A policy of concentration
In the 1860s and 1870s, federal officials in the Southwest increasingly sought to settle native peoples on a small number of reservations, where they could be supervised and where, in the thinking of the time, conflict with settlers could be reduced. For the Apache peoples this meant that groups with separate homelands, leaders and sometimes languages were placed in the same places. This is what is meant here by reservation consolidation. It was a policy decision made by outsiders, and it was often carried out through removals that families experienced as loss and hardship.
The policy did not treat all Apache groups the same way, and it changed repeatedly, so the history is one of shifting boundaries and repeated moves rather than a single event.
San Carlos
San Carlos, in what is now southeastern Arizona, is the best-known example. The reservation was established in the early 1870s, and over the following years it drew in people from several Western Apache groups, from the Yavapai, and, after other reservations were closed, from the Chiricahua and others. The sequence of removals included the Rio Verde removal of 1875, when Yavapai and Tonto Apache people were marched to San Carlos from the Camp Verde area, a journey that is recalled as a hard and costly one. In 1876 and 1877, Chiricahua and Warm Springs people were also moved to San Carlos.
The effect was to place people in close quarters who had very different relationships. Some were kin or longtime neighbors. Others had been rivals or had little contact. The location itself was, by many accounts, a difficult one, and shortages and disease were serious problems. Today the reservation is home to the San Carlos Apache Tribe.
Tensions
Written records and later histories describe several sources of friction.
- Unfamiliar neighbors. Groups had distinct customs and sometimes histories of conflict, and camps were placed near one another by agents who often did not understand those differences.
- Pressure on resources. Land suited to farming or gathering was limited, and many people were dependent on rations that were not always sufficient.
- Administration. Agents sometimes chose leaders or “chiefs” for convenience, which could disrupt older ways of deciding who had influence.
- Different relationships with the army. Some groups were seen as peaceful and others as hostile, which affected how each was treated. Some men also served as scouts, which complicated relations inside communities.
- Fear and suspicion. Events elsewhere, including escapes and outbreaks, shaped how agents and neighbors saw one another.
These tensions are not evidence that Apache groups were incapable of living together. They are what many communities might experience when forced together under hard conditions.
Bonds
At the same time, people formed new connections. Marriage across group lines became more common. Shared experience of removal, rationing and loss created a sense of common history. Over time, communities developed forms of cooperation within the reservation, even as families remembered their origins in particular groups and places. Kinship, including the clan ties described among the Western Apache, offered ways to connect people from different communities.
How strongly these new ties replaced older group identities differs from place to place. Many families still identify first with a specific group, such as the White Mountain, San Carlos, Cibecue or Tonto people, and then with the reservation community.
Other reservations
San Carlos was not the only case.
- Mescalero. The Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico was established in the 1870s. After the 1860s Bosque Redondo experience, in which Mescalero were held alongside Navajo people, the Mescalero reservation later became home to Mescalero people and, in the 20th century, to many Chiricahua and some Lipan descendants. The reservation’s modern community therefore draws on several Apache lineages.
- Fort Apache. Fort Apache, in the White Mountains, began as a military post. A reservation connected to it grew over the years, and in the late 1800s the San Carlos and White Mountain areas were separated administratively. It is now a Fort Apache historic site.
- Camp Verde. After the Rio Verde removal, some Yavapai and Apache people returned to the Verde Valley, and today the Yavapai-Apache Nation is a joint community. It is an example of consolidation leading to a lasting shared nation.
- Jicarilla. The Jicarilla reservation took shape gradually, partly because of the way the federal government changed its plans several times. It remained a separate home for one people.
- Oklahoma. The Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apache were held as prisoners of war from 1886 to 1913, and the Plains Apache lived near the Kiowa and Comanche in Oklahoma. These are separate stories, treated in other sections of this site.
A lasting effect
Consolidation changed the map of Apache life. Some homelands were largely emptied of Apache residents, and new communities formed in places chosen by the government. The distribution of Apache nations seen today, with major communities in Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma, is in part a legacy of those decisions. The loss of land that accompanied consolidation is a major theme of Apache land loss.
The reservation system of the era shaped all of this. Each nation remains distinct, and reservation boundaries drawn in the 1800s did not erase older identities. The nations that exist today are separately governed. For current information on any reservation or community, readers should consult the official website of the nation concerned.