What “protohistoric” means
Archaeologists divide the past into periods defined by what kind of evidence survives. “Prehistoric” refers to times before any written records of a region, and “historic” to times with regular written documentation. The protohistoric is the in-between stretch, when outsiders wrote occasional descriptions but sustained records had not yet begun. For the Southwest and southern Plains, it is generally placed in the sixteenth century, starting with the first Spanish expeditions in the 1540s and ending around the time of permanent Spanish settlement in New Mexico in 1598, although scholars set the boundaries differently in different areas.
The title’s “ancient” is a loose fit. The protohistoric is only a few centuries before the permanent colonial era, and earlier Apachean history, including questions of origins, belongs to the discussion of archaeology and oral tradition. Also, “the tribe” should be read as the group of related Apachean nations, not a single people.
The Coronado expedition
The best-known early descriptions come from the expedition led by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, which left Mexico in 1540 and traveled into the Pueblo country and then east onto the Plains in 1541. Chroniclers who accompanied or reported on the expedition, among them Pedro de Castañeda, described mobile peoples encountered on the grasslands. The Spanish called one of these peoples the Querechos.
According to these accounts, the Querechos lived in tents made of tanned hides, followed the bison herds, used dogs to haul loads, and ate bison meat. The chroniclers also noted that they communicated with sign language. The record of the Coronado expedition Querechos encounter is the starting point for most discussions of early Apachean presence on the Plains, and it is also the passage that tends to be quoted most often and with the most confidence.
The Teyas
Further east, the expedition met another group the Spanish called the Teyas. The chroniclers described them as also living by bison hunting and as distinct from the Querechos in appearance and, in some respects, in relations with them. Who the Teyas were is debated. Some scholars have suggested links to groups later known in Texas and the Plains who spoke other languages, and the identification remains uncertain. The Teyas are usually not treated as Apachean ancestors, and a safe summary is that the Spanish saw several mobile Plains peoples, not all of them related.
Do the Querechos equal the Apache?
Many scholars think the Querechos included ancestors of Apachean peoples, especially those later known on the Plains. The identification rests on the combination of bison hunting, hide tents, dog transport and later documents that describe similar peoples under the name Apache. But it is an inference, not a certainty. The name Querechos itself is often thought to come from a Pueblo language, rather than being a name the people used for themselves, though this is uncertain. The word Apache appears in Spanish records only toward the end of the sixteenth century, around the time of the Oñate colonization, and its origins are covered separately in the story of the origin of the word Apache.
Sources differ on how the sixteenth-century peoples should be matched to later nations such as the Plains Apache, Jicarilla and others. For that reason, careful writers say “likely ancestors of some Apachean groups” rather than “the Apache of 1541.”
What the chroniclers could and could not see
These accounts were written by outsiders for Spanish audiences. A few limitations are worth bearing in mind.
- The Spanish met the Querechos and Teyas briefly while crossing the Plains, so their observations are snapshots.
- Interpreters and sign language shaped what was understood, and names used by the Spanish may have been drawn from neighboring peoples.
- The chroniclers were focused on finding wealth, so descriptions of ordinary life were incidental.
- The expedition itself, a large armed force, may have affected how people behaved.
Despite this, the accounts provide valuable detail about technology and subsistence that archaeology rarely preserves, such as hide tents and the use of dogs as pack animals.
Archaeology and the protohistoric
The protohistoric is hard to see archaeologically for the same reasons Apachean sites are hard to find in general: mobile peoples, perishable shelters and few durable goods. Researchers look for camps on the Plains with bison remains and tent features, and for sites in the Southwest with signs of Apachean presence. The picture drawn from such work does not settle where Apachean groups were before or in 1541. Debates over the Apachean migration from the north, including routes across the Plains or through the mountains, continue; one possibility sometimes discussed is a Plains to Southwest route, though this is not settled.
Why it matters
The protohistoric period shows that Apachean ancestors were already part of regional networks of trade and travel before sustained European settlement, as Spanish records of Pueblo towns and plains hunters suggest. It also shows how thin the early written record is, and how much of the history of Apache peoples rests on other sources. Apache oral traditions, linguistic research on the Athabaskan language family and archaeology each add pieces that Spanish chronicles cannot supply. A responsible reading uses all of them and keeps in mind that the Apache nations of today are the people best placed to speak for their own history.