Who the Plains Apache are
The Plains Apache are an Apachean people who lived for centuries on the southern Plains, in the region that includes present-day western Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle and adjacent areas. Today their nation is the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma, a federally recognized tribe whose headquarters is near Anadarko in southwestern Oklahoma. Their traditional language belongs to the Southern Athabaskan family, like those of the Navajo and other Apache peoples. The language is sometimes called Plains Apache.
For many years outsiders called them the Kiowa Apache. That name is outdated and misleading, as the next article explains. The people are a distinct Apachean nation with their own language and identity, not a part of the Kiowa.
Origins and the Plains
How the ancestors of the Plains Apache came to the Plains is part of the wider debate over Apachean migration, with different scholars proposing different routes and timings, and with Apache oral traditions offering their own accounts. Spanish records of the 1500s and 1600s describe Plains people who may have been Apachean, but identifying them with later groups is difficult and uncertain.
By the 1700s and early 1800s, the Plains Apache were hunting bison and living in hide tents, using horses. Their economy resembled that of other Plains peoples, but with their own customs and language. The broader setting is covered in the account of the horse on the Southern Plains.
The Kiowa connection
The best-documented feature of Plains Apache history is their long association with the Kiowa. The two peoples travelled and camped together, joined in treaty-making, and intermarried to some extent, although they remained distinct. In many records the Plains Apache appear as a small group in alliance with the larger Kiowa. The relationship was not that of one people absorbed into another; the Plains Apache kept their own language and identity. They are sometimes described as having their own band structure and ceremonies, though much of that is not discussed publicly.
Through the Kiowa, the Plains Apache were also linked to the Comanche, with whom the Kiowa made peace in the early 1800s. That alliance system shaped much of Southern Plains politics, and it contrasts with the experience of the Lipan and Jicarilla, who were pushed away from the Plains.
Treaties and the reservation
In 1867 the United States negotiated treaties at Medicine Lodge Creek in Kansas with the Kiowa, Comanche and Plains Apache (named in the documents as Kiowa-Apache), among others. The treaty provided for a reservation in Indian Territory, in what is now southwestern Oklahoma. The Plains Apache, Kiowa and Comanche shared a reservation, and the three peoples were managed together under a single agency, which is why one still sees names that combine them.
The following decades brought the end of the bison herds, the end of the open-range life, and rapid change. Agents encouraged farming and ranching, mission and government schools were established, and children were taken away to boarding schools. The wider story is told in the history of the assimilation policy and in discussions of Apache boarding school history.
Allotment and statehood
At the turn of the twentieth century, the reservation lands were divided into individual allotments by an agreement with the federal government, and the remaining “surplus” land was opened to settlers. This is generally dated to 1901. It reduced the shared land base significantly, and the effects of allotment are still discussed in Oklahoma tribal communities. Oklahoma became a state in 1907. The Dawes Act allotment policy had similar effects on many nations across the country.
The tribe today
The Apache Tribe of Oklahoma has a tribal government and works with the surrounding Kiowa and Comanche nations and other Oklahoma tribes. Many Plains Apache families live in and around Caddo County and the Anadarko area, while others live elsewhere. The tribe sets its own membership criteria and runs its own programs; readers should consult its official website for any current details.
Language revitalization is a concern for the Plains Apache, as for many small nations. Because the number of speakers has been limited for a long time, efforts have often focused on documenting and teaching the language. This article does not describe particular programs.
Not the same as the Fort Sill Apache
Another Apache nation in Oklahoma is the Fort Sill Apache Tribe, which descends from Chiricahua and Warm Springs people held as prisoners of war near Fort Sill. They are a separate nation with a different history from the Plains Apache, although both are in Oklahoma. Readers are cautioned against treating the two as the same.
Moving beyond stereotype
Plains Apache history is sometimes lost between stories of the larger Plains nations and the better-known Apache history of the Southwest. They are one of the smaller Apache nations, and their history reminds us that Apache peoples include communities who lived as Plains hunters, mountain farmers and desert foragers. For the broader view, see the overview of the Eastern Apache nations.