A year organized around places
Before the reservation era, much of Apache life followed the seasons. Families lived in small groups, usually related by kinship, and moved among camps so that they could be where food was available at the time it was available. This did not mean wandering without purpose. Groups generally knew their territories well, had favored places to return to, and shifted according to the weather, the ripening of plants and the movement of game.
Descriptions of this pattern come from Spanish, Mexican and American records, from anthropologists and from Apache accounts, and they vary a good deal. Reliable detail is strongest for some groups, such as the Western Apache, and thinner for others. For that reason this article describes tendencies, not a calendar that applies to everyone.
Western Apache camps
Early twentieth-century studies of the Western Apache describe a cycle that combined farming with gathering and hunting. In spring, families might plant corn and other crops in fields near streams or springs, using Western Apache irrigation from small ditches in some places, and then leave to gather wild foods at various elevations while the crops grew. Agave, often gathered in spring and cooked in earth ovens, is one well-known example of such food, and mescal roasting was an important activity for some southern groups. Summer brought other plants, including cactus fruits where saguaro and prickly pear grow, and in late summer or fall families often returned to harvest crops. Autumn gathering included acorn and pinon gathering in places where those trees grow, and hunting of deer was important at various times. In winter, groups often moved to lower or more sheltered camps.
The Western Apache seasonal round, as it is sometimes called, therefore tied together farm sites, gathering areas and hunting grounds across a large and varied landscape. Because the Western Apache include several groups with their own territories, the details differed from one group to the next, and also from one year to another depending on rainfall.
Chiricahua and Mescalero patterns
The Chiricahua groups of southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico and northern Mexico are generally described as relying more on gathering and hunting than on planting, though farming is mentioned in some accounts, and the ranges they used included both mountains and desert basins. The Mescalero in the mountains and basins of southern New Mexico are linked to agave harvesting and cooking, and also hunted and gathered across varied elevations. In the cases of both, moving between higher country in warm months and lower ground in colder ones is a common theme, but written sources are uneven and reflect outside observers.
Jicarilla, Lipan and Plains Apache
East of the Rio Grande, patterns were different. Accounts of the Jicarilla Apache people describe movement between mountain and plains country in northern New Mexico and nearby areas, with farming, gathering and hunting, including bison hunts on the plains, in varying proportions. The Lipan and Plains Apache lived further east and south, and the Southern Plains horse era changed travel and hunting by making long journeys to hunt bison practical. Camps for these groups more often used hide tipis that could be moved quickly. Here the year was shaped by bison movements as well as by plant harvests.
Camps and daily work
A camp usually consisted of a few related households. Dwellings were often brush-covered structures in the Southwest or hide tipis on the Plains. Work was divided in ways that varied by group, but generally included gathering, food preparation, hide work, basketry and child care, along with hunting, travel and defense. Many sources describe women as responsible for much of the gathering and processing of plant foods and for management of household goods, and Western Apache households are commonly described as organized around related women. Men are described as hunting and as taking part in trade, raiding or protection of the group at different times. These descriptions are generalizations, and individuals had many different roles.
Winter, in many accounts, was a time for staying in camp, for work that could be done indoors or around the fire, and for stories. The winter storytelling season is mentioned for several groups, and the idea that some stories were told only in a particular time of year appears in published work. This article does not give the stories or rules, which are the property of the communities.
What changed
The seasonal movement described here was reshaped as outside settlers took land, warfare intensified and the United States confined Apache people to reservations. Restrictions on travel, rationing, the loss of gathering and hunting places, and the push toward permanent housing, wage labor and ranching changed daily life within a few decades. Some seasonal activities survived in altered forms, and many families still gather plants, hunt and travel to traditional places for particular foods at particular times of year, as their circumstances allow. The history of that change is told in other articles, while this one aims only to show how the year was once organized and why it matters for understanding the lives of Apache people today.