Not one tribe, but many nations
“Apache” is a broad name for a group of related peoples who speak Southern Athabaskan languages and who live today in Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and northern Mexico. The tribe in this title is better understood as several nations: the Western Apache (including the White Mountain and San Carlos Apache), the Chiricahua, the Mescalero, the Jicarilla, the Lipan and the Plains Apache, sometimes called Kiowa Apache. They share deep linguistic and cultural connections, but each has its own history, homeland, government and way of telling its past. The sections below follow the broad eras, and where the paths of the groups diverge, the text says so.
Origins and the debated migration
Scholars place Apache languages in the wider Athabaskan language family, whose northernmost branches are found in Alaska and western Canada. Southern Athabaskan speakers, the ancestors of the Apache and Navajo, are generally thought to have moved south at some point before Europeans arrived in the Southwest. When, how fast and by which route (along the Plains edge, through the Rocky Mountain corridor, or both) is still debated, and no single date is settled. What the evidence from archaeology and linguistics suggests is a gradual process over generations rather than one journey.
Apache peoples also have their own accounts of where they came from and how they came to their lands. These oral tradition accounts are not the same as the scholarly migration model, and this site does not treat either as a replacement for the other. Many Apache nations understand their homelands as places they have always been in relationship with, and some knowledge connected to those accounts is not shared publicly.
Homelands and ways of life before the reservations
By the time Spanish expeditions reached the region in the 1500s and 1600s, Apachean groups lived across a very large area, from the southern Plains through the mountains and basins of New Mexico and Arizona into northern Mexico. Life varied with the landscape. Groups in the mountains and deserts followed seasonal rounds of hunting, gathering plants such as agave and acorns, and, among some Western Apache and Jicarilla communities, growing crops. Groups on the Plains margin hunted bison and traded with neighbors. Trade, alliance and sometimes conflict with Pueblo peoples, Spanish settlers and other Native nations were part of everyday life.
Family was the center of social organization. Many Apache groups traced descent through the mother and formed extended-family camps, with leadership that depended on respect and ability rather than a single fixed office. Practices differed between groups, so broad statements about “the Apache” should be treated cautiously.
Colonial rule and the horse
Spanish colonization of New Mexico began in 1598, and over the following centuries Apache peoples dealt with Spain and, after 1821, with Mexico. Spanish colonial contact brought trade, diplomacy, captive-taking on all sides, new diseases, and military posts called presidios. Horses, which spread through the region in the 1600s, changed hunting, travel and warfare, and the Southern Plains horse era was especially important for the Lipan, Plains and Jicarilla groups. Periods of raiding and warfare alternated with periods of negotiated peace. Spanish and Mexican authorities at times tried to settle Apache bands near their posts with rations, and in the 1830s and 1840s some Mexican states paid bounties for Apache scalps, a policy that caused great suffering.
The United States and the Apache Wars
After the United States took control of the region after the Mexican-American War (the 1848 treaty) and the Gadsden Purchase of the 1850s, settlers, miners and soldiers moved into Apache lands. The decades of fighting that followed are usually grouped as the Apache Wars. They were not one war but a series of conflicts involving different groups, leaders and causes, including broken promises, ration shortages and forced removals. Well-known leaders such as Cochise, Victorio and Geronimo belonged to Chiricahua groups, and their stories are only part of Apache history. Other Apache men served as scouts with the U.S. Army, and many families sought safety however they could.
Geronimo’s surrender in 1886 is commonly treated as the end of organized armed resistance in the Southwest.
Reservations and removal
Reservations were created across the region mostly in the 1870s and 1880s, though the dates and boundaries differ by nation. Under the reservation system, movement was restricted, rations were distributed, and traditional livelihoods were disrupted. Some groups were moved far from their homelands. The Mescalero and Navajo were confined at Bosque Redondo in eastern New Mexico in the 1860s. Chiricahua people, including many who had never fought, were sent into exile as prisoners of war, first in Florida and Alabama and later at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, a captivity that officially lasted until 1913 and 1914. The Chiricahua prisoner of war era is still central to Chiricahua and Fort Sill Apache memory.
At the same time, children were sent to government and mission boarding schools intended to replace Native languages and customs. The Apache boarding school history is a painful chapter whose effects are still discussed in communities today.
The twentieth century: new governments and new tools
Federal policy changed direction several times. The Dawes Act of 1887 pushed allotment on many reservations, while the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 encouraged tribes to adopt written constitutions and elected councils, and several Apache nations did so in the 1930s. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 and later laws changed individual rights and tribal powers. In 1975 the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act opened the way for tribes to run programs that the federal government had previously managed. Many Apache nations used these tools to build schools, health services, natural-resource departments and businesses.
Apache nations today
The Apache peoples did not vanish, as old stereotypes once claimed. Today there are several federally recognized Apache nations, including the Mescalero Apache Tribe, the Jicarilla Apache Nation, the Fort Sill Apache Tribe, the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma, the San Carlos Apache Tribe, the White Mountain Apache Tribe, and others, each with its own government. The Lipan Apache are not federally recognized as a single tribe, although Lipan descendants and communities continue to be part of the Apache story, and some Lipan families have long been associated with the Mescalero reservation.
Many nations run language classes, cultural programs and museums. Language work, including Apache language revitalization, is a priority in several communities because fluent speakers are fewer than in the past. Readers who want current facts on a nation’s government, enterprises, programs or visitor rules should go to that nation’s own official website, since details change and this site speaks for no tribe.