One word, several kinds of home
Popular images often show a single type of “Indian house”. For Apache peoples there was no single type. The dwelling a family used depended on the group, the region, the season and the historical period. The two most often mentioned are the wickiup and the tipi, but others, including more permanent structures, also appear in the record. A separate article on traditional Apache homes looks at how materials and form fitted mountain, desert and plains settings; this one focuses on the buildings by group and the story of housing into the present.
Wickiups
The wickiup is a dome-shaped or conical dwelling made from a frame of poles or branches covered with brush, grass, bark or, in some cases, hides or other available materials. It was used by Western Apache, Chiricahua and Mescalero people, among others. Western Apache families used a house of this kind, with a frame of bent poles and thatch of local plants such as grass, and the exact form varied by area and season.
A wickiup was relatively quick to build and could be made from local materials, which suited families who moved through a yearly round of camps. In hot weather it could be left more open, and in colder months it could be covered more fully. A fire pit was usually in or near the centre, and the household’s belongings, such as baskets and bedding, were arranged around the edges. Sources differ about details, and descriptions from the nineteenth century are often written by outsiders, so accounts should be read with some caution. The term wickiup camps is also used for the clustered family dwellings found in many Apache settlements.
Tipis
Tipis, made of hide or, later, canvas over a pole frame, were used by Apache groups with strong ties to the Plains, notably the Plains Apache, the Lipan, and the Jicarilla, and by Mescalero people on buffalo hunting trips. They suited groups that moved frequently and followed bison, and they could be taken down and carried. The adoption of the horse expanded how much a family could carry, and this is part of the story of the Southern Plains horse era. A group might use a tipi on the plains and a more local structure in the mountains, which is one reason it can be misleading to attach a single dwelling to a single people.
Other dwellings
Not every Apache dwelling was temporary. Some Jicarilla families built more permanent homes, including structures influenced by their neighbours, in areas where they farmed or lived near Pueblo communities. Western Apache families who farmed also had more settled places near their fields. Later, log and adobe houses, tents, and framed houses appeared as families adapted to new circumstances. Shade structures and ramadas, open roofs on posts, were used in warm seasons for work and cooking in the Southwest.
Other features of a camp were also built: storage pits or caches, drying racks for meat and plants, and sweat-bath structures. The last of these relates to practices that are discussed in general terms elsewhere and are not detailed here.
Housing in the reservation era
The reservation system and military policy changed how Apache people lived. Camps were often moved or concentrated near agencies and forts, and federal officials encouraged families to build permanent houses, often as part of a broader assimilation policy that also affected clothing, schooling and livelihood. Some families kept wickiups for years alongside newer buildings, and tents were common in some places. In the twentieth century, government-funded housing programmes, tribal housing authorities and individual construction produced the mix of homes seen on Apache lands today.
Homes today
Modern Apache housing is much like housing elsewhere in rural America, with frame houses, manufactured homes and apartments, but it is shaped by distinct issues: land held in trust, the costs of building in remote places, and the need for infrastructure. Nations manage housing in different ways, and details change, so the official websites of the individual nations are the best source for current information.
Traditional dwellings are not simply a thing of the past. Some communities build wickiups or tipis for cultural events, education and demonstration, and for certain ceremonies. Those uses are specific to the communities involved, and this site does not describe ceremonial structures or practices.