Influence is not the same as control
Apache leaders did not set United States policy, and they did not want to. But the decisions they made, to resist, to negotiate or to wait, forced US officials and army officers to respond, and some of those responses became lasting features of how the federal government dealt with Native nations in the Southwest. This article looks at that influence while keeping in mind who bore the costs. In nearly every case, Apache families paid far more than anyone else.
The period is generally described as running from the late 1840s to 1886, although historians differ about where to start and what to include under the label of the Apache Wars. It is better to think of a series of conflicts and negotiations involving different groups than a single war.
Army methods and the use of scouts
Operating in the mountains and deserts of Arizona and New Mexico was hard for US forces. Columns tied to supply wagons could not easily follow small, mobile groups of Apache who knew the country. One lasting response was the army’s growing reliance on Apache scouts, who served as trackers and guides, often from groups other than the ones being pursued. General George Crook, who commanded in Arizona in the early 1870s and again in the 1880s, is especially associated with this approach. The long record of Apache scout history is complicated, and communities remember it in different ways. Scouts were serving for their own reasons, including pay, family security and old rivalries, and they were sometimes treated unjustly in return. In 1886, many of the Chiricahua scouts were sent into captivity with the very people they had been pursuing.
The pursuit of Apache groups also affected the army’s organisation in the region, including how it positioned posts and supply lines. These changes, however, are better described cautiously than with confident claims about their scale. What can be said is that the long campaigns made the Southwest a testing ground for methods later used elsewhere, and that many details are still debated by historians who study the Apache and US military relationship.
The end of treaty-making
Congress ended treaty-making with Native nations in 1871. The causes were many, including a dispute between the House and the Senate, but the breakdown of earlier agreements was part of the setting. Afterward, relations were governed by statutes, executive orders and agreements. For Apache communities this meant that reservations were generally created by executive action and could be shrunk or abolished by the same means. The Chiricahua reservation negotiated with Cochise in 1872 was closed in 1876, which is one example of how fragile such arrangements were.
Peace policy and consolidation
In the early 1870s, the federal government pursued what was called a peace policy, which sent civilian and military representatives to negotiate with Apache leaders and to place people on reservations with rations. It was inconsistent in practice, and local settlers and officials sometimes undermined it. The Camp Grant massacre of 1871, in which a large group of Aravaipa Apache, most of them women and children, were killed by a mixed party from Tucson, shocked many in the eastern United States and prompted the government to send peace commissioners to Arizona, even though the people responsible were acquitted in a trial.
From the mid-1870s, officials favoured consolidating Apache groups onto fewer reservations, especially San Carlos in Arizona. The 1875 move of people from the Rio Verde reservation to San Carlos is an example of forced relocation of this kind. Mixing groups that had different leaders, homelands and sometimes histories of tension created friction, and it contributed to repeated departures from the reservation. Leaders such as Victorio responded to these conditions by leaving and defending their right to return to their own country. In that sense the reservation system itself was reshaped by the responses of Apache leaders, even if it was shaped far more by decisions made in Washington.
1886 and the prisoner of war policy
The campaign against Geronimo, Naiche and their followers ended in September 1886, when Geronimo surrendered to General Nelson Miles in southern Arizona. The decision that followed was unusual: the federal government sent virtually the whole Chiricahua population, including people who had not fought and scouts who had served the army, to Florida as prisoners. The Chiricahua prisoners of war spent about twenty-seven years in captivity before their release in 1913. This policy turned a military campaign into a punishment of a whole people, and later accounts, including by officers who served in the campaign, criticised it.
The end of the campaign is often described as the close of the Southwest conflicts, but the arrangement should not be mistaken for an end to Apache history. The Apache nations went on, and their later struggles over land, schools and recognition continued the same relationship with federal power.
Long consequences
The effect on land was lasting. Reservation boundaries were drawn and redrawn, and the story of Apache land loss includes losses long after 1886. Federal policy toward Native nations changed again in the twentieth century. Several Apache nations organised governments under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, an example of how policy shifts reached them. In recent decades, tribal governments have exercised more control over their own affairs, under policies of self-determination.
The legacy of Apache leaders in American history is therefore double-edged. They are remembered as people who forced governments to deal with them, and who defended homelands under extreme pressure. They are also reminders of how federal power was used against Native communities. Readers should look to the nations’ own official sources for current perspectives.