Not Exploration
In the modern era, the large movements of Apache people were not journeys of discovery. They were mostly decisions made by governments: removal to reservations, confinement as prisoners, and, later, programmes that encouraged families to leave for cities. Some people also moved by their own choice, for work, schooling or family. The word “exploration” hides the fact that many of these moves were forced, or were shaped by few real alternatives.
This article gives a general outline. Each nation’s history is different, and the nations’ own official sources are the best place for detail.
Concentration on Reservations
From the mid-nineteenth century, United States policy aimed to confine Native nations to defined reservations. For Apache peoples this often meant relocation away from their home ranges. A well-known example among the Western Apache is the Rio Verde removal of 1875, when people from the Camp Verde area were marched to the San Carlos reservation, a hardship that is remembered in the communities involved. San Carlos became a place where groups that had lived apart, and who had different languages and customs, were placed together under difficult conditions.
Other nations had comparable experiences. The Mescalero, along with Navajo, were held at Bosque Redondo in eastern New Mexico in the 1860s before the Mescalero returned to their homeland area. The Jicarilla went through a series of moves before a reservation in northern New Mexico was established. The Lipan, who had been pushed from Texas by settlers and other pressures, lost much of their land, and some later became part of the Mescalero reservation in the early twentieth century, while others remained in Texas and Mexico. Each of these paths differs; the common thread is a loss of control over where to live.
The Chiricahua Prisoner of War Period
The Chiricahua experienced one of the most severe forms of removal. After the surrender of Geronimo’s band in 1886, the whole Chiricahua population, including people who had not been at war and some who had served the army as scouts, was sent east as prisoners. They were held in Florida, then Alabama, and then at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. The Chiricahua prisoner of war era is generally dated from 1886 to 1913, when they were released and given a choice between the Mescalero reservation and Oklahoma. Some chose each, which is why a Chiricahua and Warm Springs community exists today at Mescalero and a separate Fort Sill Apache Tribe exists in Oklahoma.
Allotment and Boarding Schools
Federal policy also moved people in less visible ways. Boarding schools took many children far from home, as part of a government and church policy of forced assimilation that left lasting harm. Allotment policies in some places divided communal land. These measures changed where families lived and how communities were arranged, even when no one packed up and left for a new region.
Urban Relocation
Beginning in the 1950s, a federal programme encouraged Native people to leave reservations for cities, offering help with transportation and job training. Apache relocation programs of this kind sent families to cities such as Los Angeles, Denver and Chicago, among others. Outcomes were mixed: some people found work and stayed, while others struggled with high costs, isolation and unmet promises, and many returned home. Whatever the individual result, the programme led to growing Native populations in cities, and Apache families are now found across the United States.
Reservation relocations and urban moves are linked parts of the same history of federal policy, but urban Apache communities are shaped by their own choices as well. Many remain connected to home through family visits, ceremonies, language classes and community gatherings, and some cities have Native organisations that provide shared spaces.
Diaspora and Belonging
An Apache person living in a city, or in another state, may still be an enrolled member of a nation and may take part in its life. Enrollment rules, voting rights and services vary from nation to nation, so general statements are risky. What can be said is that distance does not end identity, and that many communities have worked to include members who live away from the reservation.
At the same time, relocation and removal contributed to real losses: of language fluency in some families, of access to elders and of contact with homelands. Efforts to rebuild these links are ongoing, and they are part of the modern story.
A Better Frame
A more accurate title for this era would be about displacement, adaptation and return. People were moved, and they responded in many ways: building new communities, keeping language and ceremony where they could, and reasserting self-government in the later twentieth century. These themes connect with other articles on federal policy and recovery.
For current information about a nation’s members, services and communities, consult its official website. Policies and programmes change, and a general history cannot stand in for them.