Settled Where?
After the period of movement from the north, which is discussed in the other migration articles, Apachean groups established ranges across a wide area. “Settlement” needs care here. Many Apache groups were not fixed in permanent villages in the way of Pueblo farmers, but they were also not wanderers without a home. Most had well-defined territories that they knew thoroughly and returned to season after season, with camps, farming plots, gathering places and sacred locations tied to particular places.
Settlement varied by nation, by period and by local conditions. The summaries below are general and should not be read as covering every family or every century. Sources sometimes differ on details.
Jicarilla: Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado
The Jicarilla homeland is generally placed in northern New Mexico and adjoining parts of Colorado. In the Spanish colonial period they are described as having two traditional divisions, often called the Llanero (plains) and the Olleros (a name sometimes linked to pottery making and mountain living). Alongside hunting and gathering, Jicarilla families farmed in places with enough water, and settlements near Pueblo and Spanish communities are recorded. They traded with their Pueblo neighbours, and Jicarilla and Pueblo trade is one of the better-documented exchange relationships. Their later reservation, in northern New Mexico, lies within the broader area of their earlier range.
Western Apache: Streams, Farm Sites and Seasonal Rounds
The Western Apache of what is now eastern and central Arizona include the White Mountain, San Carlos, Cibecue and Tonto groups, among others. Anthropologists describe them as combining farming with hunting and gathering. Families often kept farm sites along streams or in side canyons, planting corn and other crops in spring, moving to gather wild foods such as agave, acorns and cactus fruits at different elevations, and returning to harvest. This is the Western Apache seasonal round, a pattern of movement tied to elevation and season.
Social ties were organised through local groups and clans, with local groups centred on a territory. Shelters were often brush-covered dwellings suited to the area. Their homelands included the high country of the White Mountains and the Mogollon Rim, the valleys of the Gila and Salt rivers, and the Cibecue Creek country.
Mescalero: Mountains and Basin
The Mescalero are associated with the mountains and basins of south-central New Mexico, including the Sacramento Mountains and the Sierra Blanca area, and in the past ranged into parts of western Texas and northern Mexico. The name refers to the roasting of agave, or mescal, an important food. They combined seasonal gathering, hunting and, at times, raiding and trade. Their reservation lies in the heart of this earlier range, and the Chiricahua and Lipan peoples were later joined to it.
Chiricahua: Southeastern Arizona, Southwestern New Mexico and Mexico
The Chiricahua are generally divided in the literature into several bands, with ranges across southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico and northern Mexico, including the Sierra Madre. Their mountain and desert country supported gathering, particularly of agave, along with hunting. They moved between ranges according to season and conditions, and some bands are associated with specific mountain areas. Because they lived across what became an international border, their lives were affected by both Mexican and United States policies.
Lipan: The Texas Range
The Lipan are associated with Texas and northern Mexico. Spanish records place them on the southern Plains and in central and south Texas, where bison hunting was a major activity, alongside other food sources. Pressure from the Comanche and, later, settlers shifted their territory over time. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries they moved between Texas and Mexico, and today people of Lipan descent live in Texas, New Mexico and elsewhere. Questions of recognition are separate and are covered in other articles.
Plains Apache: The Southern Plains
The Plains Apache, long known as Kiowa Apache, lived on the southern Plains in a close association with the Kiowa. They hunted bison and used tipis, and ranged over parts of what is now Oklahoma, Texas and neighbouring areas. Their present community is based in southwestern Oklahoma.
What the Patterns Show
Putting these groups side by side shows three broad ways of using land.
- Mixed farming and gathering in river valleys and uplands (Western Apache, with parts of Jicarilla life).
- Mountain and desert gathering and hunting with seasonal movement (Mescalero and Chiricahua).
- Plains bison hunting with more mobile camps (Lipan, Plains Apache and the Llanero Jicarilla).
These categories overlap and shifted over time, especially after the arrival of horses, which changed mobility and trade for some groups. They also changed sharply with confinement to reservations in the later nineteenth century, when people were required to live within set boundaries.
Caution
Information on settlement comes from a mix of Spanish and Mexican records, American military and ethnographic reports, archaeology and Apache accounts. Each has limits, and early ethnographies often reflect the views of outsiders. Where this article states a pattern, it should be taken as a general summary. For the history of a particular nation, its own official sources and published histories are the best guide.