Arrival in Indian Territory
In October 1894 the Chiricahua prisoners of war were moved from Mount Vernon Barracks, Alabama, to Fort Sill, in what was then Indian Territory and is now Oklahoma. The post sat on land that also belonged to the Kiowa and Comanche, who had agreed to share some of it. The move followed years of complaint about illness and conditions in Alabama, and it brought the prisoners much closer to the Southwest than they had been since 1886.
They were still prisoners. The Army kept control of where they lived, how they worked, and whether they could travel. But Fort Sill offered open country, a drier climate and room to farm, and those differences mattered to people who had spent eight years in Florida and Alabama.
Villages Around the Post
The prisoners did not live in barracks. Instead, they were settled in small villages on the post’s land, along creeks, with families grouped by band or by leader. Among the leaders who lived at Fort Sill were Naiche and Chihuahua, and Geronimo lived in one of the villages as well, as discussed in the article on his final decades. The Chiricahua were not the only Apache people in the area: the Plains Apache people, a separate nation sometimes called Kiowa Apache, already lived nearby and should not be confused with the prisoners.
Historians generally describe several villages on different parts of the reservation, each with its own headman. Army officers continued to count and supervise the prisoners, but day-to-day family life, including cooking, child-rearing and visiting relatives, took place in the villages. Houses were built, and gardens and fields were laid out.
Farming and Cattle Work
The Army’s plan was that the Chiricahua would become self-supporting through farming and stock-raising. The prisoners were given tools, seed and cattle. They grew crops such as corn and vegetables, cut hay, and tended herds. The details of their success varied from year to year with weather and soil, and some years were better than others.
This work was not a return to older ways of life, and it was not simply an extension of the earlier Apache farming practiced by some groups. It was a program designed by officials to make the prisoners productive and, in the officials’ words, to prepare them for citizenship. The prisoners adapted to it as they could, while preserving what they were able to of family life and language.
Many men also worked as laborers, and some are recorded as enlisting for a time as Army scouts at the post. Such service while still under confinement is a reminder of how complicated the categories of friend, enemy and prisoner became in this period.
An Officer and a Change of Policy
An Army officer, Hugh Scott, took charge of the prisoners in the late 1890s. Scott had experience with the Plains nations and is often credited with treating the Chiricahua with more consideration than some of his predecessors. He later supported the idea that they should be released and given land. His support is part of why the release happened, though the decision was made by Congress and the War Department, not by one man.
Schools and Religion
Children at Fort Sill attended a school at the post, and some were sent away to boarding schools. Missionaries from outside churches worked among the prisoners, and some people joined Christian churches during these years. The assimilation policy of the day pressed in this direction, and the records tend to emphasize conversions that officials considered successes. How individuals actually understood these changes is harder to know from official records. Some ceremonial and family traditions certainly continued, mostly out of the sight of outsiders, and it is not appropriate for an outside site to speculate about them.
Health and Loss
Illness did not stop with the move, and the broader story of Apache health after reservations began in years like these. Fewer people died than in the worst years in the East, but deaths continued, and older leaders and many younger people were buried at Fort Sill. The burial grounds that resulted are discussed in the article on the Apache cemeteries at Fort Sill. Grief and mourning were handled according to the customs of the families, which the records seldom describe, in keeping with the restraint outsiders should show about such matters.
Looking Toward Release
By the first decade of the twentieth century, pressure was building to end the confinement. Many prisoners hoped to return to Arizona or New Mexico, but opposition from settlers and officials in Arizona made that unlikely. After Geronimo’s death in 1909, attention turned toward a solution for the rest. That led to the 1913 release, when the prisoners were allowed to choose between New Mexico and staying in Oklahoma.
The Fort Sill years, though still captivity, were the period in which many families rebuilt a community life. Descendants of those families belong to the Fort Sill Apache Tribe and to the Mescalero Apache Tribe, and each nation holds its own account of this history. For present-day information, consult the nations’ official websites.