The End of Prisoner of War Status
In 1913, after 27 years, the United States ended the prisoner of war status of the Chiricahua Apache people held at Fort Sill. By then the group included many people born in captivity, and the original adults were growing old. Several Army officers, notably Hugh Scott, had pressed for release for years, and Congress and the War Department approved a plan that spring.
The release did not mean a return to the places the Chiricahua had known. Arizona and southwestern New Mexico, their older homelands, were not available as a reservation, in large part because of local opposition and because the land had been taken up by others. The government offered two main options instead.
The Two Options
The first was to move to the Mescalero Apache Reservation in southern New Mexico, home of the Mescalero Apache people. The Mescalero were consulted about receiving the Chiricahua, and the two peoples were related by language and by long contact. The reservation lies in the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico, a landscape that was at least in the same wider region as the older Chiricahua country.
The second was to remain in Oklahoma, on allotted land in the Fort Sill area. People who chose this option received individual parcels, as was typical of the period’s Dawes Act allotment policy, which divided communal land into individual holdings. Those who stayed were also close to graves of family members buried at Fort Sill.
Who Went Where
Roughly 250 or so people were affected, though sources give slightly different totals. Most chose New Mexico, and a smaller group stayed in Oklahoma. The migration to Mescalero took place in spring 1913, with the Army arranging transport. Other details, like exact counts, differ between sources and are best checked against the original records.
Reasons for the choice were varied and personal, and an outside writer cannot give a full account. Several factors are often raised in historical discussion:
- A wish to live closer to the old homeland, even though that land was out of reach
- Family ties, since relatives and friends were choosing in groups
- Concern about farming conditions and the economy in each place
- Ties to the graves of loved ones, which for some argued for staying
- The presence of the Mescalero as relatives who could receive them
Some families were split by these decisions, with relatives going in different directions.
Arrival at Mescalero
The newcomers arrived on a reservation where land and resources were already limited and where living arrangements had to be made quickly. The Mescalero people received them, but the early years involved real adjustment. Over time, the Chiricahua and Mescalero communities merged in many ways through marriage and shared life. Today the Mescalero Apache Tribe includes Mescalero, Chiricahua and Lipan people, a fact reflected in its own descriptions of itself. For more on the people already living there, see the article on the Mescalero Apache people.
The Mescalero themselves had earlier endured the federal removal and confinement at Bosque Redondo, a separate history, as discussed in the account of Mescalero at Bosque Redondo.
Staying in Oklahoma
Those who remained in Oklahoma settled on their allotments near Apache, Oklahoma, and built a community there. Over the following decades they formed their own organization, and eventually that became the Fort Sill Apache Tribe, a federally recognized nation with its own government. The story of that formation is covered in a separate article.
Allotment brought problems that affected many Native communities, including the loss of land over time through sales and legal complications. These are general features of the period and not unique to this group.
A Release With Limits
It is easy to describe 1913 as freedom, and in a basic sense it was. But the release came after nearly three decades of loss. Many people had died, the children of an entire generation had been taken from them, and the chance to return to the original homelands was gone. The Chiricahua were released onto land that was not their own ancestral country, and had to rebuild from a position of great disadvantage.
For descendants, both Mescalero and Oklahoma communities carry this history. The nations’ own websites are the best sources for how they describe it today, and this independent site does not speak for them.