A new government in an old homeland
Apache peoples did not move into American territory in 1848. The United States moved over them. Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war with Mexico, Mexico ceded a large part of its northern lands, including present-day New Mexico and most of Arizona north of the Gila River. Southern Arizona followed with the Gadsden Purchase of 1853. None of the Apache nations whose homelands were affected took part in those negotiations, and the idea that Mexico could hand over their lands was not one they had agreed to.
“Apache” also covers several peoples. The Chiricahua groups, the Western Apache, the Mescalero, the Jicarilla and the Lipan each had different territories and met the new government at different times. This article describes the general shift and does not try to tell each group’s history.
What the United States inherited
By 1848 Apache communities had decades of experience with Spanish and then Mexican authorities, including periods of trade, rations and war. Those earlier decades left a legacy of raiding and retaliation along the border. One of the treaty’s provisions, Article 11, made the United States responsible for restraining Native raids into Mexico. In practice that was unworkable, and it later became a source of diplomatic friction between the two governments. It also meant that US officials arrived with obligations that made them see Apache groups primarily as a problem of security.
Forts, routes and settlers
The first American presence was military and administrative. The Army established posts in the 1850s, among them Fort Webster, Fort Thorn and Fort Stanton in New Mexico, and Fort Buchanan in southern Arizona. Roads and mail routes crossed Apache lands, including a stage route through Apache Pass. Surveys of the new border brought in parties of officials, soldiers and laborers.
Miners and ranchers came with them. The copper mines at Santa Rita in southwestern New Mexico, near the country of the Chihenne, drew workers to a region where Apache families had hunted, gathered and farmed for generations. Gold and silver strikes later brought more. Newcomers used water sources and hunting grounds, and the game and plants Apache families relied on became scarcer. These pressures, rather than any single incident, formed the background to most disputes. The broader pattern of settler encroachment is a theme across the nineteenth century.
Agents, treaties and promises
Responsibility for Native affairs belonged to the Indian Office, moved to the Department of the Interior in 1849. In New Mexico, which became a territory in 1850, the governor served as superintendent of Indian affairs. Officials signed a treaty with Apache representatives at Santa Fe in 1852, and further agreements were negotiated in the mid-1850s. Many of these agreements were never ratified, and promises of rations or protection often went unmet. The important point for Apache treaties and negotiation in this period is that leaders could not be sure the terms they heard would be honored.
Agents had limited resources and often little knowledge of Apache languages or politics. Leaders who spoke for their own local groups were sometimes treated as if they spoke for all Apache, and agreements with one group were assumed to bind others. Both mistakes caused misunderstandings.
Different groups, different paths
The record for the 1850s shows a mixed picture. The Mescalero and Jicarilla in New Mexico experienced military campaigns and, in the Mescalero case, a post at Fort Stanton from 1855. The Chiricahua groups in the south dealt with miners, the border, and passing travelers. The Western Apache in central Arizona had less contact with Americans in the early years, as the Army and settlers were mostly farther south. Their experience changed with the establishment of Fort Apache and the reservations of the 1870s. Arizona became a separate territory in 1863.
In these years there were also stretches of peace. Some leaders tried to preserve trade and good relations, and some Americans worked with them. Newspaper accounts and official reports of the time, though, often stress violence and rarely give the Apache side of events, so the record leans toward conflict.
Why relations deteriorated
Historians point to several overlapping causes:
- competition for land, water and game as settlers and mines arrived
- incidents of violence, often involving individuals, that led to broad retaliation against whichever group was nearest
- a cycle of Mexican and American campaigns that treated all Apache people as one enemy
- distrust after seizures of leaders and hostages, such as the events at Apache Pass in 1861
- a federal system that depended on far-away decision makers with little knowledge of local conditions
By the 1860s, these pressures had combined with the Civil War’s disruptions to produce open conflict across much of the region. The longer story of that conflict belongs to the broader account of the Apache Wars and to the stories of individual events.
Reading this period today
Apache nations continue to live in the places where these events occurred, and their own accounts are an important complement to government records. For the current positions and histories of each nation, the nations’ official websites are the best starting point. The history of Arizona and New Mexico is still taught mostly through Army and settler sources, and anyone reading about the period benefits from remembering that those sources were written by one side.