Many peoples, one Army
“The Apache” is a convenient phrase, but the US Army never faced one united people. In the nineteenth-century Southwest and southern Plains it met a range of Apache groups with their own leaders, territories and relations with their neighbours. The Chiricahua (including the Chokonen, Chihenne and Nednhi), the Western Apache groups such as the White Mountain and Cibecue people, the Mescalero, the Jicarilla, the Lipan and the Plains Apache all dealt with the United States in different ways and at different times. Some were at war for years; others spent long periods trying to live near forts and settlements in peace. This article gives a broad outline and cannot stand in for the specific histories of each nation.
It also helps to remember that the people involved were families. Most of the Apache men, women and children caught up in these events were not fighting anyone. They were trying to feed themselves, keep their relatives safe and stay on land they had used for generations.
Before the Army arrived
Apache peoples had centuries of contact with Spanish and then Mexican authorities before the United States took control of the region. The border raiding, trading and warfare of that period shaped what came later. Much of northern Mexico saw conflict that continued into the American period, a history covered elsewhere under topics such as the Sonora and Chihuahua raids. When the United States won the war with Mexico, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo transferred New Mexico and much of Arizona to the United States. Apache nations were not parties to that agreement, yet it placed them under a new government that claimed authority over their homelands.
The 1850s: first forts
After 1848 the Army set up posts in New Mexico and, after the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, in southern Arizona. Early forts such as Fort Webster and Fort Thorn in southwestern New Mexico and Fort Stanton in the Mescalero country were meant to protect settlers, miners and travel routes. Fort Buchanan in southern Arizona followed in 1856. Treaties were signed with some groups in the early 1850s, but the promises on both sides were poorly kept, a subject explored in the history of Apache treaties.
Relations were uneven. Officers and Apache leaders sometimes negotiated and traded; at other times, killings, raids on livestock, and retaliation led to open campaigns. Both settlers and Apache communities suffered losses, and the Army’s role was often to respond to settler pressure.
1861 to 1863: a turning point
In February 1861 an Army lieutenant, George Bascom, held talks with Cochise at Apache Pass over the kidnapping of a boy from a ranch. The meeting collapsed, hostages on both sides were killed, and many historians see it as the start of a decade of heightened conflict in southern Arizona; the details belong to a separate article on that incident. When the Civil War began, the Army withdrew from many posts, and Apache groups saw the departure of troops in their own terms.
In 1862 troops of the California Column moved east across Arizona and fought an engagement at Apache Pass, after which Fort Bowie was established to guard the route. The importance of that place is explored in the history of Apache Pass and Fort Bowie. In January 1863 the Chihenne leader Mangas Coloradas, who had come to meet Army officers, was seized and died in custody; the official explanation, that he was shot while trying to escape, has long been doubted. Many Apache people remembered this as an act of treachery, and it hardened distrust for years.
Campaigns and reservations in the 1860s and 1870s
After the Civil War the Army returned in force. In New Mexico, the Mescalero were taken to the Bosque Redondo reservation in 1863 and left it in 1865. In Arizona, troops pursued Apache and Yavapai groups through the early 1870s. In April 1871 a group of civilians from Tucson, joined by Tohono O’odham and Mexican American participants, attacked an Aravaipa Apache camp near Camp Grant and killed well over a hundred people, most of them women and children. The killings, which were not an Army operation, led to national controversy and trials in which those accused were acquitted.
Federal officials then tried a mix of diplomacy and force. In 1872 General Oliver O. Howard negotiated with Cochise for a Chiricahua reservation in southeastern Arizona. In the same period General George Crook took command of the Department of Arizona, using mule trains and enlisting Apache men as scouts. The wider Apache scout history is complicated, but scouts were central to Army strategy for the next fifteen years. By the mid-1870s the Indian Office was concentrating groups on a few reservations such as San Carlos, closing others, including the Chiricahua Reservation in 1876. The reservation system brought together groups that had not lived side by side, often with scarce resources.
The 1880s: breakouts and the final campaign
Tension at San Carlos and Fort Apache continued. In August 1881 Army officers moved to arrest a Western Apache religious leader near Cibecue Creek; fighting broke out, and some Apache scouts turned on their officers in what is now known as the Cibecue Creek incident. Later the same year and again in 1883 and 1885, Chiricahua groups left the reservations, some of them heading to Mexico. Geronimo, who is often remembered as the war’s central figure, was one of several leaders; he was a war leader and spiritual figure rather than a chief, and his role is discussed in other articles.
Crook negotiated with the group in March 1886, but the terms were disputed and some of the group left again. General Nelson Miles replaced Crook, and relied on units that included Apache scouts, with Lieutenant Charles Gatewood carrying messages. Geronimo and Naiche surrendered to Miles on 4 September 1886 at Skeleton Canyon. The surrender is generally treated as the end of the major Apache campaigns, which is why 1886 is the usual closing date for the Apache Wars.
What followed
The surrender was not the end of the story for those involved. The Army sent the Chiricahua, including many who had stayed peacefully on the reservation and men who had served as scouts, to Florida, then Alabama, and later to Fort Sill in Oklahoma. They were held as prisoners for 27 years, a subject covered in the history of the Chiricahua prisoners of war. The Army’s use of Apache scouts continued into the twentieth century, and Apache men later served in the armed forces on the same terms as other Americans.
How historians read the record
Most surviving documents from the period are Army reports, officers’ memoirs and newspaper accounts, which reflect the viewpoint of those who wrote them. Apache oral histories offer other accounts, and where they differ from official records, careful writers say so. Many figures, including casualty counts, vary between sources, and this article avoids precise numbers where sources disagree.
Apache nations are living communities today, each with its own government, language and history. For present-day information, the official websites of each nation are the best source.