A name given from outside
“Tonto” is a Spanish word often translated as “foolish” or “silly,” and historians generally agree that it was a label applied to these Apache groups by outsiders rather than a name they chose for themselves. In the scheme used by anthropologists such as Grenville Goodwin, the Tonto Apache are two of the five Western Apache groups, the Northern Tonto and the Southern Tonto. Other names, including Dilzhe’e, have been used in Apache and scholarly writing for the Tonto people, though usage varies, so it is worth checking how a given source uses the term.
Because the word was an outsider’s label, it is best understood as a convenient name in the record, not a description of the people. The Tonto Apache are a people with their own language and history, and a living community today.
Where they lived
The Tonto groups lived in the rugged country below and around the Mogollon Rim in central Arizona. This includes the Tonto Basin, the mountains and creeks that feed the Salt River and the Verde River, and the country around what is now Payson. In Goodwin’s description, the Northern Tonto lived farther north and west, closer to the Verde Valley and the upper country, while the Southern Tonto lived in the Tonto Basin and southward toward the Salt River. Their territories bordered those of the Cibecue and White Mountain groups to the east and, to the west and north, those of Yavapai people.
Because the Tonto groups lived next to Yavapai communities, there was long contact between Apache and Yavapai people, including trade, intermarriage and shared use of some places. Their languages are unrelated: Apache is Athabaskan, while Yavapai belongs to the Yuman language family. It is an important reason why the boundaries between “Apache” and “Yavapai” in the nineteenth century were sometimes blurred in army and agency records, and why historians treat early labels with care.
Ways of living
Like other Western Apache groups, the Tonto families combined farming with gathering and hunting. They planted corn and other crops in small fields along streams, harvested wild plants such as agave, acorns, juniper berries and cactus fruit, and hunted deer and other animals. The varied terrain between high forest and low canyon meant that families could move through several ecological zones in a year. This general pattern is covered in the article on Western Apache seasonal rounds, and it is the foundation for the Apache gathering foods that are still part of many communities’ food traditions.
Local groups were tied together by kinship and clan membership traced through women. Goodwin and later researchers emphasized that such groupings were relatively flexible and that individual families could move between camps. The labels “Northern” and “Southern” are useful shorthand, but they should not be read as sharp political divisions.
Conflict, removal and scattering
The Tonto country was in the path of miners, ranchers and army posts after the 1860s. Fighting between settlers, soldiers and Apache and Yavapai people was part of the Apache Wars era in central Arizona, and many Tonto families were caught up in it. Some people were gathered at agencies such as Camp Verde and the Rio Verde reservation, while others stayed in the hills.
In 1875, Tonto Apache families who had been living on the Rio Verde reservation were among those forced to move to San Carlos in the Rio Verde removal, a march made in winter. At San Carlos they were placed among other Apache groups and Yavapai people on a hot, crowded reservation. Over the following years some families returned north when conditions allowed, to Camp Verde, to the Fort Apache reservation, and to the Tonto Basin and Payson area. Others remained at San Carlos, which is why Tonto descendants are found in several of today’s nations.
After the return, families in the Tonto Basin and around Payson often lived without a recognized land base, working as laborers and in other jobs while trying to hold on to their connection to the country. That long period of landlessness is a major part of the modern Tonto Apache story.
The Tonto Apache Tribe near Payson
The Tonto Apache Tribe is a federally recognized nation with a small reservation adjacent to the town of Payson. The land was set aside by Congress in the early 1970s, after decades in which Tonto Apache families had no reservation of their own in their traditional area. The tribe is among the smallest Apache nations in both land and population, but it has its own government, services and economic enterprises.
Because the reservation is small and the community is close to a town, its relationship with its neighbours differs from that of larger reservations. Tonto descendants also live in other nations, including the White Mountain, San Carlos and Yavapai-Apache communities, and enrolment is a matter for each nation’s own rules. For current information on programs, language activities and events, the tribe’s official website is the right source.
Reading the Tonto story carefully
The Tonto Apache are easy to overlook because their communities are small and their history was interrupted by removals. Early writers often described them with the harsh stereotypes of the time, or lumped them with the Yavapai. Newer scholarship and community voices stress that they were a distinct set of Western Apache groups with their own country, kin networks and knowledge of the land.
When reading older sources, it helps to ask who wrote them, what they knew and which Apache or Yavapai people they actually talked to. The Tonto Apache of today are the best authority on how they wish to be described, and readers should look to the tribe itself first.