Farmers, gatherers and hunters at once
A common picture of Apache life treats it as purely a matter of hunting and gathering. For the Western Apache groups of central and eastern Arizona, that picture is incomplete. Their families planted crops, especially corn, and also gathered wild foods and hunted. Each activity had its own season and place, and families structured the year around moving among them. Scholars often describe this as a seasonal round. The details varied from one local group to another and from one era to another, and the description here is general.
It is also worth saying that accounts of this way of life come from several kinds of sources: Apache oral history, early twentieth-century ethnography such as the work of Grenville Goodwin, and army and agency records. They do not always agree, and they describe a period before and during major change.
The farming side
Apache farming is often overlooked in popular accounts. Western Apache farmers planted in small plots on bottomland along creeks and rivers, and in places where runoff could be directed to fields. Corn was the main crop; beans and squash were also grown, and there is mention of other crops, though the mix depended on the area. Planting usually took place in late spring, and families often moved to their farm sites for the growing season, then returned to look after the crop through the summer.
Water control could be simple. In some places people dug short ditches and diverted stream water to fields, an approach that links to later Western Apache irrigation work on the reservations. Farms were typically modest in size and could be tended by an extended family. Because rainfall in the region is uncertain, a poor year could force families to rely more heavily on wild foods and hunting, and that flexibility was a key part of the system.
After harvest, corn was dried and stored, often in caches or containers, to be used over the winter. Some farm sites were used repeatedly across generations and were associated with particular local groups, which tied farming to questions of land use and belonging. The article on Western Apache local groups looks at those social ties.
The gathering side
Wild foods filled much of the rest of the diet. Depending on the area and season, families gathered agave hearts, acorns, piñon nuts, juniper berries, seeds, greens, and fruits such as those of cacti. Agave and mescal roasting is a well-known example: the hearts of the plant were baked in pits and then eaten or dried. Acorn and pinon gathering took place in the fall in the oak and pine country, and families sometimes traveled considerable distances to harvest from productive stands.
Knowledge of where and when plants ripen was held in families and passed on through experience and teaching. Some of that knowledge is not shared publicly, and this article does not attempt to record details of how plants are used in medicine or ceremony.
Hunting and animal foods
Deer were an important source of meat and hides, and other game was hunted as well. Hunting often took place when families were at higher elevations or when they travelled between camps. Animal products supplied clothing, containers and tools. Hunting was done in ways shaped by knowledge of animal movement and by customs about respect for game that varied among families and communities.
How the year fit together
A rough outline can help, with the caution that it is a generalization and that real patterns shifted with weather and local conditions:
| Season | Typical activities |
|---|---|
| Spring | Moving to farm sites, preparing fields, planting; gathering early greens |
| Summer | Tending crops; gathering in higher and lower country as plants ripen; hunting |
| Fall | Harvesting corn; gathering acorns, nuts and berries; hunting |
| Winter | Living at camps with stored food; hunting; storytelling and visiting |
Families lived in dwellings often called wickiups, dome-shaped shelters of poles and brush, which could be built quickly at a camp and left when people moved. Homes at farm sites might be more substantial. The exact forms depended on the area and on the season.
The role of elevation
The Western Apache country is a landscape of steep elevation changes. High forests in Mogollon Rim country and the White Mountains offer cooler summers and different plants and animals than the lower country along the Gila and Salt rivers. Moving between these levels in different seasons allowed a family to extend its food supply and to avoid the worst heat or cold. This is one reason the seasonal round matters to the history of Western Apache people: it was not random wandering but a pattern based on detailed knowledge of land.
Change under reservation conditions
The seasonal round was disrupted when Western Apache people were confined to reservations in the 1870s and 1880s. Movement was restricted, rations were issued and agents encouraged particular forms of farming and stock raising. In some places families kept up parts of the older pattern for decades, including going to gathering areas or planting fields near streams, while in others access to land was lost to settlers, mining or boundary changes. Some Apache families took up cattle raising, which became important on several reservations.
The memory of the round continues in modern practice in different ways, including gathering trips, family gardens and language and culture programs. Readers who want to know what is practised today should consult the nations’ own websites and cultural offices. The main point is that Western Apache economies were varied and adaptive, and that farming was a significant part of them.