Apache

The Apache are a family of peoples speaking Southern Athabaskan languages, close relatives of the Navajo, whose homelands stretch across the American Southwest, the southern plains and northern Mexico. They are not a single nation: the six major groups, the Chiricahua, Jicarilla, Lipan, Mescalero, Plains and Western Apache, were historically independent of one another, and today nine federally recognised tribes in Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma carry the Apache name. Speakers of the languages call themselves Indé, "the people".

Athabaskan languages are spoken mainly in Alaska and western Canada, and the ancestors of the Apache and Navajo are thought to have moved south from those northern lands sometime between about 1000 and 1500, by different estimates. The route is debated. One theory brings them down the plains, where in 1541 Coronado described bison-hunting "Querechos" who lived in hide tents and used dogs to drag their belongings; another, supported by finds in the mountains of the Southwest, has them arriving through the Rockies by the fourteenth century or earlier. Both routes may have been used. The name Apache reached Spanish in the 1590s and most likely comes from a Zuni word for the Navajo.

Apache society rested on the extended family, usually linked through women, as husbands joined their wives' households. Several families formed a local group led by a chief whose authority depended on reputation rather than birth, and among the Chiricahua and Western Apache local groups joined into bands. Depending on the land, people hunted deer, pronghorn or bison, gathered and roasted agave, acorns and pinyon nuts, and in some groups farmed. Homes ranged from tipis on the plains to brush-covered wickiups in the mountains. Religious stories tell of the culture heroes Killer-of-Enemies and Child-of-the-Water, and the girls' puberty ceremony, the Sunrise Dance, remains central.

Before the Spanish arrived, Apache groups traded bison meat and hides with the Pueblo towns for maize and cotton. Horses later gave them great mobility, and for centuries relations with the settlements of New Spain swung between trade and raiding. After Mexico became independent in 1821, raids continued, and by 1835 Mexico was offering bounties for Apache scalps, and the Mimbreño leaders Mangas Coloradas and Cuchillo Negro led raids in reprisal. After the Mexican–American War, a gold rush and the reservation system brought war with the United States. In 1875 the army forced an estimated 1,500 Yavapai and Tonto Apache to march to San Carlos, a trek that killed several hundred. Geronimo's small band surrendered in 1886 and was imprisoned in Florida and later at Fort Sill.

Two of the labels on our maps name particular Apache groups. The Mescalero live mainly in eastern New Mexico and today form the Mescalero Apache Tribe, which also includes most Chiricahua and many Lipan. The Lipan, labelled on one map as Ndé Kónitsąąíí Gokíyaa, moved from the Southwest onto the southern plains before 1650 and into Texas, where Spanish records place them near San Antonio in 1718; Comanche pressure and later Texan campaigns pushed them south and west. The Plains Apache lived closely with the Kiowa.

Population fell to about 6,119 in the 1910 census but has grown strongly since, to 148,936 people in the 2020 census. The nine recognised tribes cooperate through the Apache Alliance. All the Apache languages are endangered, and Lipan is reported to have no remaining speakers.

Our maps draw approximate Apache territories in 1492, 1500, 1530, 1600, 1650 and 1700, sometimes labelled Mescalero or Lipan. Neighbours include the Comanche, Hopi and the Wichita.