Apaches

The Apaches are twelve linguistically related tribes that occupied an extensive territory (known as Apachería) from the Colorado River to the Rio Grande, and from northern canyons in present-day Arizona and New Mexico extending south a thousand miles into present-day Mexico. They combined hunting and gathering with small-scale agriculture. Initially attracted to the material benefits of the Spanish missions, they subsequently rejected the regulation of their lives and the attempt to suppress their traditional religion and its practice. They launched a general rebellion in 1677, initiating a century of hostility that halted the extension of the northern frontier of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The Bourbon crown's expansion of presidio garrisons and initiation of subsistence rations in the 1770s brought generally peaceful relations into the 1820s, with a substantial growth in the Hispanic population south of Apache-dominated areas.

The gradual dissolution of the presidio garrisons for want of material support, and the attempt by state officials in the early 1830s to force the Apaches to become sedentary workers in order to receive subsistence rations, led to a renewal of the periodic, devastating Apache raids. The frontier countryside was slowly depopulated. Though U.S. annexation after 1848 carried with it the promise of controlling Apache incursions, for nearly three decades the United States limited itself to protecting the settlements on its side of the border. In 1873 Colonel Ronald Mackenzie led 400 U.S. soldiers in an extermination campaign against the Lipan Apache; survivors were deported to the Mescalero Apache Reservation in the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico, established in that same year. Only in the 1880s, when the U.S. and Mexican governments reached an agreement on mutual border crossing were the Apache raids ended, with the remnants of the tribes permanently restricted to reservations. The Apaches are known to be among the last indigenous peoples to accept colonial domination. Chief Geronimo (1829–1909), of the Chir-icahua Apache, was one of the more famous Apache warriors, battling and evading both the Mexican and U.S. troops for more than twenty-five years, finally surrendering in Arizona in 1886.

As of the 2000 U.S. Census, many of the 66,800 people who make up the ten tribes of the Apaches still reside in reservations in Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. Reservation life, marked by poverty and limited economic opportunities, continues to be a challenge for the Apache; for example, in the late 1990s over 50 percent of the San Carlos Apache were unemployed. However, in the late twentieth century many of the reservations initiated casino operations, tourism, and timber and agricultural businesses that have improved the standard of living on the reservations. The resort and casino run by the Mescalero Apaches attracts visitors year-round. Many Apaches are nationally and internationally respected artists, writers, and scholars, such as the poet Jose L. Garza (Coahuilateca and Apache), the historian Veronica E. Velarde Tiller (Jicarilla Apache), and the sculptor Allen Houser (Chiricahua Apache).

See alsoIndigenous Peoples .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

John Upton Terrell, Apache Chronicle (1972).

John L. Kessell, Friars, Soldiers, and Reformers: Hispanic Arizona and the Sonora Mission Frontier 1767–1856 (1976).

David J. Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico (1982).

Francisco R. Almada, Diccionario de historia, geografía y biografía de sonorenses (1983), pp. 56-63.

Additional Bibliography

León García, Ricardo, and Carlos González Herrera. Civilizar o exterminar: Tarahumaras y Apaches en Chihuahua, siglo XIX. Tlalpan, Mexico: CIESA, INI, 2000.

Thrapp, Dan L. The Conquest of Apacheria. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967.

                                         Stuart F. Voss