Historically the Apache are known principally for their fierce fighting qualities. They successfully resisted the advance of Spanish colonization, but the acquisition of horses and new weapons, taken from the Spanish, led to increased intertribal warfare. The Eastern Apache were driven from their traditional plains area when (after 1720) they suffered defeat at the hands of the advancing Comanche. Relations between the Apache and the white settlers gradually worsened with the passing of Spanish rule in Mexico. By the mid-19th cent., when the United States acquired the region from Mexico, Apache lands were in the path of the American westward movement. The futile but strong resistance that lasted until the beginning of the 20th cent. brought national fame to several of the Apache leaders—Cochise, Geronimo, Mangas Coloradas, and Victorio.
Today the Apache, numbering some 50,000 in 1990, live mainly on reservations totaling over 3 million acres in Arizona and New Mexico and retain many tribal customs. Cattle, timber, tourism, and the development of mineral resources provide income. In 1982 the Apaches won a major Supreme Court test of their right to tax resources extracted from their lands. In 1995, after much debate, the Mescalero Apache agreed to build a nuclear-waste storage site on their New Mexico reservation. The project is expected to produce about $250 million in income over the 40-year life of the site.
See G. C. Baldwin, The Warrior Apaches (1965); D. L. Thrapp, The Conquest of Apacheria (1967); K. Basso and M. Opler, ed., Apachean Culture and Ethnology (1971); J. U. Terrell, Apache Chronicle (1972).
Licensed from Columbia University Press
North American Indians of the southwestern U.S. Their name comes from a Zuñi word meaning “enemy.” Most Apache live on five reservations in Arizona and New Mexico. Culturally, the Apache are divided into Eastern Apache, which include the Mescalero, Jicarilla, Chiricahua, and Lipan, and Western Apache, which include the Cibecue. The Eastern Apache were predominantly hunting and gathering societies, while their Western counterparts relied more on farming. Their ancestors had come down from the north, as is evident from their languages; Apachean languages are distantly related to other Athabaskan languages spoken in Canada. They settled the Plains, but, with the introduction of the horse, they were pressed south and west by the Comanche and Ute. They attempted to befriend the Spanish, the Mexicans, and later the Americans. Beginning in 1861, however, they engaged in a quarter-century confrontation against U.S. military forces. The Apache wars were among the fiercest fought on the frontier. The last ended in 1886 with the surrender of Geronimo. The Chiricahua Apache were evacuated from the West and held successively in Florida, Alabama, and Oklahoma. Apache descendants numbered some 100,000 in the early 21st century. Seealso Cochise.
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