Apache

Apache (apparently from the Zuni name, = "enemy," given to the Navaho Indians) is the collective name given to several culturally related tribes of Native Americans, aboriginal inhabitants of North America, who speak a Southern Athabaskan language. The modern term excludes the related Navajo people. The Apache peoples migrated from the Northern Plains into the Southwest relatively recently. Noted leaders have included Cochise, Mangas Coloradas, and Geronimo. The U.S. Army found them to be fierce warriors and skillful strategists.

Entry into the Southwest

The Apache and Navajo (Diné) tribal groups of the American Southwest speak related languages of the language family referred to as Athabaskan. Southern Athabaskan peoples in North America fan out from west-central Canada where some Southern Athabaskan-speaking groups still reside. Linguistic similarities indicate the Navajo and Apache were once a single ethnic group. Archaeological and historical evidence suggests a recent entry of these people into the American Southwest, with substantial numbers not present until the early 1500s.

Related Topics:
Athabaskan - Canada

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Southern Athabaskan speakers probably moved into the Southwest from the Great Plains where 16th-century Spanish accounts identified them as ?dog nomads.? These mobile groups lived in tents, hunted bison and other game, and used dogs to pull travois loaded with their possessions. In April 1541, while traveling on the plains east of the Pueblo region, Francisco Coronado wrote:

Related Topics:
Great Plains - Spanish - Bison - Travois - Francisco Coronado

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:After seventeen days of travel, I came upon a rancheria of the Indians who follow these cattle (bison). These natives are called Querechos. They do not cultivate the land, but eat raw meat and drink the blood of the cattle they kill. They dress in the skins of the cattle, with which all the people in this land clothe themselves, and they have very well-constructed tents, made with tanned and greased cowhides, in which they live and which they take along as they follow the cattle. They have dogs which they load to carry their tents, poles, and belongings. (See Hammond and Rey.)

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The Spaniards described Plains dogs as very white, with black spots, and ?not much larger than water spaniels.? Plains dogs were slightly smaller than those used for hauling loads by modern northern Canadian peoples. Recent experiments show these dogs may have pulled loads up to 50 lb (20 kg) on long trips, at rates as high as two or three miles an hour (3 to 5 km/h). (See Henderson)

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Although there is some evidence Southern Athabaskan peoples may have visited the Southwest as early as the 13th century AD, most scientists believe they arrived permanently only a few decades before the Spanish. The Southern Athabaskan nomadic way of life complicates accurate dating, primarily because they constructed less-substantial dwellings than other Southwestern groups. They also left behind a more austere set of tools and material goods. Sites where early Southern Athabaskans may have lived are difficult to locate, and even more difficult to firmly identify as culturally Southern Athabaskan.

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Trade between the long established Pueblo peoples and the Southern Athabaskans become important to both groups by the mid 16th century. The Pueblos exchanged maize and woven cotton goods for bison meat, hides and material for stone tools. Coronado observed Plains people wintering near the Pueblos in established camps. In 1540, Coronado reported the modern Western Apache area as uninhabited and other Spaniards first mention Apache living west of the Rio Grande in the 1580s. So, it is likely that the Apaches moved into their current southwestern homelands in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Southern Athabaskans expanded their range through the 17th century, occupying areas the Pueblos peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Spanish first mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navajo) in the 1620s, referring to people in the Chama region east of the San Juan River. By the 1640s, the term was applied to Southern Athabaskan peoples from the Chama on the east to the San Juan on the west.

Related Topics:
Maize - Cotton - Western Apache - Rio Grande - San Juan River

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