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ApacheHistorically 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).
The Columbia Encyclopedia. Copyright © 2001-09 Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
- Geronimo
Geronimo, c.1829–1909, leader of a Chiricahua group of the Apaches, b. Arizona. As a youth he participated in the forays of Cochise, Victorio, and other Apache leaders. When the Chiricahua Res...
- Mangas Coloradas
Mangas Coloradas [Span.,=red sleeves], c.1797–1863, chief of the Mimbrenos group of Apache of SW New Mexico. Many of the Mimbrenos were massacred by trappers in 1837 as a result of the bounty ...
- Jeffords, Thomas
Jeffords, Thomas, 1832–1914, American pioneer, b. Chautauqua co., N.Y. He went to Arizona in 1862 as a U.S. army scout and messenger and later became a stage driver. In 1866–67, he controlled ...
- Victorio
Victorio, d. 1880, chief of the Ojo Caliente [warm spring] Apache, at one time a lieutenant of Mangas Coloradas. When his people were removed from their ancestral home to the desolate reservat...
- Poston, Charles Debrill
Poston, Charles Debrill, 1825–1902, American explorer and author, b. Hardin co., Ky. After practicing law in Tennessee, he moved to California in 1850 and from there led a party to explore the...
- Cochise
Cochise, c.1815–1874, chief of the Chiricahua group of Apache in Arizona. He was friendly with the whites until 1861, when some of his relatives were hanged by U.S. soldiers for a crime they d...
- Crook, George
Crook, George, 1828–90, U.S. general, b. near Dayton, Ohio, grad. West Point, 1852. During the Civil War, Crook commanded a regiment of Ohio volunteers as colonel. After the war he operated so...
- Vargas Zapata y Luján Ponce de León, Diego de
Vargas Zapata y Luján Ponce de León, Diego de, c.1643–1704, Spanish governor and captain general of New Mexico, b. Spain. As governor (1691–97) he reconquered (1692) and resettled New Mexico f...
- Kiowa
Kiowa, Native North Americans whose language is thought to form a branch of the Aztec-Tanoan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). The Kiowa, a nomadic people of the Plains area, h...
- Alamogordo
Alamogordo, city (1990 pop. 27,596), seat of Otero co., S N.Mex., near the Sacramento Mts.; inc. 1912. Holloman Air Force Base, home to U.S. stealth aircraft, is there, and the White Sands Mis...
