Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes

APACHE 15
vision. If the child were fortunate, a spirit, usually in the
form of an animal, would come to promise protection
and to give the child his or her own special identity.
For a fuller sense of Algonquian culture and history,
see those tribes indicated earlier as having their
own entries.
ANASAZI. See SOUTHWEST CULTURES
ANISHINABE. See CHIPPEWA (OJIBWAY)
APACHE
On hearing the name Apache, pronounced uh-PATCHee,
many people think of the chief Geronimo, along with
the warlike nature of the tribe. Throughout most of their
history, the Apache raided other tribes for food and
booty. The ZUNI, who feared them, gave them the name
apachu, meaning “enemy.” The Apache also stubbornly
resisted Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American expansion.
But there was of course much more to Apache culture
than warfare. Like all Indian peoples, the Apache
had a well-defined society and a complex mythology.
Different versions of the Apache native name include
Tineh (Tinneh), Tinde, Dini, Inde (N’de), Deman, and
Haisndayin for “the people.”
The Apache ancestral homeland was located on the
region of North America referred to as the Southwest
Culture Area, and they are classified as SOUTHWEST
INDIANS. The numerous Apache bands roamed far and
wide in this region—territory that now includes much of
New Mexico and Arizona, as well as northern Mexico,
western Texas, southern Colorado, western Oklahoma,
and southern Kansas.
The various Apache peoples migrated to the Southwest
later than other Indians. Before Europeans reached North
America, Athapascan-speaking bands broke off from other
ATHAPASCANS in present-day western Canada and
migrated southward, probably in about 1400 (although
some scholars have theorized as early as 850), and became
known as the Apache. Other Athapascans who migrated to
the region became known as the NAVAJO.
The Apache can be organized by dialects into the following
groups, each made up of various bands: San Carlos,
Aravaipa, White Mountain, Northern Tonto,
Southern Tonto, and Cibecue in Arizona; Chiricahua
and Mimbreno in Arizona and New Mexico; Mescalero
in New Mexico and Mexico; Lipan in Texas and Mexico;
Jicarilla in New Mexico and Colorado; and Kiowa-
Apache in Oklahoma. Members of these different groups
intermarried or were placed together on reservations by
non-Indians later in their history, altering the various
subdivisions. For example, the San Carlos and White
Mountain groups, sometimes together called the Western
Apache (along with the San Carlos subgroup, the
Aravaipa, as well as the Cibecue and Tonto), came to
include members from other more easterly groups, such
as the Chiricahua and Mimbreno.
Lifeways
The Apache were primarily nomadic hunters and gatherers,
seeking whatever game, especially deer and rabbits,
and whatever wild plant foods, especially cactus and
mesquite seeds, found within their territory. (The
Mescalero band was named after a kind of cactus important
in the Apache diet, mescal.) When they could not
find enough food to eat in their rugged lands, much of
which was desert country, Apache raided the farming villages
of the PUEBLO INDIANS, as well as, in later years,
Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American settlements.
The various Apache groups adopted lifeways from
other Indians with whom they came into contact. For
instance, some of the Western Apache, living close to the
Indians of the Rio Grande pueblos, took up farming.
The Jicarilla Apache borrowed cultural traits from the
PLAINS INDIANS. On acquiring horses in the late 1600s
through raids on the Spanish and on Pueblo Indians,
mounted Jicarilla often rode in pursuit of the great buffalo
herds. The Kiowa-Apache lived close to the KIOWA,
a Plains tribe, and their culture was closer to that of the