There are six major divisions of the Apaches; the Western Apaches, the Chiricahuas, the Mescaleros, the Jicarillas, the Lipans, and the Kiowa Apaches. The westernmost Apache groups found in Arizona — excluding the Chiricahuas, who were originally in southeastern Arizona — are called the Western Apaches. They comprise five major subtribes: White Mountain, Cibecue, San Carlos, and Northern and Southern Tonto.
———How long the Apaches have been in the Southwest is uncertain, but it is clear that they arrived before the Spanish explorations of 1539-42. Apache oral traditions contain some references to the north, but religion, ritual, religious practices, and sacred locals described in oral traditions are all located in the Southwest and northern Mexico, indicating ancient familiarity with the area. Oral traditions recount a long period of residence in northern Arizona and gradual movement south. Early Apache sites are hard to identify, and consequently the archaeological record is poor. Evidence from some archaeological sites suggest a date around A.D. 1450 for the entry of Athabaskan peoples into the Southwest, but some scholars call for earlier dates.
———The historical home territories of the Western Apaches ranged from south of modern-day Flagstaff, and Sedona; along the drainages of the Verde River, across the Mogollon Rim into the White Mountains, and on to the Arizona-New Mexico border; and through the Gila River valley and portions of the Salt River valley to the Santa Catalinas, south to the Pinaleño or Graham Mountains, and as far south as the San Pedro River valley. Raiding, warfare, and their seasonal round of hunting and gathering took them into northern Mexico as well.
———Today most Western Apaches live on two reservations. The White Mountain Apache Reservation and the San Carlos Reservation each are home to more than ten thousand members who live in communities that cover just under 2 million acres of land. One other small reservation exists in Arizona near Payson for the Tonto Apaches, and some Apache people live on several of the small Yavapai reservations.
———The Apache language belongs to the Southern Athabaskan language family and is related to other Athabaskan languages spoken on the Pacific Coast and in Canada. Western Apache and closely related Navajo are considered to be two distinct languages, each with multiple dialects. These languages belong to the greater grouping known as the Na-Dene phylum. Both languages are still spoken, with most speakers bilingual in English, but there is concern that younger people are not learning them.
———Prior to European contact, the Western Apache economy was based on hunting and gathering, supplemented by gardening (horticulture), trade with more-settled agricultural peoples, and raiding. The Western Apaches were mobile people who moved in a seasonal round, covering millions of acres as they collected wild plants and hunted game from favored campsites. They were the most agricultural of all of the Apache groups.
———The Western Apaches were primarily mountain and upland people who preferred cool, timbered locations. Their rugged, beautiful environment provided outstanding biodiversity. Agave (mescal), a large desert succulent plant with a tuberlike heart that could be roasted, was a favored staple plant food, as were cactus fruits (tunas), acorns, black walnuts, and pine nuts (piñons). These foods are still eaten, especially on ceremonial occasions. Agricultural sites in drainages near heads of creeks, rivers, or springs were the primary home bases. Here Apache families planted corn, beans, pumpkins, and other crops. Sometimes they left the crops alone or in the care of the elderly, the disabled, and the young while they went out to hunt and gather. Only planting and harvesting required a presence at the farm sites. Women were the primary farmers and men the hunters, but both sexes participated in large tasks that required many hands.
———Winter was the primary hunting season as well as the time in which small parties embarked on raids. WInter camps moved every two weeks or so, favored sites were the Nantanes Plateau, the lower slopes of the Pinaleño or Graham Mountains, the Gila Range, and the Santa Theresa and Turnbull Mountains. Trade was carried on with more-settled groups such as the Pueblo Indians. Meat, skins, and other animal products as well as salt and other wild harvested products were traded for agricultural products such as corn, beans, squash, and cotton clothing. Apache tradition also tells of Apache people living in some Pueblo sites and building Pueblo-style structures at different times and places.
———There were two types of groupings into which Western Apache society was organized: those based upon territoriality, and those based upon kinship. Individuals belonged to groups of both kinds at the same time. Local groups, bands, and subtribes were based upon territoriality. Matrilineages (matrilineal extended families), clans and unnamed Phratries were based upon kinship and marriage. local groups occupied the farm sites, had rights to hunting territories, and were named for the farm sites. The local groups were made up of smaller, matrilineal-matrilocal family units, with multiple households organized around a woman, her husband, her married daughters and their families, and unmarried daughters and sons all residing close to or with each other. A few Apache males were permitted more than one wife, normally sisters. Local groups in the same general watershed were known as bands. Anthropologists call groups of bands "subtribes."
———Clans consisted of groups of people who considered themselves related and descended from a single female ancestor. They were often named for the place of origin. They served to unite Apaches in local groups, to regulate marriage through clan exogamy (which prohibited the marriage of members of the same or closely linked clans), and to carry out joint ceremonial obligations such as the puberty ceremony. In the nineteenth century there were over fifty named clans. Certain prototypical personality types and behaviors were said to be associated with each clan. Closely related clans were further grouped into unnamed units, called "phratries" by scholars. Today clans and phratries have declined somewhat in importance, and matrilocal residence is less likely. The old territorial units, though disrupted by the reservation system, continue to provide the nucleus of some reservation settlements and political alignments.
———People became leaders through force of personality, example, wealth and prestige. Families had headmen and local groups had chiefs, normally male, but Apache leaders could not compel their followers except in situations of warfare. Leadership was normally achieved through experience and deed but often did run in families. Leaders were expected to provide for their followers by using their personal wealth.
———Traditional Apache religion focuses on curing, puberty ceremonies, hunting and agricultural rituals, personal power and protection, and guidance for a moral life. Spiritual leaders, often referred to as medicine men and medicine women, have access to greater power than that possessed by ordinary individuals, who may also have some special gifts. These shamanic spiritual leaders provide healing and counseling and conduct ceremonies. Many Apaches consult these spiritual leaders. The Apache religion has been renewed through prophets and their teachings, the most important of whom in this century was Silas John Edwards. His trained disciples conduct ceremonies at consecrated holy grounds.
———The most important and frequent community ceremony is the girl's puberty ceremony, called Na'ii'es in Apache and the Sunrise Ceremony or Sunrise Dance in English; it normally takes place in the summer months of the year after a girl's first menstruation. The gaan or mountain spirits, associated with mountain caves, appear as masked dancers during puberty ceremonies and are important in curing. The Apache religion is undergoing a resurgence at the present time, although some ceremonies are no longer conducted.
———The Apache reservations were heavily missionized first by the Evangelical Lutherans as part of the federal "Peace Policy" to convert and assimilate the western Indians. Other groups followed: Catholics, Mormons, Baptists, adherents of the pentecostal Miracle Church, and others. Some Apache people are exclusively Christian; others are Christian and also participate in the Apache religion; and some practice the Apache religion exclusively. Since 1989 the San Carlos Tribal Council has repeatedly opposed telescope development on Mount Graham, which contains Apache sacred sites. The Apache Survival Coalition has led an international battle to preserve these sites — a struggle that has received worldwide attention.
———Although primarily peaceful, the Apaches were successful in resisting the Spanish, never permitting the establishment of settlements north of Tuscon. After Mexico achieved independence from Spain in 1821, the Mexican government targeted the Apaches in an unsuccessful policy of extermination and slavery.
———The Southwest became a part of the United States as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war with Mexico, and the Gadsden Purchase of 1853. Initial contacts with Americans were peaceful, but this soon changed because of the failure of the Americans to recognize Apache rights to customary territories and the tribe's pattern of hunting and gathering over a broad area. Increasing numbers of American miners and settlers arrived in the Arizona Territory who had little respect for Apache rights to land and water. A series of incidents in which Americans pretended friendship but killed or poisoned Apaches ensued, and this treachery eventually ignited the Apache wars, which lasted from the 1850s until 1886.
———Gradually, army posts were established in Apache territory, and rations were provided to the Apaches to compensate them for lost hunting, gathering, and farming opportunities. By 1870, the first reservation had been set up in areas not yet desired by the Americans. Many Apaches voluntarily moved to these reservations because the alternatives were extermination or starvation, but others were forcibly removed from their giant concentration camps, with Indians from a number of different bands and territories crowded together. Food supplies were inadequate, and the army exercised total control.
———The White Mountain Apache Reservation, centered on Fort Apache, was established informally in 1970 and formally by presidential executive order in 1871. In 1871 the Camp Grant Reservation was established for Arivaipas, Pinals, and other Apache Indians, but was soon abolished. That same year, a group of eighty people, primarily women and children, from the peaceful Arivaipa band were massacred by southern Arizonans while under the protection of military, and twenty-eight children were kidnapped. This event, sometimes referred to as the Camp Grant Massacre, is remembered today by the tribe on Apache Memorial Day. In 1872, the San Carlos division of the White Mountain Apache Reservation was established, and other Apache reservations were abolished. Displaced Apaches from different bands, groups, and subtribes, including the Chiricahuas, as well as Yavapai from the Verde River area, were all placed on the reservation, causing great hardship, overcrowding, and starvation. These conditions were made worse by constant reductions in the land area of the reservation by presidential executive orders in 1873, 1876, and 1877 following the discovery of viable resources such as copper, silver, coal and timber on portions of the reservation. These reductions led to frequent outbreaks and military action, resulting in continued sporadic warfare between the Apaches and the army. Later reductions were made by presidential executive order to provide farmland, timber, and water to whites. By 1886 the government had placed all Apaches on reservations or imprisoned them.
———In 1896 the reservation was formally split into two reservations, the northern section above the Salt River known as Fort Apache or White Mountain Apache Reservation and the remainder as the San Carlos Apache Reservation. Rationing was eventually ended and troops were removed from the reservations, but Apaches still had no effective control of their lands and resources, and no economy. Many Apaches and most of the Yavapai were forced to work off-reservation as wage laborers in order to survive. Indian agents served as labor contractors, hiring out groups of Apaches for road construction, mining, and farm labor at off-reservation sites. From 1906-1930 many Apaches worked on the construction of dams on the Salt and Verde Rivers, and on Coolidge Dam. By 1926, 96 percent of the San Carlos grasslands were completely utilized by the white cattlemen, but tribal herds began to increase slowly until 1935 and then more rapidly when the tribe regained some control over its lands. The White Mountain Apaches also had little control over their grazing. Both tribes had little self-determination until the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which led to the creation of tribal councils and the beginnings of self-government in 1935-17. Still, a great amount of control remained with the Indian agents and superintendents and the Bureau of Indian Affairs well into the 1970s. Many of the off-reservation jobs that Apaches had utilized began to disappear as the effects of the Great Depression hit Arizona in the 1930s, and neither cattle raising nor farming provided a strong enough base for the reservation economy, given the limited conditions on the reservation.
———The San Carlos Reservation, which is primarily desert, has remained one of the poorest places in the entire United States and still suffers from very high unemployment and an inability to create new jobs, given its lack of resources, infrastructure, and capital and its remote location. Principal economic revenues today come from federal programs, cattle raising, timber sales, recreation (including fishing and hunting, limited farming, the mining of peridot (a green semiprecious stone), and a casino, which opened in 1994.
———On the White Mountain Reservation the world's largest of ponderosa pine was sold and logged by white companies that utilized only small amounts of Apache labor. Still, the exclusive forest and mountain environment has led to a stronger economy, with timber and recreational opportunities including a ski resort and many fishing lakes and streams on the reservation. Farming and cattle raising are also practiced. The tribe opened a casino, which doubled in size in 1995. Economic development continues on both reservations, to very different outcomes. Western Apaches remain a culturally distinct population, poorly understood and still struggling to attain the economic levels enjoyed by other Americans.

ELIZABETH A. BRANDT
Arizona State University