Hi Ziggy, I have been away for so long I don't know if you ever got to read the reply on the old board and writing this good
should not be left in cyberspace limbo, so I am re-posting it here for you benefit.
I could write a book on this subject because, as my father was full blood Chiricahua, I have study indepth the history of my people. I give you here a brief synpopsis on who the Apache were and are.
The Apache were originally a tribe from the northwest of what is now Canada who migrated to the southern plains and southwest about 1,200 years ago and consist of several sub-tribes but they all share, with some dialect differences, the Athabscan language with their cousins, the Navaho.
These groups are loosely organized by their dialects; The Western Apache or Coyotero, consisted of the White Mountain (the largest of this sub-tribe), San Carlos, Cibuecue, and Tonto (both northern and southern) bands lived primarily in very large areas of eastern Arizona and New Mexico whereas the Aravaipa were mostly in Arizona and tended to travel further west than most Apaches. The Chiricahua and Mimbreno, Mescalero, traveled fairly widely throughout southeastern Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico. The Jicarilla and some smaller groups of Mimbreno lived in New Mexico and Colorado, while the Kiowa-Apache and Lipan made Oklahoma, Texas, and Mexico their home.
Apaches were hunter-gatherers and were also quite active raiders of other tribes, in fact, the Apache name is believed to come from the Pueblo word Apachu, which translates as “enemy†like the Lakota of the northern plains came to be called by the French word bastardization of the name Sioux which also means enemy, as the Blackfoot and Crow knew them.
The Apache were constantly at war with the Spaniards and Mexicans because of the penchant they had for raiding Indian villages and carrying off women and children into slavery. They came to be known as the most feared and effective guerrilla fighters the world had ever seen, In fact General Crook called them “the tigers of the human species†after he was introduced to the type of hit and run and very savage fighting that had made the Apache legendary. The fiercest of all the tribes was the Chiricahua, (my tribe) and it’s leaders, Cochise, Geronimo, Nana, Nachise and others engaged in guerrilla warfare to protect their land that would last over 25 years. Never a populous people, guerrilla warfare was the only way they could fight. After Geronimo humiliated General Crook by escaping with 24 warriors and a small number of women and children to the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico, President Grant replaced him with General Nelson Miles (it is said that that worthless racist pig little runt, General Phil Sheridan, was offered the command but wanted no part of fighting the Apache from horseback) who put an army of 5,000 (one fourth of the entire U.S. Army at that time) in the field to try to capture 2 dozen warriors, making it the most costly and intensive campaign ever undertaken to subdue and Indian tribe. It took him over 7 months but finally in September, 1886 Geronimo (who was a holy man, NOT a chief) surrendered and the army and U.S. government once again broke EVERY SINGLE PROMISE they made to him and shipped him and 450 (all that was left) Chiricahuas in chains to Florida as prisoners of war. Geronimo never saw his homeland again and died a POW in Oklahoma in 1909.
The Sioux, who were one of the largest an easily most powerful of all the plains Indians are, according to legend, supposed to have come south to test their mettle against these small nomadic tribes and left over 100 warriors dead in the desert and vowed never to attempt such folly again.
Today, the Apache live mostly in fetid and festering squalor on reservation that were set aside as worthless land white men did not want. The Kiowa Apache and Lipan live on various reservations in Texas and Oklahoma; the Mescalero, Jicarilla, and portions of other tribes live on the Mescalero reservation in New Mexico; most of what is left of the San Carlos, Chiricahua, White Mountain, Tonto, and other tribes live on the San Carlos and White Mountain (formerly Apache Pass area) reservations. My family live most at San Carlos and White Mountain although I have a couple of uncles on the tribal council at the Havasu reservation in western Arizona. The poverty on these reservation is unbelievable, unemployment is near 50% and alcoholism is raging, demonstrating the absolute failure of the BIA’s reservation system and the handout system that continues to create lazy, unmotivated, pathetic, shells of human beings both on the res and in the ghetto’s of this country.
Dan
