Among the last native arrivals in the Southwest – almost simultaneously with the Spanish conquistadors – came a wandering, roaming people who depended for food entirely on wild plants and animals. The Zuni called them enemy – ‘apachu’ – and that name has become synonymous with fierce and ruthless individuals with a criminal bent. The Apache and their Navajo cousins had previously arrived in the Plains from their northern homelands, and at one time may have been the strongest force there, living up to their reputation as incorrigible raiders, as cunning and daring fighters. Apparently, during that time they were also occasionally allied with the ferocious Tonkawa of central Texas, a Plains people with a fearsome reputation and the stigma of being cannibals.
But at some time during the early part of the 16th century, the Comanche appeared on the Plains, and in alliance with their Kiowa relatives gradually drove the Apache out of the area and toward the Southwest. Only one Apache group stayed in the Plains; known as the Lipan, they remained in western Texas and continued fighting the Comanche. All the others entered the Southwestern area, where they almost immediately began to immitate their Navajo cousins, raiding the villages of the Pueblo and the agricultural tribes of Arizona. When the Spaniards arrived in New Mexico shortly after, the Apache were already feared by all the Indians throughout that country. Soon they acquired horses, too, and firearms, and became more predatory than ever. But if they were excellent riders, the Apache never really took to horses – that is, they took them, but usually preferred eating the animals, stealing more whenever they needed them. Most of their raids and almost all of their fighting, meanwhile, continued on foot.
The name Apache originally applied to some eight or nine tribes, all closely related in speech, and all probably descendent from a single wandering group of immigrants from the north. The four Southwestern tribes which eventually became the historic Apache all spoke closely related dialects of the Athabascan language, and their social structure and ceremonials remained similar throughout history. Their cultures and ways of life, however, underwent changes as they came into contact with different people in their new lands. The Jicarillo, for example, retained many of the Plains traits and long continued to hunt buffalo; but as they came into contact with the Pueblo, they also began to engage in extensive farming. The Western Apache, too, became primarily farmers, and of all the Apache most closely resembled the Navajo, who may in fact have been the same people at one time. It was the Mescalero and Chiricahua who remained essentially a hunting people, and it was these two tribes who became the most notorious native raiders in American history. The Chiricahua, in fact, remained the fiercest of the Apache, the very last of the Western Indians to hold out against the white man’s troops, and it was the Chiricahua who produced such famous leaders as Cochise and Geronimo.
Like the Navajo, the Apache tribes possessed a rich store of sacred mythology and ceremonies, a blend of their original Athabascan lore with the legends of many of the other people with whom they had had contacts during their migration. There were many similarities with the Plains tribes: there were Pueblo-type masked dances; there were sand paintings, much like the Navajo’s, and there even were rituals very similar to some of the more complex of the Great Basin cultures. Much of the Apache myth revolved around the Mountain Spirits, supernatural beings who inhabited certain mountains and who held great powers, both good and evil, over the Apache people. One of their most spectacular ceremonies was the girls’ puberty rite, a four-day ritual during which black-masked impersonators of the Mountain Spirits danced around the blaze of a huge bonfire. Wearing towering painted headdresses, they twisted and turned to the rhythm of drums, chanting and yelling and waving wooden swords in a battle against evil, while the girls swayed entranced to the chorus of chanters.
With the Navajo, too, the Apache shared an extreme horror of dying and of the dead, whose evil spirits harmed the living by bringing on the ghost illness, a condition of fright and nervousness. The dead were therefore quickly buried, and all their possessions, including their teepee, were burned. The entire family then purified itself with sagebrush smoke and quickly moved on to another campsite.
In their frequent raids and warfare, however, the Apache became exceptionally fearless and skillful fighters who hit quickly, without warning, and then scattered in all directions, making pursuit all but impossible. The ideal of Apache manhood was the brave warrior, totally without fear, the successful raider and killer who showed aggressiveness and physical endurance. Both the Mexican and American governments were to experience countless examples of this Apache ideal in decades to come.