What Is: Apacheria

Some Native tribes were powerful enough to stake their claims to their hunting and home range such that trespassers knew they were risking their lives to pass through it.  The Comanche protected Comancheria, in what is now Texas and New Mexico.  Likewise, the various Apache bands staked out their own territory, from north of the Arkansas River through the northern border states of Mexico, from central Texas into what is now New Mexico and Arizona.

Like most tribes, the Apache were not a centralized entity, but a collection of nomadic bands who depended primarily on hunting and raiding for their subsistence.  A hunting range of adequate size to provide game was absolutely essential to their existence.  Warriors spent a great deal of time and energy patrolling their band's territory and fending off trespassers, whether from other tribes or European trappers, traders and settlers.  The most effective Apache bands were the Plains Apache or Kiowa-Apache, whose portion of Apacheria included the area south of the Arkansas River in Kansas and Colorado, into eastern New Mexico and through the Staked Plains and central Great Plains area of western Oklahoma and Texas.  Later, during the Apache Wars, 1846-1886, the Apache bands of New Mexico and Arizona fought prospectors and settlers in their territory and staged raids deep into Mexico. 

Today, various Apache tribes occupy only a fraction of what was once Apacheria.

Comments

  1. CHRIS GATELEYSeptember 22, 2021 at 7:09 PM

    I love the history of native AMERICANS! WE as whites did them so terribly wrong!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Did It Happen: Custer's Cheyenne Family

Image
Despite popular legends to the contrary, when Col. George Armstrong Custer's body was found after the Battle of the Little Bighorn/Greasy Grass in June 1876, he wasn't scalped or mutilated.  However, the corpses of many of the men nearby, including George's brother Thomas, were mutilated.  Although some White commentators at the time believed the lack of mutilation might have been the Natives way of showing respect to a brave enemy anyone who had rode and fought with Custer knew this idea held no water whatsoever.  No Native respected George Custer.  He had the blood of the Washita Massacre of 1868 on his hands.  There would have been plenty of Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors on the battlefield who would have taken the chance to show their disdain for him.  Other specular insists that it was because Custer wasn't in military dress, or that he'd cut his famous long, curly yellow hair prior to battle.  Still, someone could've recognized him and pointed him out. Co
Read more

Trapper and Guide: Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, 1805-1866

Image
The only son of Sacajawea of the Shoshone and Toussaint Charbonneau, a French-Canadian fur trapper who may have been mixed-race himself, became a man of many talents.  Throughout his life, Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, 1805-1866 was a trapper, trader, scout, guide and interpreter as well as a mayor, prospector and hotel operator.  He was also educated, well-traveled in Europe and America, and spoke English, French, Spanish, German and several Native languages including his mother's Shoshone. The life of this remarkable man began in 1805 at Fort Mandan, near present-day Washburn, North Dakota.  Toussaint Charbonneau had signed on with the Lewis and Clark expedition as a hunter, interpreter and guide, but the real draw was his pregnant teenaged wife, Sacajawea, a Shoshone by birth.  Lewis and Clark knew they would need to trade horses from the Shoshone to make it over the Rocky Mountains and they would need an in with the tribe when the time came.  Sacajawea went into labor and had a
Read more

Cameahwait and Sacajawea

Image
The story of Sacajawea's reunion with her family and tribe during the Lewis and Clark Expedition is a familiar one, told from her vantage point.  However, her brother, Cameahwait, by this time chief of the Salmon Eater band of the Lemhi Shoshone would have also had feelings in the matter. Little is known of Cameahwait's life or how he rose to a position of authority among his people.  Apparently, he was several years older than Sacajawea.  In their society, siblings and cousins are often considered the same relationship and spoken of in the same words.  Some sources suggest that they may have been cousins, or even half-siblings.  No matter what the exact familial rank, their actions when they met up again suggested a close family bond.  When Sacajawea was 12 and her brother much older and already an established warrior, the Hidatsa raided their hunting camp.  Four men, four boys and some elderly and children were killed.  Sacajawea and some other girls her own age were take p
Read more