Apache Tribe Research Paper

The Oklahoma Apache Tribe

Apache is a word that comes from the Zuni word meaning enemy and the Yuma word for “fighting men.” The Western Apache, Chiricahua, Mescalero, Jicarilla, Lipan and Kiowa are the six sub-tribes the Apache Tribe consist of. Each of the sub-tribes are from a different geographical region. There are six regional groups. It’s impossible because of their nomadic nature that there were a lot of names that were used to identify the same tribe. The Angelo theory is that the Apache Indians migrated Southwest from Northern Canada around the 1500’s. The history of the Apache Indians says that this was the other way around and that most of the people who spoke Athapaskan migrated to the North and only very few of them stayed in

their homeland. It is generally agreed that around 5,000 Apaches had lived in the Southwest at the end of the 1600’s.
The men dressed in deerskin shirts, Moccasins, and leggings. They never went without a loin cloth. They wore a deerskin cap with attractive ornamentation. The women wore high boot top moccasins with short deerskin skirts.
The Apaches survived by hunting buffalo, deer, mountain lions, bears, and beavers. and eating the meat of the buffalo. They also survived by gathering Cactus fruits and a lot of wild fruits from plants. They didn’t fish and eagles were sometimes hunted for their feathers. They would pluck two or three feathers from them in place of using them as food. The Apaches had believed that Snakes, Prairie Dogs, fish, and turkeys were unclean so they did not eat them. Every male Apache was taught to hunt. Every time before hunting the boys would grease their bodies with animal fat to mask their smell so the animals wouldn’t smell human and run away. The Apaches also would swap Buffalo hide, meat, and bones. They would only trade bones that they could work into scrapers or needles. They also traded salt from the dessert for corn,
The Apace women are the strong hold for their families and are mainly the ones who are teachers.

The children don’t claim the father’s side of the tribe, but they claim their mother’s side. The fathers side of the tribe is counted like distance family. The women would build irrigation ditches and plant corn in them. The crops weren’t very good. It was the women who gathered the cactus fruit and the fruits from wild bushes.

The boys were trained for warfare. They could walk for a very long time without any water or food. They also learned how to keep silent, stand guard, and to read smoke signals. The boys would go to war when they were 15 years old. The young girls were trained to do chores around the house by their mothers.

The Apache girls that were reaching maturity were honored with the sunrise dance. They did this from early spring to late fall. This was a test of the girl’s endurance and discipline and also a celebration of her reaching woman hood. This dance lasted about four days usually and the girl would dance almost all the time and she would be accompanied with over 100 songs. They would wear ankle wraps while dancing and straps of leather that had bells attached. They put these on their knees, elbows, or ankles as well. They dance to prayers and songs for most of the four

days.

In the early 1900’s the U.S. government banned all of the Native American rituals and Spiritual practices. Doing the sunrise dance was illegal so participating in one of these rituals they would give and receive blessings and gifts also experiencing how much they could heal.
The Apache Indians battled the Spaniards in the 1730’s. The battles were long and most of the time ended in a lot of deaths. In 1749 in a ceremony an Apache buried a hatchet. This symbolized that the fighting was over. That is where the tern “bury the hatchet” came from.
As the time passed the Apache Indians developed a very strong bond with the white men of the area. In the beginning of the relationship between the Apaches and the white men the Apache Indians felt very protected and the bond between the two was strong. After a while raids began to happen. The Indians lost a lot of their people due to this. The white men also began stealing their livestock, food, and belongings. In the 1940’s there was only 35 Apache Indians recorded to live in the state of Oklahoma.