Reciprocity among Cherokees and Apaches

The Apache and Cherokee Indians, at face value, may seem as different as Native American tribes can be. They both had radically different methods of dealing with colonists and settlers in their territories, were located on opposite sides of the continent, and had vastly different ways of running their societies. Despite their differences, they were also alike in many ways, and among these likenesses was the idea of reciprocity, a chief similarity that the two groups shared.

For the purpose of this essay, this writer will define reciprocity as the expectation or ‘norm’ that people will respond to another party in the same manner in which the other party has treated them. So, for practical purposes, this means rewarding a good deed with another good deed, and punishing a bad deed with another bad deed. Of course, in order for a system like this to produce a favorable outcome, both groups must start out with good deeds, otherwise the system will only lead to relatively permanent hostilities.

Among the Apaches and the Cherokees, reciprocity was an important behavioral norm both within the tribe and toward outsiders of each tribe’s respective culture. However, this essay will mostly examine the two tribes’ behavior of reciprocity toward outsiders, with internal reciprocal acts taking the backstage. The majority of the most notable examples were indeed concerning the two tribes’ relationships with the Americans, and it is from these interactions that we can see the way the two tribes differed in their attitudes toward the Americans, yet were very similar in demonstrating a firm belief in reciprocity.

Far from the Apache, on the opposite side of the continent, the Cherokee nation was a southeastern tribe that, at their peak, spanned mu...

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...y in mind, but rather that reciprocity was the moral default for the Indians. And though Europeans were not exemplars of mercy and forgiveness by any means, Native American tribes did not originally have a religion as pervasive as Christianity that held such beliefs.

However, upon examination, it can be concluded that the methods employed by the two tribes in order to maintain their ways did not need to be equivalent for a norm of reciprocity to arise. The Chiricahua held out though fierce opposition and alacrity, while the Cherokee tried their best to assimilate and trust the Americans when they promised that such assimilation could make them their equals. Unfortunately, neither tribe was able to achieve their goal of maintaining their freedom in the end, but that did not prevent reciprocity from being understood as a given among both tribes’ relations with others.