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Native Americans: History, Culture, & Tribes: Apache

This guide covers the history and culture of Native American tribes. This guide is an ongoing project. As such, additional content will be added throughout the academic year.

Internet Resources

Geronimo and the Apache Resistance

For decades in the 19th century, Apache tribes resisted the westward advance of the pioneers and the threat they posed to traditional ways of life. Fighting the longest was Geronimo—one of the most famous, feared, and misunderstood Native American warriors in history. Geronimo and the Apache Resistance, from the PBS American Experience collection, separates myth from reality in the tragic collision of two cultures with dramatically different views of the world—and of each other. It is an illumination of the mysteries of Apache power that made them so terrifying in battle yet so skillful in escaping disaster. In the words of the descendants of those Apaches, the film provides the long-awaited chance to tell their story as it has never been told. Distributed by PBS Distribution. (56 minutes) Distributed by PBS Distribution.

Source: Films on Demand

Unconquered: Allan Houser and the Legacy of One Apache Family

In decades past, Native American artists who wanted to sell to mainstream collectors had little choice but to create predictable, Hollywood-style western scenes. Then came a generation of painters and sculptors led by Allan Houser (or Haozous), a Chiricahua Apache artist with no interest in stereotyped imagery and a belief that his own rich heritage was compatible with modernist ideas and techniques. Narrated by actor Val Kilmer and originally commissioned as part of an exhibit of Houser’s work at the Oklahoma History Center, this program depicts the artist’s tribal ancestry, his rise to regional and national acclaim, and the continuing success of his sons as they expand upon and depart from their father’s achievements. Key works are documented, as is Houser’s tenure at the Santa Fe–based Institute of American Indian Arts.

Primary Sources & Reference Materials (Log in Required)

Perspectives

Apacheria

Cochise, Geronimo Naiche, Crook, Jeffords, Bascom-all are names that resonate throughout the story of the Apache people during the last half of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth. The history of the west is dense with stories of battles waged, won, and lost; and cunning strategies in the long culture war between Anglos and Hispanic peoples on one side and the Native Americans on the other that often ended with tragic misunderstandings on both sides. Over the years, as clashes erupted both over territory and the white man's interference in the traditional lifeways of native peoples, the pressure on the Apache grew, leaving them with a choice between changing their ways or vanishing entirely. Book jacket.

Geronimo: My Life

In this, one of Native American history's most extraordinary documents, a legendary warrior and shaman recounts the beliefs and customs of his people. Completely and utterly authentic, its captivating narrator is Geronimo himself, who describes his early life and his family, rituals related to hunting and religion, and his military tactics.

The Apache Wars

In the tradition of Empire of the Summer Moon, a stunningly vivid historical account of the manhunt for Geronimo and the 25-year Apache struggle for their homeland.   They called him Mickey Free. His kidnapping started the longest war in American history, and both sides--the Apaches and the white invaders--blamed him for it. A mixed-blood warrior who moved uneasily between the worlds of the Apaches and the American soldiers, he was never trusted by either but desperately needed by both. He was the only man Geronimo ever feared. He played a pivotal role in this long war for the desert Southwest from its beginning in 1861 until its end in 1890 with his pursuit of the renegade scout, Apache Kid.   In this sprawling, monumental work, Paul Hutton unfolds over two decades of the last war for the West through the eyes of the men and women who lived it. This is Mickey Free's story, but also the story of his contemporaries: the great Apache leaders Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, and Victorio; the soldiers Kit Carson, O. O. Howard, George Crook, and Nelson Miles; the scouts and frontiersmen Al Sieber, Tom Horn, Tom Jeffords, and Texas John Slaughter; the great White Mountain scout Alchesay and the Apache female warrior Lozen; the fierce Apache warrior Geronimo; and the Apache Kid. These lives shaped the violent history of the deserts and mountains of the Southwestern borderlands--a bleak and unforgiving world where a people would make a final, bloody stand against an American war machine bent on their destruction.

The Apache Indians

Available in English for the first time, The Apache Indians tells the story of the Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad's sojourn among the Apaches near the White Mountain Reservation in Arizona and his epic journey to locate the "lost" group of their brethren in the Sierra Madres in the 1930s. Ingstad traveled to Canada, where he lived as a trapper for four years with the Chipewyan Indians. The Chipewyans told him tales about people from their tribe who traveled south, never to return. He decided to go south to find the descendants of his Chipewyan friends and determine if they had similar stories. In 1936 Ingstad arrived in the White Mountains and worked as a cowboy with the Apaches. His hunch about the Apaches' northern origins was confirmed by their stories, but the elders also told him about another group of Apaches who had fled from the reservation and were living in the Sierra Madres in Mexico. Ingstad launched an expedition on horseback to find these "lost" people, hoping to record more tales of their possible northern origin but also to document traditions and knowledge that might have been lost among the Apaches living on the reservation. Through Ingstad's keen and observant eyes, we catch unforgettable glimpses of the landscape and inhabitants of the southwestern borderlands as he and his Apache companions, including one of Geronimo's warriors, embark on a dangerous quest to find the elusive Sierra Madre Apaches. The Apache Indians is a powerful echo of a past that has now become a myth.

The Truth about Geronimo

Britton Davis's account of the controversial "Geronimo Campaign" of 1885-86 offers an important firsthand picture of the famous Chiricahua warrior and the men who finally forced his surrender. Davis knew most of the people involved in the campaign and was himself in charge of Indian scouts, some of whom helped hunt down the small band of fugitives Robert M. Utley's foreword reevaluates the account for the modern reader and establishes its his torical background.