The Apache: One of the Toughest Human Organisms the World Has Ever Seen

Beginning in the 1640s, Puebloans from the Rio Grande area, especially Taos, but in the 1640s, Puebloans began fleeing the rule of the Spanish in New Mexico and heading to the Great Plains to settle down with a people the Spanish would call the Cuartelejo Apaches.

The Puebloans were sick of the religious and the Spanish and their harsh encomienda system so a few of them abandoned their homes and Pueblos and went to the canyons of eastern Colorado and western Kansas. A place that used to be, long ago, underwater, and is today, littered with the fossils of ancient sea monsters and the eroded banks of that ancient ocean.

When the Puebloans arrived to one of these canyons, Ladder Creek Canyon, they were met by these Cuartelejo Apaches who already had huts and wikiups set up. It seems they welcomed the Puebloans who felt the canyon was more akin to their homes down in New Mexico. As opposed to the open plains around them. The canyon had good soil for farming, it protected the people from the constant wind and harsh elements, it wasn’t nearly as flat and dry as the surrounding high plains. It was a good place to settle down for these fleeing Taos Puebloans.

In 1664, after a small uprising at Taos, a whole bunch more Taos Puebloans abandoned their homes in New Mexico and fled for the El Cuartelejo site that they must have been in contact with. Again, the Plains Apache that lived their welcomed the Puebloans.

But the Spanish, after learning of the refugees, sent a Lieutenant Juan de Archuleta to go up and retrieve these Puebloans and bring them back to their rightful homes.

Despite this forced removal from the canyons that were hid among the plains of Kansas and Colorado, Taos Puebloans were already back at El Quartelejo to live with the Apaches by the 1660s.

Again, the Apaches and Puebloans lived in harmony as they hunted the bountiful wildlife, drank from the plentiful streams, and enjoyed the fertile soil and the roaming buffalo.

Then, after the Pueblo Revolt and subsequent reconquest by Diego de Vargas, in 1696, another group of Puebloans, about 60 of the Picuris also joined the Cuartelejo Puebloans and Apaches. They were followed shortly by some Tewa Puebloans from Santa Clara.

By this time, it seemed, the Puebloans and the Apaches were no longer getting along.

There were a few reasons for this, but the main one began with a Ka and ended with a manche.

In 1706, the Spanish in New Mexico received word from the far flung Cuartelejo Pueblos that the Apache had begun to mistreat them and if the Spanish could please send us an escort to bring us back home safely, that would be great. But it wasn’t just the Apache that were beginning to pick fights with the Puebloans… The Comanche had recently arrived on the scene and they too were starting trouble. With everyone.

The Spanish governor at that time, Francisco Cuervo y Valdés, took the message seriously and as soon as his General, Juan de Ulibarrí, had returned from scouting the upcoming city of Albuquerque in the great forest of Doña Luisa on the banks of the Rio Grande, as soon as Ulibarri had returned to Santa Fe, the governor sent the man northeast to bring back the Puebloans.

Ulibarri is a man I’ve talked about before. He is a storied soldier and Indian fighter who fought in the Reconquest of New Mexico, fought against the Navajo at El Morro, and even most likely had an adopted Apache son!

So on July the 13th, 1706, Ulibarri led 28 soldiers, 12 militiamen, and 100 Puebloan auxiliaries into the Buffalo Plains of the north. The leader of the Auxiliaries was a man I have spoken of before. He was probably a man Ulibarri was related to through marriage. He was also probably a son of one of the leaders of the Pueblo Revolt. He was also possibly of African descent for he was very dark. He was a man who switched  sides from his father and the Puebloans to the Spanish. He was of Hopi descent and his name was Jose Naranjo.

Also with Ulibarri… was a Frenchman named Jean L’Archevêque. And he… was a survivor of the La Salle expedition. Well… a survivor and one of the men who actually KILLED La Salle. He had fled from the French and had sworn allegiance to Spain. Probably not the most trustworthy man. But a man who will come up again later in this episode.

It’s so great to hear about all these people in a totally different context then when I last spoke about them. Listeners who have heard all the episodes, including the Roadrunner exclusives will know about the La Salle expedition, the Cuartelejo Apaches, The mysterious Naranjos, L’Archeveque, and Ulibarri! History is such a delightfully tangled web. Especially the history of the American Southwest.

Well, this group headed north and Ulibarri thankfully kept a journal of the expedition. First the group went to Taos where they stayed to give backup to the Puebloans, on account of an impending Ute attack. But when that Ute attack never materialized the expedition crossed the Sangre de Cristos and headed north.

After reaching the Cimmaron and Canadian rivers, Ulibarri mentions that they ran into a semi agricultural band of Jicarilla Apaches. These Jicarilla Apaches welcomed the Spanish and the two exchanged gifts and Ulibarri and his expedition stayed a few days.

But then they were on their way again. First they crossed into modern day Colorado and then they came upon the Great Plains. Naranjo, who was acting as a guide and who could speak Apache, on account of an Apache woman he had been with previously, Naranjo warned Ulibarri that the way ahead was tough and it’s likely that they would get lost. Which they then did. Even though, they were following piles of grass that the Apache set up and used as guides for themselves on the plains. Like rock cairns on slick rock but piles of grass cairns on the buffalo plains instead.

Eventually though, by August 3rd, the expedition had made it to El Cuartelejo. It may seem like El Cuartelejo is just one site, but in reality, it was the name given to the whole region of canyons on the plains that the Puebloans had been fleeing to since possibly the 1620s, but definitely the 1640s. And again, these Apaches were named El Cuartelejo Apaches.

On the hillside, welcoming the Spanish, was a large Cross the Apaches had built as a sign of peace. It turns out, things really had soured on the Great Plains and the Apache had taken some Puebloans hostage. Most of this sourness actually came from pressure from three groups that were entering the area and causing trouble. Those groups being the the Pawnee, the Utes, and of course, the Comanches.

At Cuartelejo though, Ulibarri paid the ransom for 5 Puebloans to the Apaches and sent two runners, one of them traveling 100 miles away, to two other Cuartelejo settlements to give word that if they desired, the Spanish would bring them back to New Mexico.

Of course, Ulibarri took the time to claim the entire area for Spain. But all the while, Ulibarri and his men were leery of attacks form the Ute or Comanche with their superior French powder and arms. Especially after the Apache showed Ulibarri a French rifle they say they took from a Frenchman after killing he and his wife.

Eventually, Ulibarri had around 60 Puebloans, or as Ulibarri put it, quote, sixty two persons, small and grown, of the Picuris who were living as apostates, slaves of the devil… end quote. So, the entire expedition, plus these 62, went back to New Mexico pretty much the same route and were back to their various pueblos and in Santa Fe by September 2nd.

But not before Ulibarri visited with those same Jicarilla Apaches that they’d stayed with earlier. These Apaches had been watching some of the expeditions horses while they were out on the plains. Apparently these Apaches had been raided not once, but twice by the Comanche and Utes! The Utes are Shoshone as well which makes them cousins to the Comanche.

Besides being successful in quote unquote rescuing over 60 Puebloans, Ulibarri’s expedition was also successful in building better relations between the Spanish and the Plains Apache. Although that better relations is mainly due to other outside forces being more formidable.

For most of the 1700s though, better relations with the Western Apache would not be the reality and by 1724, according to Frank C Lockwood, in his The Apache Indians, but by 1724 quote, the Apaches had become so aggressive that it looked as if white civilization in northern Mexico would be wiped out. End quote.

This episode won’t only focus on the fight for survival between the Apaches and the Spanish in the American Southwest and Mexican Northwest, I’ll also go into what was happening to the Eastern and Plains Apaches as well. There’s a lot of history in the 18th century with the Apaches and the Comanche, early Spanish Texans, the French, and others. And during this whole century, the Apache’s way of life will constantly evolve as their territory changes and their fearsome reputation grows.

Those Cuartijelo Apache were part of something archaeologists call the Dismal River Culture and this culture consisted of two separate Apache groups with one, obviously being the Cuartelijo and the other being the Paloma who became the Kiowa Apache or Plains Apache.

The Plains Apache though, they would later migrate to Oklahoma and Texas after being pressured to do so by the Pawnee, French, and their real enemy, the Comanche.

The Cuartelijo Apache would also move south where they probably joined the Lipan and Jicarilla Apache for the same reasons as the Plains Apache had.

Lipan means the light grey people in the Apache language. There’s Lipai which means light grey and nde which as we know from the last episode, means the People. Lipan.

There’s a lot of revolving terms used for the Apaches throughout this episode and this whole series. That’s mostly because these bands weren’t fixed but they were always changing and evolving as they migrated and mixed and merged and split apart. I try to use only a few terms but each source calls the same people something different so it can get a little complicated.

The Dismal River Culture of the Apaches lived in Navajo Hogan like huts with hides over them and they congregated around the streams of the Western Great Plains. They used stone arrow heads, bone tools, hunted Bison, and fired some grey pottery bowls. The era of the Dismal River Culture was mostly during this time that the Puebloans were there in the mid 1600s.

Before that, the Apache were purely nomadic and there is not much if any artifacts to suggest they were even in the area, although it is believed that they arrived to this area of the Great Plains around the 1500s. Which is considerably later than the Western Apaches possible arrival into Arizona.

There’s still so much unknown about the early Athabaskans. But there is one interesting… theory that I must dispute.

A video was shown to me starring a Navajo Historian named Wally Brown who claimed that it wasn’t the Puebloans who built the ruins at El Cuartelejo in Kansas but it was the Athabaskans. The Navajo, specifically. He claimed that the Dine had emerged from this spot or came down from Canada 2,000 years ago… And actually, the Athabaskans taught the Puebloans how to build masonry structures! Not the other way around.

He says quote, other people are given credit but these are the structures that were made by the towering house people. End quote. The towering house people were his 2,000 year old Athabaskan ancestors.

He claims that the Dine stopped building their homes with stones in the pueblo style because earthquakes made them collapse so they switched to Hogans.

Wally Brown goes on to say that the Cuarteljo Ruins site in Kansas was the place of emergence for the Navajo. They lived there for 50 years and then they moved west of the rio grande and south of the book cliffs of Utah, just north of Moab. Pretty much the Colorado Plateau or modern day Dinetah.

He then goes on to say that after an argument over ceremonies the Dine separated and many went far north to Canada and others went south and became Apache. But most stayed in Dinetah and became Navajo.

This view of the Navajo being in the area for much longer than evidence suggests is taking off with both Dine and Anglos.

I just don’t buy it though. Both DNA and language show that the Indeh and Dine, Apache and Navajo, are closely related to their northern Athabaskan neighbors who themselves are closely related to people in Western Siberia and Eurasia.

The Athabaskans were likely the last major group to cross over into the New World!

What Wally Brown and the Warrior Producers are doing on their site and their Youtube Channel though is pretty great. They have tons of videos that preserve and share the Navajo and Dine culture, beliefs, world views, and even the landscape of the American Southwest or Dinetah. I encourage people to check out his videos if they’re interested in the Navajo or Dine.  

But this increasingly popular opinion that the Navajo have always been here, they kicked out the Anasazi, they taught the Ancient ones to build and farm… I don’t believe that’s correct. Then again, what do I know… I’m just guessin’!

Over 3 or 4 decades around the late 16, early 1700s, the Comanche began their southward push on the great plains which, as I previously stated, would force the Apache southward and out of their way. Part of this push was on account of the Sioux, who were themselves pushing the Comanche southward. And the Sioux were newcomers to the area from the Great Lakes Region who had themselves been pushed out of their homes in the east. Their stories mirrors the steppes of Eurasia in a lot of ways. This story sounds like the constant surge of Eurasians into Western Europe! It mirrors all of human history, really.

John Upton Terrell states in his Apache Chroncicle, the story of the People, that in the beginning of the 1700s, quote, the apache of the high plains were faced with a new and swiftly growing danger. It was the southward migration of the Comanche. End quote.

The Comanche were from the upper rockies and they’d gained the horse and were given the name Comanche by the Spanish when they misunderstood the Ute word Komantcia which means anyone who wants to fight me all the time.

Reminds me of the casino scene in Hell or High Water.

The Shoshone branch of Native Americans that became the Comanche were expert horseman and warriors. They were too much for the Apache to withstand so the Apache eventually went south into New Mexico and Arizona. But that migration took some time.

During the 1700s the Spanish were far more worried about and bothered by the Comanche and the Navajo to focus on fighting the Eastern Plains Apaches. The Comanche and Utes to the north constantly wrecked havoc while the Navajo to the west of New Mexico never ceased their warring against the colonies.

To help alleviate the pain of these constant attacks, the Spanish actually made some alliances with the Jicarilla and Plains or Cuartelejo Apaches. One band of Plains Apaches did not make alliances with the Spanish though.

One very important band of Apaches in this region between the Rio Grande and the Pecos River and the region around Santa Fe, one important band of Apaches is known to us as the Faraon, or Pharoh to the Spanish, but the Faraon Apaches. Later they’d become the Mescalero Apaches and the last time they’re ever called the Faraon is in 1814, but for now, this band of Pharaoh Apaches, Lords of the Plain, they’re giving the Spanish a solid colonial headache.

During the Pueblo Revolt The Faraon allied themselves with the Pueblos to kick out the Spanish. They lived to the east of the Sandia Mountains, where I live now and constantly sent small raids down into Santa Fe and Albuquerque and the surrounding towns. Including my own town!

Once the Taos and Picuris Pueblo welcomed the Spanish back in and sided with them though, the Faraon Apaches considered these Puebloan Indians race traders and instead focused many of their raids on these red men’s pueblos as well as the white man’s.

By 1715, the Governor at that time, Juan Ignacio Flores Mogollón had had enough of these Faraon Apaches stealing horses and mules from the Pueblos he was supposed to protect. So in August of that year, Mogollón sent Captain Juan Páez Hurtado, 39 soldiers, twenty civilian settlers, and one hundred and fifty one Indian fighters. Men from Pecos, San Juan, Nambe, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, Tesuque, Taos, Picuris, and more. Apparently, 76 of these Puebloan warriors had guns. The punitive expedition also had plenty of horses and mules. And they expected to come back with even more.

Hurtado and his men then crossed over the Sangre de Cristo mountains east of Santa Fe and came down onto the plains at the gorgeous Mora River. There, he was then joined by 30 Jicarilla Apaches! So the Apaches had now begun to fight with each other… or maybe not…

It seems that although the punitive expedition found many Faraon camps… they were all abandoned. Hurtado believed, probably correctly, that the Apache foe had been warned by either Puebloans or the Jicarilla and Cuartelejo Apache that had joined them.

The expedition was an utter and complete failure. The only violence occurred when Hurtado had his guide whipped 50 times for being an alleged spy.

A few years after the failed Hurtado expedition, the new and completely corrupt governor of New Mexico, governor Valverde, cheated and stole lands and cattle from both Puebloans and Apaches, which sent these groups into the mountains where they would begin raiding from. Raiding just to stay alive.

His soldiers weren’t treated any better though and he stole their wages and forced them to work his own stolen fields and animals. The guy was a regular crooked politician. Like any modern day American politician, really.

Well, the Religious of the area got excited when in 1717 the Jicarilla Apache made some requests from the Spanish for help against the increasingly formidable and violent Comanches.

The Spanish and been noticing for a few decades by now that their old enemy, the Apache, their numbers had been dwindling. Their raids had slowed… Eventually, they would learn through messages like this Jicarilla one, that the answer of the disappearing Apache was this new enemy, the Comanche.

I know I’ll take flak for quoting SC Gwynne’s Empire of the Summer Moon but he makes a good point about this battle between the two nations when he wrote, quote:

While this was most likely not an attempt to kill off the entire tribe, neither was it a simple question of moving the Apaches off their hunting grounds. The Comanches had a deep and abiding hatred of Apaches, and what they did to them also had a good deal to do with blood vengeance. Either way, the Comanches were in the middle of a relentless southward migration, and the Apaches were in their way. End quote.

Obviously, the priests saw an opportunity to preach and convert amongst these beleaguered Apaches, a people who had famously stayed far away from Catholicism. So the priests asked Mexico City if they could gather a force to punish the Comanche, preach amongst the Apache, and to finally, once and for freakin all, find out where the dastardly French were and stop them from arming the Crown’s enemies.

It’s important to note that on the continent, the French and the Spanish were at war in what’s known as the War of the Quadruple Alliance. Technically, Spain was at war with France, England, Austria, and the Dutch Republic. Hence, the Quadruple Alliance. It had to do with Italy and Sicily but it’s only important to note because it fostered an atmosphere of fear in the hearts of the Spanish in the New World. Now was a good a time as any for these four major European powers to take from the Spanish her possessions in the New World. That particular war was over by 1720.

But, in September of 1717, the corrupt ex soldier governor Valverde somehow amassed the largest army the Great Plains had seen since Oñate. He had sixty regular soldiers, forty five settlers, and four hundred and sixty five Puebloan allies. Eventually this enormous army would also be joined by 196 Jicarilla Apaches. There were also almost a thousand horses and mules among the leather jacket wearing soldiers and settlers. Along with plenty of tobacco, chocolate, sheep, and several casks of wine. Mostly for the governor’s consumption.

Along the slow and leisurely taken route through the great plains, the governor and his army saw plenty of burned and destroyed Apache villages and settlements. And all the while, the Apache warriors who had accompanied the Spanish were regaling the Governor with tales of their own sad history at the hands of the Comanche and Ute.

John Upton Terrell actually writes of this destruction. Quote: in one rancherira alone more than sixty apache had been killed by raiders, who also carried away many women and children. The fighting and killing was occurring with greater frequency each year, and they would not be able to bear it much longer unless the Spanish helped them to defend themselves. End quote.

Things were certainly looking rough for the Apache of the plains of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado. A place they soon would no longer be able to call their own.

During this Valverde trek, many apaches would dance for the Governor and sing his praises. Valverde seemed to listen generously and intently to their plights. He promised them revenge and help and that they would have these wrongs righted. They land would be returned to them. The Comanche would be punished. Soon. Soon my children.

But as John Upton Terrell put it, Valverde, quote, took no action to demonstrate the sincerity of his words. Indeed, he did nothing at all for them. End quote.

The Valverde excursion would come upon quite a few Comanche camps, but they’d always be abandoned. Sometimes recently abandoned, other times they’d been abandoned for quite some time. One such camp was estimated to have had over a thousand warriors in it. But the Spanish had been too late. And the Comanche just could not be snuck up on.

Valverde was not the first military leader to lose track of, become confused by, and downright out maneuvered by the Comanche, nor would he be the last.

Eventually, with winter coming, Valverde had to give up on punishing the Comanche on behalf of the Apache during this expedition. He now had to focus on The French.

John Upton Terrell tells a story from this time on the plains about an Apache man who had great knowledge of the French and their whereabouts. It reads, quote:

Informed that an Apache had arrived who had suffered a gunshot wound that was not yet fully healed, he had him brought to his tent. There, said a report, "the governor examined the wound and asked him who had given it to him..." Through interpreters the wounded Apache, a Paloma, "answered that while he and his people were in their land... the French, united with the Pawnees and the Jumanos, attacked them from ambush while they were planting corn. Placed on the defensive, they fought, and it was then that they gave him the oblique wound in the abdomen which was still healing.* (It must have been infected, as corn was planted in may or June, and this was mid October). The Apache also said that had not night settled on them, so that they could escape from their rancheria, none would have been alive. The Comanche seized the Paloma lands ... and held them from that time on.” End quote.

So the Comanche and the Pawnee were on the warpath. But the Jumano?

I talked about the Jumanos in my Subscriber only episode over the Llano Estacado. I should have talked about them in the last episode. But the Jumano were a Texan and New Mexican group of Native Americans that was probably three different peoples. The Texas State Historical Association suggests quote, they include the Tompiro-speaking Pueblo Indians in Salinas, a nomadic trading group based around the Rio Grande and Río Conchos, and the Caddoan-speaking Wichitas along the Arkansas River and Red River basins. End quote.

Earlier historians wrongly, I believe, assumed they were Apaches. John Upton Terrell even calls them Outlaw Apaches but I believe they were Puebloans who were branching out onto the Buffalo Plains, building small pueblos at the base of the Llano Estacado and trading with the Mississippians and eastern tribes. At least one branch of the Jumanos were. It’s most likely the Spanish called a bunch of different groups Jumanos.

But the various Jumano groups still had some characteristics that linked them together. One of those characteristics was their use of scarification and paint that they used to make stripes go down their face and skin. So they’d scar themselves and then put certain materials in their skin to create a pattern, like a tattoo.

The Jumanos were also a, breasteses out kinda group. They are often remarked by the Spanish as having their breasts and genitals uncovered. The men also cut their hair short except for one lock which they would paint and stick feathers into. That’s very unApache. The Apache loved to grow their hair long.

In Eve Ball’s Indeh, An Apache Odyssey, Eve Ball interviews an Apache named Daklugie who tells many a story but he also talks about Apache way of life. I am reading that entire awesome book for subscribers if you’re interested and want to be a Roadrunner.

Well, Daklugie tells Eve Ball that quote, we glorified in our long, luxuriant hair, but other tribes cut at least part of theirs off. Long hair all over one’s head was an expression of courage and a dare to one’s enemies.

He goes on to say, quote, when I went to Carlisle, my hair came down to my knees. I braided it and fastened it under my belt to prevent its catching on brush and thorns. End quote.

Of course not all Apache bands are the same but the Apache did indeed love to grow their hair out. So these Jumano men having short hair tells me they probably weren’t Apaches.

That tattooing though, sounds very Mogollonish or even southern Puebloan. If you ever see pictographs or petroglyphs of them they are often depicted with stripes on their face and body. Even on ceramics this is shown.

The Jumanos were often interpreters for the Spanish in the early days. But eventually, they disappeared. Most likely they went back west or merged with later Apache Plains Indians and other tribes in the Texas and northern Mexican region.

The story by the wounded Apache continued though. I’ll quote from it now:

The French have built two large pueblos, each of which is as large as that of Taos. In them they live together with the said pawnees and jumanos Indians. To whom they have given long guns which they taught them to shoot.

They also carry some small guns suspended from their belts. At the time of the fight the Paloma had shouted at the French that they would ask the Spanish for help and quote, to this the French responded that they would be greatly pleased to have them notify the Spanish and bring them there, for the Spanish were women. End all quotes.

Some smack talk! Valverde wasn’t as bothered by the insult as he was bothered by even more news that was told to him by this Apache man. The wounded Apache also told Valverde that some of their Apache women had been kidnapped by the French but they had escaped. But during captivity they witnessed many more large French towns and forts that dotted the river banks of the great plains. There were at least three other settlements besides the two large forts previously mentioned. Obviously, this greatly worried the Spanish. But it also meant certain doom for the various Plains Apache.

If these French were trading in both long guns and pistols with the Pawnee and Comanche, the Apache stood no chance. And it wasn’t like the Spanish were any help.

The Viceroy in Mexico City, after Valverde’s return, told him to build a presidio, or fort in the northern plains near the modern day site of Cuartelejo in Kansas. But he correctly guessed that that position was way too far away and there was no way they could safely support it. Instead, a presidio was built 70 miles from Santa Fe among the Jicarilla. At least some help, was coming for the Apache.

Earlier I mentioned that Juan de L’Archeveque would be mentioned again. Well it’s that time.

In 1720, Valverde sent another expedition into the great plains to see what was going on with the Comanche and the French. For some strange reason, he sent a young inexperienced and ignorant of the territory Spanish soldier named Captain Pedro de Villasur. No one is sure why he picked him for this task. And on top of that, Valverde gave him very few men and little equipment.

Another one of the men that came along on the expedition is the same Naranjo mentioned earlier. Naranjo and L’Archeveque were the guides for the mission. At least the two had been to Cuartelejo but that wouldn’t help them much on this expedition.

By August, they’d reached El Cuartelejo but they didn’t encounter a single hostile European or Indian. And the Apache at Cuartelejo weren’t much help with information as they knew nothing of either enemy’s whereabouts. So, Villasur headed further northeast. He made it all the way to the North Platte River. Which is quite far, really. He made it all the way to the confluence of the North and South Platte Rivers which is near modern day Columbus Nebraska.

At this point, Villasur learns that Indians, Pawnee Indians, are approaching his expedition. So he sends out an emissary to ask if they’d like to have a smoke. Apparently though, the Pawnee weren’t interested in such things because they kidnapped and held this messenger.

Villasur was stung by the kidnapping so he made a defensive camp between the two rivers.

This is what John Upton Terrell wrote about what happened next, on the morning of August 14th, 1720. Quote:

At dawn several hundred Pawnee warriors attacked with such suddenness and fury that Villasur and a number of his men were slain before they could fire their guns. The Pueblo Indians panicked and escaped with the horse herd, but not before eleven of them had died.

The professional Spanish soldiers fought with great bravery. They took a heavy toll of the Pawnee, but only twelve of them, almost all badly wounded, would break out of the ambush and live. Among the thirty soldiers and eleven Pueblos dead on the field were Naranjo, Father Minguez, L'Archeveque, and the other civilians. Many of the Pawnee had been armed with guns, and not a few of them had been wearing "French clothes.” End quote.

Obviously, the Spanish and their prestige among the other nations in the Americas, took a huge blow. Their standing on the world stage even suffered from this small yet definitive skirmish.

Much like how the forced abandonment of the Salinas Pueblos by the Apache had helped the cause of the Pueblo Revolt, this attack helped bolster the Comanche and Ute who proceeded to attack the Spanish and Apache with even greater fury. And by now, the Cuartelejo and Jicarilla Apache had pretty much given up on getting any help from the beleaguered Spanish. Although they would continue to ask for their help for the remainder of the century.

The Spanish were in quite the bind. They were in a pickle in the early 1700s in their colony of New Mexico. As John Upton Terrell states, quote, The Ute would hold the north along the sources of the Rio Grande, and the Comanche would take complete control of western Kansas, southeastern Colorado, and the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas. The Navajo would dominate the vast region west of the Jemez and south of the San Juan, their raiders sweeping out of it great distances the year round to pillage and kill and take captives and drive off livestock. End quote.

The Apache too were in a tough spot. Not only were the Utes and Comanches attacking them throughout the west but in Spanish Texas, in 1724, the Lipan Apaches fought a bloody and devastating battle against the Comanches which saw the Lipan Apaches completely driven from southern Oklahoma and northern Texas. At a place known as the Great Mountain of Iron on the Wichita River in Oklahoma, a place that is either in the Wichita Mountains or maybe is Quartz Mountain to its west, but in Oklahoma this battle lasted nine…. Days…

By the end of that decade of 1720s, the Apaches on the plains were so distraught over the Comanche attacks that they began seeking shelter at Pecos Pueblo! The same pueblo the Faraon Apaches called traitors for siding with the Spanish… well now they were seeking shelter among these Puebloans.

In response to the Apache hiding among the Pecos Puebloans, the Comanche attacked the Pueblo. The Comanches would actually attack the pueblo right up until 1838 when the whole thing was abandoned.

To think… the Apache used to be the ones attacking the puebloans…

By now, the Spanish realized that they needed to keep these Apache alive just to guard themselves against the Comanche! To help build a buffer zone, the Spanish actually gave the Apache some lands near Taos Pueblo. In 1733, a mission was even founded by the Spanish for the Apache! I believe it's the first one, actually. But I did read about multiple first missions among the apache in various places so I’m not sure.

This mission was built on the Rio Trampas. I don’t believe it’s the Las Trampas church that is known as the quote unquote, most perfectly preserved Spanish Colonial church in the United States. Although they share a name.

Anyways, the mission and the lands didn’t really work and the Comanche, by 1748, had kicked the Jicarilla Apaches from their lands in west Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Colorado. The Jicarilla didn’t even stay near Taos. By the mid 18th Century, they were on the other side of the front range and the Jemez Mountains in New Mexico near their current reservation.

In Texas, the Lipan Apaches, the same ones who had fought the bloody nine day battle against the Comanches, well in 1749, they were still clinging desperately to their lands where a story of trickery and survival unfolded.

In that year of 1749, several Apache bands including the Lipans rode their people into San Antonio, Texas to sign a peace treaty and to declare their desire to enter into mission life and become servants of the King in Spain and of god. These people had been raiding the Texans since San Antonio’s founding in 1718, so, the Spanish in charge were ecstatic.

The Apaches would actually ask the Spanish for years for peace, a presidio, and a mission. But especially the Presidio, please. The Apaches wanted this fort and church in their homeland near modern day Menard, Texas, which is in the dead center of Texas near San Angelo.

Surprisingly, the Spanish eventually took the requests seriously and they sent out two scouting expeditions in 1753 and 1755. Technically, the Spanish had heard rumors that there were gold in them their hills. The hills of hill country Texas. It also didn’t hurt that yet again, the Spanish were leery of French encroachment.

In 1756, a rich Spaniard named Don Pedro Romero de Terreros even offered to pay for the whole endeavor. He’d pay for two missions for two years in Apache country… so long as these missions were run by his cousin, Alonso Giraldo de Terreros. The project, was ultimately, approved.

The person in charge was a Colonel Parrilla. He was a soldier with a lot of experience on the frontier. He had been governor of Sonora and Coahuila. He had also led successful campaigns against the Apache in Western New Mexico.

Well he’d be successful here as well. He imported 1400 heads of cattle and seven hundred sheep after building the mission and the presidio. Parrilla also arranged for the transfer of quite a few Tlascaltecan Indians from northern Mexico to help with the future conversions. If you catch my drift…

Despite his successes at first, Parrilla was quite skeptical that the Apaches, a people he had fought and knew, he was highly skeptical that the Apaches were serious. In his gut he knew the real reason for the possible conversions was because of the expensive, manned, and armed San Saba Presidio. He even wrote the Viceroy and told him that the Apaches were treacherous and they were not going to make good on their word.

Sure, every now and then a Lipan Apache would show up in San Antonio to proclaim their love of God and the crown and asking for some beads, or tobacco, or for some hats. Or maybe do y'all have any knives? Kettles? Could I have some ribbons before returning to my people? Some beef maybe?

For the most part though, as Parrilla noted, the Apaches who this was all for, pretty much steered clear of the Spanish and their religious.

SC Gwynne sarcastically writes of the Apaches at this time, quote, on the eve of the move to the mission, when they should have been swooning in anticipation of simultaneously receiving Jesus and pledging allegiance to the Spanish king, none could be found. End quote.

Surprisingly, on April 18th, 1757, the mission finally opened its doors. The mission and the presidio with 100 soldiers. But there wasn’t a single Apache there to celebrate. One of the fathers was then sent to go find these Apaches and bring them to the church, but… no luck.

But then, miraculously, the Spanish and the religious, their luck turned around! And some Apache were finally located.

SC Gwynne writes of this turn of events in his much maligned Empire of the Summer Moon. Quote:

Then in June it seemed to the hopeful fathers that the miraculous moment had finally arrived. That month they discovered some three thousand Indians camped near the mission. This was more than they could have dreamed possible. But as the missionaries prepared to welcome their new charges, they learned the real reason for the gathering: the annual buffalo hunt. There was some talk of going north to fight other Indians, too, but no talk at all of coming into the mission. The Indians soon vanished.

He continues:

Parrilla, now certain that he had been duped, wrote the viceroy, quote:

Your Excellency will understand what a difficult undertaking is the formation of missions for the heathen Apache nation, and will see that the favorable reports that were sent in to that Captaincy General concerning the matter were direct results of the unreliability that has always characterized the missionaries and inhabitants of the province of Texas in every occurrence that has concerned them. End Parrilla’s quote.

SC Gwynne continues:

Meanwhile, three of the four priests had also lost confidence in the venture, leaving Father Terreros as its sole supporter. "We find no reason," wrote the dissenting padres, "why we should remain with this enterprise, which we consider ill-conceived and without foundation from the beginning. ... Having fully learned the wishes of the Indians, we find no other motive [for friendship] than the hope of receiving gifts.

Parrilla tried to abandon the mission project altogether, proposing that the presidio alone be moved north to protect the mines, with no success. Though he was bitterly frustrated, and not a little nervous about manning an outpost so far beyond the frontier, he had his viceregal orders. End all quotes.

But the presidio had the desired effect of protecting the Apache, right?!

Not quite… As the months progressed, word from Apaches landed in the ears of the padres… a great invading army from the north was on their way to destroy them. It was apparently, a force so great, that the Apaches believed the Spanish would not be able to protect them.

This was probably tough for Parrilla to swallow seeing as how everything else the Apache had said had not come true. Like their desire to convert and to become loyal Spanish citizens. But, this time, what the Apaches had said was indeed the truth. 

I will quote SC Gwynne once again here because he writes quite well. Even if he is lambasted constantly by historians and the Comanche themselves. I follow a few Comanches online who despise this book, and with good reason. But I’m steering clear of most of the controversial claims. But Gwynne writes, quote:

The San Saba Mission proposal was indeed, as Parrilla had suspected, a sham. The Lipans and other bands never had any intention of converting to Christianity. But what neither Parrilla nor any Spanish official had understood was the reason for the deception, and thus they had no idea of the extent of the treachery that had been perpetrated upon them. What had in fact happened, while the padres were busy shining up their sacramental vessels, was that the Comanche empire—an area far, far larger than any Spaniard suspected in those years— had arrived precisely on their doorstep.

The Spanish had been cleverly lured well beyond the actual boundaries of the Apache lands. The San Saba country was not their homeland at all: It was Comancheria proper, and a Spanish fort there amounted to a declaration of war on the Comanches. This was exactly what the Apaches wanted: They wanted their dire enemy destroyed. Or at least stopped in its relentless southward sweep. End quote.

While it was a brilliant plan, getting the Spanish to fight the Apache’s battles, it was also a doomed one and in the spring of 1758, the Comanches came riding hard under a full moon.

On march 2nd, in the dead of night, The Comanches came and stole all 62 of the mission’s horses.

In response, Parrilla sent out 15 soldiers. But these guys quickly realized they’d gotten in over their heads, and they returned with haste.

Parrilla now rode to the mission, where three priests and a handful of Indians and servants were protected by five soldiers, only five soldiers… but he went there to beg Father Terreros to leave for the far greater security of the presidio.

Father Terreros refused, and he insisted that the Indians would never harm him. Gotta love that friar zeal for suicide…

Naturally, Terreros was wrong. On the morning of March 16, 1758, mass was interrupted. It was halted by the noise of whooping Indians.

The fathers ran to see where the noise was coming from but all they saw was the heart stopping sight of black and red painted Indians in full war regalia. Comanches and Wichitas. They had muskets, bows and arrows, and lances. The mission was completely surrounded.

At first the fathers gave the Comanche leader gifts but they didn’t seem interested in them. The Comanches didn’t really seem interested at all until the killing began.

Father Terreros died first after being shot, and then the soldier guarding him fell next. A few others were shot or bludgeoned or hacked to pieces. The mission was put to the flame. The dead priests were stripped, mutilated, and one of them was decapitated.

In Frank C Lockwoods The Apache Indians, he comments that during this attack, quote, the wily Apaches suffered little, for only a few of them were present at the time of the attack. End quote.

After the killing, the Comanches and Wichitas stole the cattle, the goods, the vestments, just… everything they could get away with, really.

Two miles away, Parrilla was told of the attack and his response was to gather nine soldiers to protect what was left of the mission. Nearly all nine men were injured with two dying immediately. The survivors somehow made it back to the Presidio.

Most everyone, 10 people, died at the mission but the Indians never attacked the Fort.

Parrilla had asked for backup from other presidios but none came. Well, a few soldiers eventually arrived after the third viceroyal decree. The people of Texas were scared out of their minds. The whole northern frontier of New Spain was rocked.

The Apaches had been right…

Despite the French offering to broker some sort of peace deal, Parrilla would gather 380 Spaniards and 134 Apaches to find and destroy the Comanches that had attacked the mission at San Saba.

They’d leave in August of 1759 and they’d stick to the eastern timber forests that cling to the side of the Great Plains in fear. Parrilla would actually find an Indian village but they would be Tonkawas. That didn’t matter. He slaughtered them anyways. An Indian’s an Indian during a punitive raid. Fifty five of the Tokawas were killed and one hundred and fifty women and children were taken to San Antonio for conversion and… assimilation. To put it kindly.

Parrilla and his Apache ally forces would then ride north between present day Fort Worth and the Red River, which is the border of Texas and Oklahoma. And here in these hills they’d find a formidable group of Comanche, Wichita, Osage, Caddoan, and other tribes, and all backed by the might and cunning intrigue of the French.

This group of Indians and French were dug into defensive positions and they were well armed.

Clearly, Parrilla and his men were in for a tough challenge. Except… as SC Gwynne writes, quote:

What happened next might have been one of the greatest slaughters in the history of the American West, except for the fact that Parrilla's forces almost immediately turned tail and ran. Though his Spanish regulars had charged on his command, the rest of the army proved utterly feckless. Most of it melted away. Retreat turned into panic, and panic turned into headlong flight. For some reason —perhaps because they were so pleased to capture all of the provision wagons of a large Spanish army-the Indians did not pursue Parrillas terrified, feeing army. Because of this, his forces suffered few casualties, an inconvenient fact that he was hard-pressed to explain to his skeptical superiors back in San Antonio and later in Mexico City. End quote.

It was apparently, the worst defeat inflicted upon the Spanish in the New World ever. I know this episode is about the Apache but like much of the history of the Southwest, it is intertwined and spiraled together with so many other peoples, nations, and histories. After this, no other punitive expeditions would ever again be sent against the Comanches in Texas and no missions would ever again be built in hostile country.

But if you’ve been listening to the podcast, you know that Don Juan Bautista de Anza and Don Maria y Pacheco with his sons go and defeat the great Comanche leader Green Horn in Colorado so the Spanish still do fight against the Comanche.

Apparently, Parrilla was sent to Mexico City to explain what had happened and while he was there under oath… he claimed he had been up against 6,000 Indians under the command and flag of French officers… the court though, disagreed. They found no evidence of Frenchman at the battle and they doubted the numbers of enemy combatants.

The French were a thorn in the side of both the Spanish and the Apache in the New World. The French constantly supplied the Apaches with guns which the Spanish feared. And the French also supplied the Comanche with guns which the Apache feared. Everyone, it seems, feared the French guns.

And speaking of feared French and the Apache… well, actually, this has nothing to do with the Apache Indians of the American Continent… except for the name.

In my research on French interactions with the Apache, of which I found next to nothing. Maybe it’s just not in English. But when researching the Apache and the French I found that in the 1870s, some ten thousand or so street ruffians and vagabonds in Paris were so brutal in their attacks on random people on the street that the French newspapers compared them to the Apaches of America and Mexico. They dubbed them the Apaches. Kinda goes to show how prevalent the belief of the violent Apache was, even 150 years ago… on another continent.

These Apaches were no joke though. Craig Gemeiner on the website Defense Dans La Rue says this of the Apache street fighters of Paris, quote:

The Apaches most prominently focused on their own form of street combat however. Crude and unscrupulous, yet highly effective, “French Apache street fighting” emphasised the use of elementary street kicks, hand strikes, head-butts, throws, and an assortment of weapons both standard and improvised which included knuckle dusters, knives, razors, scarves, bodkins, jackets, hats, the Apache gun and even sheep bones!

And the techniques of the French Apache were all set-up with dirty tricks. End quote.

These early 1900 Apaches in Paris even sparked a new dance craze called Apache Swing which occasionally saw the participants in the dance DIE! Or be killed! The dance was so violent as it mimicked fighting that people would be thrown or stabbed or hit. Like thrown across bars and tables. It sounds ridiculous… People in America thought the Twist was bad…

Apparently the Apache street fighting gangs were eradicated when they were systematically round up and sent to the front lines of WW1 where most of them, no doubt, died in a storm of steel.

Back to the early 1700s New Spain though… Parrilla, after the disastrous failure in Texas, was reassigned and became a governor elsewhere in a few different places and also he put down another native rebellion. This time in Florida.

But for a long time, this defeat at what is known as the Battle of Twin Villages was considered a huge disgrace for the Spanish.

Many of the Texas Apaches would eventually merge into other Apache bands but some… would simply disappear from history.

But not before they had a few last stands as they were in the area. Frank C Lockwood writes that not long after this, the Spanish and the Comanche actually do indeed make peace but that did not sit well with the Apache who then began to raid some Comanche settlements. But as they raided and plundered, they’d leave behind clues for the Comanches to discover. Clues that suggested that the Spanish were the ones who were raiding and killing them. NOT the Apache.

But that wasn’t quite enough and the Apache actually began attacking Spanish settlements as the Spanish went further and further north.

Despite this though, the Apaches convinced the Spanish to build yet another mission and Presidio in the Texas region. But by 1767, all of them, San Saba included, were abandoned by the Spanish. The Apache’s word on their conversion now meant nothing to the religious of the area who in a surprisingly un Spanish Catholic friar way, suggested they retreat and abandon their pursuits in the region of Texas. The Apache would just have to keep living in sin.

By the mid 18th century, many of the alliances the Spanish had with the Apaches were disintegrating. And now the Apaches had a pretty strong defensive line in the wilderness that stretched from Texas to Arizona. From the deserts, mountains, and canyons of Big Bend, to the deserts, mountains, and canyons of cactus country. The Apache would hide, fight, and raid from their mountain strongholds and they would continue to make life unbearable for many Spaniard along a line of attack that was anywhere from 12 to 1,500 miles long.

It didn’t help that the Spanish weren’t really doing their OR sending their best to the northern frontier. In many cases, the men sent to lead the presidios or govern the land were corrupt. They were greedy. They were prone to tyranny. They often didn’t pay the soldiers well. And then, in many cases the soldiers only sought to loot on account of not getting paid well enough by their presidio commanders. Not everyone of course. And not everywhere, but a large amount of the blame for the ill ran northern boundary of New Spain and of New Mexico was on the heads of the Spanish themselves. And a large part of that ill ran area of wilderness was the failure to control the Apaches along that enormous border.

Frank C Lockwood puts it perfectly when he wrote in the Apache Indians, quote, the failure to control the apaches was the fault of the Spanish Government. It was their duty to see the fact that the adequate protection of the northern frontier absolutely demanded a coordinated and steadfast program; and it was obligatory upon them to devise and enforce such a program. End quote.

Lockwood also quotes another historian named Dr. Charles Edwin Chapman who wrote a book in 1916 called the Founding of Spanish California. In the quote, Chapman summarizes another quote by a Lieutenant Capitan General Pedro de Labaquera who was speaking to the king on the affairs and disarray in northern New Spain.

Here’s the quote from Lockwood’s The Apache Indians:

Nowhere is there a better statement in brief space of the weakness and defects of the Government in its dealing with the Apache problem than Dr. C. E. Chapman's summary of a memorial addressed to the King by Pedro de Labaquera, who had long served in Mexico as Lieutenant Captain-General:

"The Apaches, when attacked, habitually retired to the mountains which were inaccessible to the presidial troops. This was due not merely to the fact that the latter were cavalrymen, but to the nature of the soldiers themselves. Most of them were mulattoes of very low character, without ambition, and unconquerably unwilling to travel on foot, as was necessary in a mountain attack. Moreover, their weapons carried so short a distance that the Apaches were wont to get just out of range and make open jest of the Spaniards. Furthermore, some presidial captains were more interested in making a personal profit out of their troops, arising from the fact that part of the latter's wages was paid in effects, than they were in subjecting the enemy, nor did the various captains work in harmony when on campaigns. Continuance of the Apaches in Apachería was in the highest degree prejudicial. Not only were they a hindrance to conquests toward the Colorado and in the direct route between Sonora and New Mexico, but also they endangered regions already held by Spain, leading subjected Indians, either from fear or from natural inclination, to abandon missions and villages, and whether in alliance with the Apaches or by themselves, to commit the same kind of atrocities as the Apaches did. Labaquera recommended that two hundred mountain fusileers of Spanish blood be recruited in Spain, equipped among other things with guns of long range, and despatched to New Spain for service against the Apaches. These men, under a disinterested leader, would quickly subject the Apaches, and might then be given lands in the region. End quote.

This request for 200 mountain fusileers of Spanish blood, and in this context a fusileer would be a sharpshooter, a rifleman or like a sniper, essentially. But the request for 200 snipers to go take out the Apache in their mountains strongholds never materialized.

But the Spanish understood that the Apache threat was different from other threats they’d faced previously and that made their interactions with them more militarized.

One way the Spanish tried to subjugate the Apache was by using other Indians in the northern frontier as a buffer. Like the aforementioned O’odham. But, the Apaches grew so powerful and strong in this era that by the 1760s, many O’odham, in Arizona and Northern Mexico, had been kicked out of their old canyons and mountain strongholds and they began concentrating around Spanish towns like Tucson and San Xavier del Bac.

I know I talked a lot about the Apache’s arrival into the area of the American Southwest in the last episode and I know I ruled out a myth in the beginning of this episode but knowing when the Apache entered the wild and woolly west is key in understanding their relationships with their neighbors.

One important fact I did not really learn about or even think about when studying the Apache origins was the fact that the O’odham groups and the Puebloans traded pretty frequently and without problems right up until the mid or late 1600s. So the Puebloans of the Santa Fe Rio Grande region and the O’odham of the Hohokam areas of Southern Arizona and northern Mexico, and that’s quite a vast distance between the two cultures. But these two groups traded regularly without interruption until the late 1600s. When the Apache arrived and began disrupting this exchange.

It’s also important to note that when Coronado went through the area in the 1540s, he claimed the space between these two groups, the pima or O’odham and the Puebloans was uninhabited. That’s a vast area of the Gila Mountains, the Chiricahua Mountains, the deserts and hills and canyons and petrified forests of eastern Arizona and western New Mexico. The Mogollon Rim. Etc…

Revisionist historians and new up and coming historians love to prove their old professors or scholars of a past era wrong and I even pushed the date of arrival of the Apache back in my episode by citing the Montezuma castle evidence, but it could be quite possible that the Apache weren’t in the American Southwest and Mexican northwest until AFTER the Spanish arrived and explored. But BEFORE, just right before, they set up camp in northern Sonora and New Mexico.

It does make sense, too. What preceded the Spanish arrival to the area was their diseases which decimated the Americas which would have depopulated many areas which would have made it easier for the Apache to infiltrate the Southwest. A place that had been largely devoid of most of its previous inhabitants for over two hundred years by then. Not to mention, the O’odham apparently attempted to colonize or migrate to the Rio Grande Area but were stopped by the Apache.

Absolutely, the Apache were, well probably, on the great plains by the 15th century with their dogs pulling their homes and belongings as they followed the bison and planted the occasional crop. But I am still unsure of when they arrived to the land of sharp mountains and sharper thorns.

I’m not sure we’ll ever answer the question of when the Apache arrived to the southwest but one thing is certain: They definitely made their presence known once they’d arrived.

The 1700s were a violent time in the west, away from the Plains, when it came to the Spanish, their Indian Allies and neighbors, and the Apache.

John Upton Terrell states that during this time between 1748 and 1770, quote, the Apache killed more than four thousand persons and stole or destroyed property valued in excess of twelve million pesos. In a period of less than three years one hundred and forty settlers were murdered, more than seven thousand horses and mules were stolen, and large numbers of sheep and cattle which the apache had been unable To drive off were slaughtered by them in pastures. End quote.

Of course the Apache suffered greatly as well with many carried into slavery or killed in skirmishes with the Spanish. But far fewer Apache died than Spaniard… mostly because the numbers of the Apache were so much smaller. In the mid 18th century, and really in the 19th century as well, but in the mid 1700s, the Apache population could reasonably be stated at being between 5,000 and 7,000 men, women, and children. And all of them spread out along that massive Apacheria.

Those numbers come from a father Juan Nentvig or Johan Neuntuig in 1764. More on him in a bit. But also by Visitador Pedro de Rivera in 1728 and by archaeologist Edward Spicer. A visitador was someone appointed by the King do visit the various regions of the kingdom. And Edward Spicer is the quite famous anthropologist who worked on many sites in the American Southwest. He was a very knowledgeable man.

As I mentioned in the first Apache episode, a major problem the Spanish had in dealing with these relatively low population Apaches was the lack of a central figure head. They couldn’t make a deal and have every Apache follow it. That’s not the way the Apache worked.

But sometimes a treaty could be struck and peace would reign in one Spanish region or city or area as the Apaches promised to leave The Spanish be. But then the warriors would just go raid a neighboring settlement that didn’t have the same peace plan in place. And then on top of that, the warriors would return to the settlements that they had a peace agreement with and trade the goods they’d just stolen from their Spanish neighbors!

In Max Moorehead’s The Apache Frontier he comments at length about this problem when he wrote, quote:

In a sense the Apaches held the Spanish frontiersmen in tributary vassalage, extracting from the settlers and their subject Indians a never-ending subsidy. Yet neither side was satisfied with the arrangement, and both preyed upon the other when occasion permitted. End quote.

And then inevitably something would happen and the peace would fall apart and the raiding and killing would begin again. Over and over again all over the Spanish frontier.

It was noted in the 1760s by the aforementioned Jesuit Missionary Juan Nentvig that the Apaches previously, quote, attacked only two or three times a year always at full moon, now they attack at any time and in larger numbers. End quote.

In 1773, a third attack on the city of Tubac by the Apaches saw one hundred and thirty of the best horses in Sonora stolen. These horses were practically hand picked by the great explorer, Indian fighter, and Spanish statesman Captain Anza. A man we will talk about again soon. He had chosen them to explore California with. But now they belonged to the Apache.

The next year, 1774, the Apache stole three hundred more horses form the town of Fronteras.

In May they stole thirty more from Tubac. In September, they stole thirty six mail carrying horses.

And as Frank C Lockwood puts it, at the same time as these thefts from the forts and major cities, quote, individual settlers, miners, wood choppers, and ranchmen in lonely places, were being robbed and murdered. End quote.

Some of these attacks were blamed on the fact that the Sobaipuris Native Americans abandoned their villages up north. Leaving no buffer between the Apaches and the Spanish. Another padre would comment at the same time that there was no way Christianity could spread further north until the people the Spanish at this time called los crueler barbaros apaches, or the cruel apache barbarians were quote unquote stopped.

In 1775 a General Don Hugo Oconor was given 2,000 soldiers, flying squadron men, settlers, and Indian allies to hunt down and punish these Apaches. And possibly retrieve some of these many stolen horses.

Frank C Lockwood sums up the campaign nicely.

It was his purpose to strike the Indian hip and thigh, front and rear, in camp and on the move. Buffeted from this direction and that, whether they stood or retreated, they were to be found, repulsed, and beaten. Fifteen defeats of devastating proportions were administered to the Apaches during this campaign. The Spaniards killed, in all, one hundred and four of the enemy and recaptured nearly two thousand animals. End quote.

The next year 1776, General Oconor again went on the offensive killing nearly thirty Apaches.

Up north, a Fray Francisco Garces, a man I talked about in the D&E series, but Garces was up in Zuni in October when he wrote about how the Apaches had been slowly and curiously returning to their old homes and haunts in the north. They were bringing their families and horses and all their belongings and they were inquiring about peace with the Spanish.

It seems these campaigns in the south were somewhat working.

Another favorite, but expensive, way the Spanish attempted to stop these attacks from the Apache at this time, and really all the time, but a favorite way for the Spanish to defend themselves was to build these presidios I keep talking about. And boy, did the Spanish build them some presidios in the 1700s. They actually built a line of them along that long northern boundary of New Spain. General Oconor was actually in charge of selecting many of the sites for these presidios. But he was relieved in 1777 when his health began to fail.

In 1782, the Spanish Crown in Northern New Spain built a Presidio in Tubac and manned it with O’odham warriors. Those people I talked about in the previous episode and an important people of the region and its history. Well the O’odham got their very own company.

This presidio was actually first built to prevent O’odham uprisings, which had happened recently, a la Pueblo Revolt style but now the Presidio, manned by O’odham was to guard against the Apache. And they were mostly guarding the Tucson area.

The year before that in 1781, a Teodoro de Croix, an important man I will mention again soon, but de Croix, said that the area, Sonora, was quote, submerged in Apache hostilities. End quote. 

And then, in 1782, The Apache raided the Presidio of Tucson with 600 warriors. That was an unusually high number of Apaches. The battle was so fierce that some Apache occupied the houses within the fort’s walls. And then, a few months later, the Apaches raided again, but this time they drove off all the livestock at the fort.

After that attack, the Spanish mounted a flying defense and chased the Apaches into the thorny wilderness. They caught up to a few of them and killed seven of the Apaches. After their deaths, quote, the soldiers cut off seven of their heads, as is our custom. End quote.

That quote was by the Tucson presidio’s commander, a man named Pedro Allande y Saavedra and he said that the heads were put next to the quote, lines of countlesss Apache heads that have crowned the palisade. End quote.

100 years later, when a man I will talk about in the next episode, a man named Mangas Coloradas, or Red Sleeves, when Red Sleeves went into an American camp to establish peace, he was met with death. Mangas Coloradas’ men watched the white eyes, or Americans, they watched the soldiers kill him, dig a shallow ditch, and bury him. Only for the soldiers to come back the next day, dig him up, decapitate his body, and boil his head in a big black kettle.

In a fantastic book I’m reading for subscribers called Indeh: An Apache Odyssey by Eve Ball, the narrator, a man named Daklugie, he talks to the author about this extremely brutal dismemberment that happened to the Apaches. He says, quote, To an apache the mutilation of the body is much worse than death, because the body must go through eternity in the mutilated condition. End quote.

He goes on to say that before this mutilation of Mangas Coloradas, the Apache never practiced mutilation against the White Eyes. Only after this dismemberment did the brutality start.

He tells Eve Ball, quote, While there was little mutilation previously, it was nothing compared to what was to follow. I have seen these things done. Every apache who lived through those terrible times saw them.

A little later he states, quote, there was no attempt to protect the women and children from knowledge of what occurred. They saw mutilation in many forms. End quote.

As previously mentioned, the Apache were in fact, in the 1700s, long before Daklugie’s story. But the Apache were known to cut the heads off priests. I have read some of those reports to y’all. So maybe Daklugie meant only his band or his people. 

Daklugie actually goes on to talk about scalping as well. He says to Eve Ball, quote, why are White Eyes so squeamish about scalping? It was white eyes who started it. The Indians of the east and of the plains practiced it a little, but not until both Mexicans and White eyes scalped some of our people did Apaches resort to it. And anyways, the dead feel nothing. After all, there’s nothing to it. You just put your foot on a man’s neck, we never scalped women, run your knife around the hairline, and peel the skin off. End quote.

That fact may be true, since I have yet to run into a story about the Apaches scalping anyone… at least up to this point in our story. In the late 1700s.

So the Spanish would often catch up to fleeing Apaches and the unlucky ones would be killed. Killed and mutilated. The men at least.

The ones that didn’t get killed, were no doubt sold into slavery by the Spanish and their Native allies.

Although, the Spanish didn’t call them slaves, but rather criados, from the Spanish word criar, or to raise. As in to raise up from childhood. Most of these slaves were taken as children. The adult males were killed, obviously. Women were occasionally sold into prostitution. Or household servitude.

The Spaniards taught these criado children Spanish and christianity and these slaves, while illegal, made up the quote unquote servant class of northern New Spain.

Again, having slaves was highly illegal but the Spanish justified it by calling it something else and by teaching them Christianity and saying they were saving their souls. They could also sell them between other Spaniards… another highly illegal activity. But Mexico City, and Madrid were just… so far away. Local leaders were often corrupt and in on the enslaving. Plus it was very tough to enforce the borderlands.

In a 1798 census of the Sonoran town of Arizpe, it was found that of the 52 apache children and young adults, almost all were servants in Spanish households.

While all of this slave holding and Apache child kidnapping may have helped Spanish households on the northern frontier, it certainly did NOT help the O’odham people surrounding the Presidios. Naturally, the Apaches took their own captives as revenge. The Apache took both O’odham and Spanish prisoners. Slavery wasn’t helping anyone. It so often does not…

At the end of the 18th century, the Apache were raiding the O’odham’s villages regularly. This was especially true near the San Pedro River. The O’odham were so hard hit there that they’d eventually abandon the area completely! And part of this area is what’s known as Aravaipa Canyon… the very place the Apache Kid and his people were from. Obviously, before the Apache, for who knows how long, the beautiful fertile canyon known as Aravaipa belonged to the O’odham. The descendants of the Salado, no doubt.

So the Sobaipuri and O’odham had abandoned their villages, leaving only the Spanish and their expensive forts to guard against Apache attacks.

We’ve been talking a lot about the Apaches and the fact that they fought… a lot… obviously. But how did they fight? How did they do their killing and their raiding? I had just assumed with the bow and arrow but I would have been somewhat incorrect.

In the late 1700s a Father Ignaz Pfefferkorn wrote a book called Sonora: A Description of the Province which he spent a good deal talking about the Apaches. Including how they fought.

Apparently the Apache were quite lethal with the bow and arrow, Pfefferkorn, wrote, quote, the Apache are incomparable archers and seldom miss. End quote.

Another author and Spaniard from the time, a Bernardo de Galvez, wrote in his 1786 instructions for Governing the Interior Provinces of New Spain that the first arrow from these Apache archers were so lethal that they could penetrate both the Spaniards shield AND his famous leather jacket. Unfortunately for the Apache their bowstrings got more and more loose with each arrow they fired but they were quick to do repairs and restring on the fly. These are just things we moderns and our composite bows don’t even think about. But this is something an Apache had to deal with in every single engagement.

So if a Spaniard survived the first arrow, it was in his best interest to charge. But then he’d have to watch out for the Apache’s lance. Which they grasped with both hands for an overhead thrust which they used when on foot. This overhead thrust was also quite lethal.

Eventually though, the Apache’s acquired the rifle. Obviously not from the Spanish but as previously mentioned, from the French. It did not take long for the Apache to use the musket effectively and accurately.

My wife and i just visited the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City and on display was an authentic war club from the eastern United States that was made from the stock of a rifle. The warrior then affixed a sharp steel blade to the top and used it as a club. Other tribes would tear guns apart and use each individual piece. Others would decorate their guns but not use them. Partly because ammo was so scarce or the guns traded were defective. But the Apache, they learned how to use firearms as God intended.

The only drawback of course, was the fact that an Apache could shoot up to 10 arrows in the same time it took to shoot once and reload.

That same Bernardo de Galvez who wrote about the Apache’s lethality with a bow also wrote that since it took so long for the Apache to reload, the Spanish should give the Apache MORE rifles so that the playing field would be more even. He hoped the Apache would forget how to use the bow and start depending on the Spaniards for their rifles, ammunition, and repairs. More on that in a bit.

The Apache though, would not soon forget how to use a bow.

The Apache also chose when and where to fight. And this made them even more lethal. They’d often spring a trap, shoot and loot, and then flee to the mountains.

If things didn’t go the Apache’s way during a battle, the Apache had no qualms fleeing for the hills. Obviously, the Spanish thought this was cowardice.

On the other hand, it was noted by other Spanish authors of the time that often, when an Apache or a group were surprised by the Spaniards, they’d often resist and fight until they were exhausted and captured, or killed.

Regardless, an offer of peace to the Apache warrior, was an offer of weakness. And the Apache were not weak.

In 1776, something happened in the colonies of New Spain and New Mexico that I have previously talked about in I believe the Dominguez and Escalante series. 1776 was of course the same year the D&E Expedition left but it was also the year the Crown had to shake things up if it still wanted to control its far flung colonies. Its far flung colonies wracked with Apache warfare.

So in that year King Charles III, after long quorums with his Council of the Indies and other officials and governors and anyone who had his ear, well in that year the king decided to put the area of northern New Spain and New Mexico in the hands of a special military government. No more viceroys or corrupt civilian leaders. It was time to place the area under martial law.

The man in charge of this martial law was Don Teodoro de Croix and he was essentially awarded supreme authority.

The following year, Don de Croix would enlist another great man and Indian fighter I have talked about, Don Juan Bautista de Anza to be the governor of New Mexico.

A year later, in 1778, as Don De Croix completed his inspection of the northern part of New Spain and New Mexico, he came to the realization that… the biggest threat to the region was in fact, the Apache.

And The Apache weren’t no piddly problem, neither. John Upton Terrell wrote that quote, the problems they had created were formidable. From every quarter reports poured in telling of destroyed towns, settlers murdered women and children slaughtered or carried into captivity, supply trains taken, missions burned, troops defeated, livestock stolen. From Texas to the California border, from northern new Mexico deep into Mexico, the apache and their allies controlled the country. End quote.

Something had to be done. And Don de Croix was the man to do it. Unfortunately for him, he had to get it done through the immense and decaying bureaucracy of the late Spanish Empire.

A lot of his plan was to build presidios but funds never came. Political jealousies hampered him at every turn. He was seriously slowed by the aging empire. But eventually, after 1780, his plan came into effect. It helped that he forced ranches and mines and those with means to pay taxes to help fund their own defense.

And the defenses included more presidios. Fifteen of them. This is the line of presidios I mentioned earlier. Between these forts, he also kept a strong patrol of well paid guards that patrolled the sectors. Especially the places hardest hit by the Apache. 

These presidios were expensive though. And in each one there was a captain, a lieutenant, a chaplain, an alferez or junior officer, a sergeant, two corporals, forty men, and ten Indian scouts. Plus the patrolmen mentioned a moment ago between each presidio. And these presidios were spaced out about 100 miles apart.

Of course these forts were rarely if ever manned with that many men. Usually they were understaffed and a lot of the men were doing necessary labor to keep themselves fed since many Presidios were in the middle of nowhere. So the soldiers ended up doing a lot of farming and gardening. But they were also in charge of guarding mail routes which took them away from the presidio. Or they were guarding missions. Or they were

They also had to spend a considerable amount of time and men to guard the horse herds on account of the Apaches constantly stealing them. The Apaches stole the horse for two reasons. One, to use them, obviously, but the other, was to eat them. The Apache loved the taste of horsemeat and they often would slaughter horses and eat the still warm flesh while being pursued after a raid.

One of the reasons they loved the horse meat so much is because they had been pushed off of their buffalo hunting lands by the Comanche. And in the dry deserts of the American Southwest, the buffalo didn’t really roam. The next best thing to the bison, was the horse.

The Apache weren't native to the region known as Apacheria in southern Arizona and New Mexico. But they were adept at adapting to the harsh environment. In the Time Life Old West Books I love to look through, Benjamin Capps writes in The Indians about the Apache and their adaptations. He wrote that by the 1750s, the Apache had, quote: been pushed into some of the driest reaches of the Southwest, a wasteland consisting of rocky mountains, eroded breaks and sandy plains, offering little sustenance for horses or for people. Through necessity they quickly learned to live in this harsh country, to travel through it afoot like the coyote or mountain lion, to blend in so that they were nearly invisible. they became, in the words of an admiring commentator, “one of the toughest human organisms the world has ever seen.. end quote. Under the circumstances, the horse was often more valuable to them as food than as transportation. End all quotes.

I love that description of the apache. One of the toughest human organisms the world has ever seen. I wish i knew who wrote that.

By law in the late 1700s, each soldier had to have 7 of their own horses and one mule each. Which meant the presidios had 350 horses and 50 mules that needed to be guarded. Obviously, the Apache were adept at stealing a few here and there undetected. But as mentioned also, sometimes they would get away with the whole lot of them. Which left the presidios and the mounted leather jacket companies… without mounts.

The soldiers at the presidios though, on top of not always doing a lot of soldiering, got paid in essentially company script that they could only use at the presidio so they weren’t obviously incentivized to be good soldiers.

And on top of that, the soldiers’ captains made a lot of profit off of these soldiers and their pay so after an attack by the apaches on the presidio, often times, if it was a dangerous looking mission or one that may have a lethal outcome, the captains would often not force his men to pursue since if his men died… he made less money.

Then there’s the matter of a soldiers training, or rather… lack thereof. The aforementioned Pfefferkorn once witnessed a soldier load the musket ball… before the gun powder. He said of this, quote, if he but knows how to sit firmly in the saddle (things which the Sonorans are, in general, well able to do) he is a finished soldier. End quote.

Later in the century, a man we will shortly discuss, Bernardo de Galvez, he would also remark that the soldiers accuracy on the frontier was… less than desirable as the hitting of targets rarely happened. And De Croix would later remark that most of the men he saw were, quote, ignorant of the use of these weapons. End quote. Those weapons being the muskets.

Regardless of all these drawbacks, the strategy of the forts seemed to work off and on in the 18th century.

According to John Upton Terrell, quote, De Croix’s strategy was to keep the Lipan, Mescalero, Gila, and other Apache bands under attack as much as possible. End quote.

It seemed to work for a time too. The Spanish forces became more victorious against the Apaches than they ever had before. Attacks ceased. Raids slowed. Death, destruction, theft: they all became over the next few years almost non-existent. Or greatly reduced.

But then, bureaucracy struck again and in 1783, the Spanish Crown told Don De Croix to cease all hostilities with the enemy, be it apache or otherwise and only fight if there’s an extreme necessity to do so.

Shortly afterwards, De Croix was transferred to Peru, the Special Military Government was disbanded, the provinces went back into the control of Mexico City, corruption immediately flowed into the colonies again, and the peace by the sword that de Croix had found, disappeared.

As John Upton Terrell puts it, quote, the Apache struck viciously on all salients, and the interior provinces once again suffered from their destructive, murderous raiding. End quote.

It would take yet another strong Indian fighting man to fix the problem.

That man was Bernardo de Gálvez, and in 1786 the previously mentioned author of Instructions for the Governing of the Interior Provinces of New Spain, was the newly appointed Viceroy down in Mexico City. Galvez had been injured in 1771 during an attack against the Apaches, which is probably how he was able to write so well of their tactics in battle. After that injury, Gálvez decided that things needed to be shaken up with regards to fighting their enemy. It had been over 100 years of brutal campaigns against the Apaches after all.

Galvez’s answer was borrowed from the Spanish campaigns in North Africa. And it was pretty simple: give the people rations and they will calm down. Except, it wasn’t quite that simple and John Upton Terrell rather… dramatically states that the plan was quote, the most dishonest and brutal plan for the pacification of Indians ever devised by a supreme commander since the first Spaniards set foot on the North American mainland. End quote.

Is Galvez’s plan harsh and effective? Yes. Is it the most dishonest and brutal plan. I don’t think so… but maybe you be the judge.

Galvez proposed that two groups of Apaches be formed. Peaceful Apaches and Apaches at war. The Apaches that settled around the various Presidios would be given weekly rations of meat, grain, brown sugar, and tobacco. So just the essentials. They would also be given clothing and blankets. And they would be called the peaceful Apaches.

Now, that wasn’t the total destruction of the Apache, which a lot of people wanted, including Galvez himself, but he said about this plan that quote, a bad peace with all the tribes which ask for it would be more fruitful than the gains of a successful war. End quote.

These peaceful Apaches that settled around the presidios became known as Apaches de paz, or peace Apaches. And these Peace Apaches would in turn for getting rations, go out on patrols with the Spanish against the ones who refused to settle.

The viceroy Gálvez said of those Apache that refused to settle that, quote, war must be waged without intermission in all of the provinces…. Against the Apaches who have declared it. End quote. And every Apache who refused the rations therefore had declared war.

As usual, this would end up being a brutal affair with many Apache captured and sent away to work. At first, they were sent to DF but on the long 1,500 mile journey, many captured Apache would escape and make their way back to the northern frontier of modern day Arizona and Sonora! As those who listened to my Apache Kid series know, captured Apaches really like to escape.

So, the Spanish had to improvise and they chose to begin sending the Apaches on ships… to the Caribbean. Specifically Cuba. Where… they worked on Sugar Plantations. And that… was not work that many of them survived.

And this reminds me of why the Apache were so afraid to go to Florida later when the Americans threatened it. It may have been why the Apache Kid and his confederates first mutinied.

This policy by Galvez in 1786 had other aspects to it as well, though.

Apart from rations of food being handed out, the Spanish also gave the Apache defective firearms that I imagine fell apart after shooting like some kinda looney tunes scene. And actually that isn’t far from the truth.  In Max Moorehead’s Apache Frontier he states that quote, the muskets should be long ones. These would be awkward for the Indian to use while on horseback. They should also have weekend barrels, stock, and bolts, making them easily damaged and in continuous need of readjustment, repair, and replacement by skilled Spanish gunsmiths. End quote.

So Galvez was going to give the Apache defective firearms that needed constant repair if they worked at all.

And what goes best with defective firearms?! Liquor of course! Along with the food rations, tobacco, and defective firearms, the Spanish also began handing out liquor to the Apache.

I’m not being flippant about this, but we all know what liquor does to American Indians. All people, I suppose. But it was no different for the Apaches who on top of the occasional tizwin benders, they would now have Spanish provided high alcohol content spirits. Many Apache would never fully recover from this introduction of poison.

So maybe John Upton Terrell was right with his dramatic assessment.

These rations and guns were passed out at places like Tucson and Janos. I’ve spoken of Janos a few times. It’s that far flung area where Dominguez would pass away at. It’s also where Miera was stationed. He was at the Presidio of San Felipe y Santiago de Janos, in the modern day Mexican State of Chihuahua. This would have been quite some time after he had fought there though.

Shortly after the policy was enacted, the Franciscan friars noticed an unwelcome change in the Apache and wrote that many of them were now a different people. They were stupefied from the liquor. They began gambling more, cursing, and they adopted more immorality.

So to the Spanish, this campaign against the Apaches proved to be rather successful. The raids never fully stopped but they certainly slowed enough to allow an entire generation of Spaniards to know peace with the Apache.

Meanwhile up in New Mexico, Governor Anza had successfully put a stop to an alliance that had formed between the Navajo and the Gila Apache. For years they had conducted raids deep down into Mexico before hiding in the amazing beautiful but rugged Gila Mountains Wilderness.

To accomplish this, Anza had built a military presence between the two tribes on the Rio San Jose, which kind of sort of follows I-40 from the west and turns down into the Rio Grande near I-25. It turns south at the Laguna Pueblo. The river separates the western half of the state, really. Cuts off the northern Navajos from the southern Gila area. Then troops moved up from Mexico into the Gila wilderness and inflicted some severe damage on the Apache there.

At the same time, Anza declared that any Navajo found south of this river would be taken prisoner and punished in Santa Fe.

HIs final act against the Apaches was to forbid any and all trade and communications between the Navajo, the Puebloans, and the Apache. This was simply too much for the Navajo who depended heavily on trade with the Puebloans. So many Navajo came to Santa Fe to beg Anza to allow the trade. Which he did, but only if the Navajo accompanied the Spanish on raids against their former allies and cousins, the Apache. The Navajo obliged. The Gila Apaches were then forced even further south.

On other fronts, as I’ve talked about before Anza successfully subdued the Comanche! And even the Utes! Anza was truly an enlightened leader of New Mexico. One of the few.

By the time Anza left office in 1787, John Upton Terrell states that quote, Comanche, Pueblo, Ute, and even some apostate Apache were serving as auxiliaries under the Spanish flag. End quote.

Eventually, three hundred Chiricahua accepted Spanish protection in Sonora. Many bands came down from the mountains of southern Arizona and New Mexico and lived around the presidios. Only the Lipan Apaches were denied peace, and that was because of an entanglement of alliances between the Spanish and the Comanche. The Comanche, you see, needed to raid someone and if the Lipan were allied with the Spanish then a raid on them by the Comanches who were also allied with the Spanish would force the Spanish to retaliate against the Comanche. Tangled webs we weave.

But generally, the region was experiencing a truly unprecedented peace.

There was so much peace in the American Southwest and Mexican Northwest that a ton more Spaniards moved to the area. Mines opened up. Ranches were built. Towns and Cities were erected. By 1800, a thousand people were living along the Santa Cruz river. 

Karl Jacoby in Shadows at Dawn sums it all up nicely with this long quote:

Gálvez's reforms witnessed the settlement of large numbers of Apaches in establecimientos de paz. By 1793, royal censuses revealed 1,995 Apaches living at various settlements in the far north, a number that increased over time, as new bands entered into agreements with Spanish villages. To some, the military-run establecimientos de paz with their regular gifts of grain, meat, cigarettes, and piloncilo represented a sad departure from the lofty goals of the missions. Rather than civilizing the Indians as the Jesuits and Franciscans had done, the military, it seemed, encouraged a degrading idleness. "Drunkenness, tobacco, and cards were the gods of the apaches de paz," lamented Ignacio Zuñiga of Tucson in 1835. Yet even Zuñiga had to acknowledge that the new policy had brought tranquillity to much of Sonora. The region from Janos to Tucson-in Zuñiga's words, "a bloody theater of war for a hundred years" —soon had more than "fifty rancherías de paz," and the countryside began once again to be filled with "ranchos and haciendas that offered the beautiful vision of peace and abundance." No longer exposed to constant Apache raids, Sonora's population rose, and Sonorenses accumulated enormous livestock holdings. By 1804, Tucson boasted some 1,000 inhabitants and a herd of 3,500 cattle, 2,500 sheep, and 1,200 horses grazing outside its presidio walls. End all quotes.

This whole period lasted until the 1830s and saw the American Southwest and Mexican Northwest transformed. Paz, peace, truly spread amongst the Spaniards and the Apaches. For the most part.

But a different threat was looming for the Spanish. And it wasn’t just the Comanches. And this threat would threaten the uneasy peace the Apaches had.

I didn’t know this until researching for this episode but by this time, the late 1700s, the Spanish were quite leery of an American style independence movement among their Spanish and mestizo populations in the New World. A mind virus was spreading throughout the globe, which had began in the Atlantic east. This virus was spreading in much the same way it had spread over a hundred years before amongst the Indians of northern New Spain when they had risen up shortly after the Puebloans had in New Mexico. This virus had even jumped the ocean and was infecting the Spaniards neighbors to the north. The French. In this era of the end of the 18th century, the Spanish crown lived in constant fear of their subjects rising up against them like the Americans had against the British.

So to stop possible resistance, to stop their subjects from being able to revolt or rise up or defend themselves from a tyrannical government, the Spanish Government in the new world kept Spanish armaments in central locations away from the people… the people’s means of revolution and fighting against injustices was withheld from them. But so was their means of defense against the Apaches.

Thank god for our second amendment, seriously.

In the next episode, the Apaches rations cease when the cost becomes too high. But on top of that, there’s the sale of Louisiana to the Americans. The invasion of Spain by Napoleon. And then, the Mexicans win their independence which begins anew the battles in the region between the Apache and the people of Mexico.

And then slowly, the White Eyes, the Americans begin their Manifest Destiny.

But you’ll also hear how this Spanish policy of keeping the people unarmed… backfires. Like the defective guns the Spanish were giving the Apache. The Apache that never forgot how to use a bow and arrow.

Selected Sources:

The Apache Indians by Frank C Lockwood

The Indians by the Editors of Time-Life Books with text by Benjamin Capps

Apache Chronicle: The Story of the People by John Upton Terrell

From Cochise to Geronimo: The Chiricahua Apaches 1874-1886 by Edwin R Sweeney

Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Violence of History by Karl Jacoby

Western Apache Language and Culture by Keith H Basso

A Portal to Paradise by Alden Hayes

Indeh: An Apache Odyssey by Eve Ball

The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History by Paul Andrew Hutton