Today, no one can understand the history of Tucson and Southern Arizona without first understanding the Apache Wars. For this reason Southern Arizona Guide has many articles about this complex and fascinating era of our history: America’s longest war.
Cochise County in Southeast Arizona is where many major 19th century battles took place between the Apaches and the United States Army. Today, you can visit the historical sites made famous by the great chiefs, such as Cochise, Mangas Coloradas (Red Sleeves), and Victorio; and the fearless, ruthless shaman Goyathlay, better known today by his Spanish name … Geronimo.
Taking side trips and back roads through the beautiful countryside of Southeastern Arizona, you can stand in their shadow and begin to understand what it was like to live here on the frontier during the Apache Wars. Click on this link to view the Apache Wars Timeline.
The Forts
A series of forts were built to house the United States Army whose presence was needed by Anglo Americans to protect them from the dreaded Apaches. No such forts were built to protect the Apaches from the dreaded Anglos.
On the east side of Tucson is the restored Fort Lowell’s officers quarters and military museum. See our Arizona Historical Society Ft. Lowell video here.
Within a two-hour drive east from Tucson, you can visit the ruins of Fort Bowie; once a frontier outpost that guarded Apache Springs for the stagecoaches of the Butterfield Overland Mail Company. Near Fort Bowie ruins are Chiricahua National Monument with its magnificent “Standing Up Rocks” and well-preserved Faraway Ranch; and Cochise Stronghold which served as a high, rocky fortification and lookout station for the Chiricahua Apaches.
South of Tucson at Sierra Vista is the still-active Fort Huachuca, home of the Buffalo Soldiers. It is here that their story is told in exhibits at a small but fine military history museum. (Actually there are two fine museums on Fort Huachuca. The other is about the history of U.S. military spying.)
North of Tucson, there are other forts built to subdue the Apaches, including Fort Apache on the Fort Apache Reservation; and the nearby San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation that the Apaches feared most because of deplorable conditions there, including killer diseases, such as malaria. On the way is the site of Camp Grant where a mob of Tucson Anglo and Mexican civic leaders and Papago (now Tohono O’odham) Indians massacred over a hundred Apaches, almost all women and young children, and took the few surviving children as slaves.
Background
From 1840’s until the final surrender of Geronimo in late 1886, farmers, ranchers, miners, & merchants attempting to settle the American Southwest and Northern Mexico lived in terror of the Apaches.
For centuries prior to the coming of the Europeans, the Apache had it pretty good. Theirs were small hunter-gatherer, kin-related bands that moved frequently according to the seasons and other factors, such as the availability of game and fresh water. Sometimes they traded peaceably with neighboring Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Papago, Pima, Yavapai, and other tribes. But often these encounters were hostile. Perhaps it was the Yavapai, or was it the Zuni, who were the first to call them ‘apache’, which means ‘enemy’?
The Raiders
They were frequent and feared raiders, which is a polite way of saying the Apaches were marauding thieves and murderers when they wanted food, horses, guns, ammunition, and captives for slaves and ransom.
Usually they killed for what they considered necessity or self-defense. As the wars of the 1870’s and ‘80’s wore on, as often as not they killed for revenge, as did the Americans, who tried to herd them into concentration camps called reservations, and Mexicans who tried to exterminate them.
If the Apaches could not intimidate other tribes into turning over the fruits of their hard labor, their food stores and herds, the Apaches typically killed the males and older females, plundered whatever they could carry, and then sold the young women and children into slavery in Mexico. The Mexicans frequently forced the young Indian slave women into prostitution. They suffered greatly and eventually died from disease, abuse, and despair. From the Apache perspective, and for centuries, it was good to be the alpha predators of the American Southwest and Northern Mexico.
The Invaders
However, by the 1850’s, the table was turning. With the arrival of significant numbers of Anglos into what became New Mexico and Arizona, and ever-greater numbers of Mexican settlers arriving in Chihuahua and Sonora, the Apaches were beginning to realize that they were being supplanted by other, more powerful super-predators. It took most of them years to realize that their continued efforts to repel the avaricious, heavily armed invaders, remain free to live on their ancestral lands and pursue their predatory way of life, were utterly hopeless. By 1886, even the recalcitrant Chiricahua under Geronimo realized that their only options were (a) the dreaded San Carlos Reservation, (b) confinement as prisoners of war in a faraway place, or (c) annihilation.
The Americans
Compared to the Mexicans, the American’s ‘Indian Removal Policy’ was generous, at least officially. On the one hand, the Apaches were offered reservation lands on which they could receive rations, learn farming, get an Anglo education, convert to Christianity, and become ‘civilized’.
On the other hand, Apaches found off the reservation were fair game. Whether man, woman, or child, Anglos would seldom be questioned for killing free-roaming Apaches like vermin.
The Mexicans
The official Mexican policy was somewhat different. No reservations. Assimilation or death. The Mexicans hated the Apaches. The Apaches hated the Mexicans. And for decades, they slaughtered each other whenever possible.
Mexican civilians near the U.S. border would sometimes lure Apache men with their families into town to talk trade and peace, get the Indians drunk, then kill them all. Conversely, Apaches were known to kill and mutilate Mexican men, women, and children and not always in that order.
A never-ending cycle of vengeance was the way of the border from roughly 1847 through 1886 when Geronimo surrendered for the fourth and last time. Even then, some renegade Apaches continued to raid, kill, and be killed in Northern Mexico until around 1915. Both Apaches and Mexicans adhered to the Old Testament principle of “an eye for an eye.” Such is the way of most primitive people everywhere in every time, including the present.
The Reservations
For the American’s part in this violent collision of cultures, they felt that Native Americans in general and the Apaches in particular had no rights any White man was bound to respect. As General Sheridan was famously misquoted, “A good Indian is a dead Indian.” The United States government, through its military and Bureau of Indian Affairs, broke treaties as if they were dry twigs.
The American government directed its army to herd the Apaches onto reservations far from their homeland, where they would suffer tremendously and die from exposure, contaminated food, lack of clean drinking water, malnutrition, and disease, primarily smallpox and malaria. Once on the reservations, corrupt Indian agents stole their government-issued food and blankets, which the agents then sold for personal profit. The Apaches were to be subdued or eliminated by any means necessary.
To be fair, it wasn’t so much that the American Anglos treated the Apaches with intentional cruelty. Certainly acts of extreme cruelty occurred – on both sides. But such was not the general rule. Rather most Anglos were simply indifferent to the needs and suffering of their vanquished charges. If the Indians died en masse on reservations, very few Americans really cared and far fewer acted to prevent it.
Apache leaders, such as Cochise, Victorio, Juh (pronounced ‘Whoo’ or ‘Ho’), Nana, Chihuahua, and Geronimo, often led their people off their reservation in order to survive. Once off their reservation, the U.S. Army considered the Apaches ‘hostiles’ and pursued them with the invaluable assistance of Apache scouts, otherwise known as mercenaries. The Army’s mission: either return renegade Apaches to their reservation or exterminate them.
Skirmishes, ambushes, full-blown battles, and bloody massacres ensued.
Next:
- Map of important Apache War sites in Southeastern Arizona.
- Key people & places involved in the Apache Wars.
- Timeline of key events.
- Big Sycamore Stands Alone: A fascinating study of the Aravaipa Apache way of life and how economic interests drove Tucson’s most prominent citizens to lead the mob that committed the Camp Grant Massacre.
- Why the Apache were eventually defeated.
- How the Apache Wars could have been shortened, with far less loss of life.
Recommended Places to Eat and Stay
(see Lodging|Lodging Map)
For Dining in Cochise County see our Dining Map.
For more Apache history check out these titles.
- Geronimo: His Place, The Man, His Time & More Books About Geronimo
- An “Historic Stay” at the Greenway Manor
- Tales of Pete Kitchen, Pioneer: A Timeline
- Woman of the Apache Nation: A Book Report
- In Their Own Words: Cochise & The People Who Knew Him!
- More Apache Reading Suggestions
- Historic Military Forts in the Time of the Apache Wars
- The Curious Case Of Mickey Free
- Tom Jeffords and the Chiricahua Apache Reservation
- Cochise and the Battles of Dragoon Springs and Apache Pass
- The Great Apache Chief, Cochise, Becomes A “Reservation Indian” To Save His People!
- Apaches Attack A Stagecoach; Passenger and Driver Murdered!
- John Clum: The Only Man To Ever Capture Geronimo!
- The Illustrated Life and Times of Geronimo: A Book Review
- Powerful Apache Warrior Women: Lozen & Dahteste
- Apache May: An Indian Girl On The Slaughter Ranch
- The Most Extraordinary Presidential Inaugural Parade
- Cochise Stronghold Campground: A Superb Setting!
- The Oatman Massacre: A Book Review
- Route 66 & the Burros of Oatman, AZ
- The Truth About Geronimo: A Review
- The Apache Wars: A Timeline Part 1 – Birth of Mangas Coloradas
- Camp Grant Massacre: A Strange Epilogue
- Chief Nana’s Revenge: An Extraordinary Life
- A Parade & Ceremonial Sword: Tucson Honors The Wrong Man … Again!
- A Targeted Killing: How Cushing Street Got Its Name
- “Don’t Let The Sun Step Over You”: A White Mountain Apache Book
- Butterfield Overland Mail Company and the Dragoon Springs Stage Station
- A Fate Worse Than Death: How Pennington Street Got Its Name!
- The Black Legend: A Book Review
- How Tucson Pioneers Perpetuated the Apache Wars: Part II
- How Tucson Pioneers Perpetuated The Apache Wars
- The Lost Apache Tribe of the Sierra Madre
- The Day Buck Fly Shot Geronimo
- Tucson Street Names Honor Many Who Were Killed By Apaches
- Now Available! 2nd Printing of Self-Guided Tucson History & Dining Tour
- Ever Heard of a Heliograph? It Was Used in Arizona Territory
- The Camp Grant Massacre: Part I, Circumstances Leading up to the Slaughter
- How Tucson Pioneers Perpetuated The Apache Wars: Part III
- Fort Bowie, Arizona Territory: 1862 – 1894. A Pictorial
- From Paradise Az to the Wonderland of Rocks: A 3-Day Road Trip!
- The Death Of Chiricahua Chief Cochise
- How Tucson Became Capital of Confederate Arizona Territory
- The Wrath of Cochise, by Terry Mort: A Book Review
- Buy the E-Book! “Southern Arizona’s Extraordinary History” Is Now Available!
- Big Sycamore Stands Alone: A Book Review
- Adventures In Apache Country: An (1864) Tour Through Arizona by J. Ross Browne
- Fort Bayard, New Mexico: A Splendid History!
- Steins: A Ghost Town With Stories To Tell
- Pinos Altos: A New Mexico Ghost Town
- Silver City, New Mexico: A Walk About Town!
- Silver City, New Mexico: Too Much Like Southern Arizona To Ignore!
- The Camp Grant Massacre: Part II, The Outcome
- Geronimo’s Autobiography – Excerpts From His 1905 Book
- The Apache Wars: A Timeline Part 6 – Prisoners of War
- The Apache Wars: A Timeline Part 5 – Geronimo Surrenders
- From Lozen to General Crook
- The Apache Wars: A Timeline Part 3 – The Massacres Continue
- The Bascom Affair, Apache Pass, Apache Springs and Camp Grant
- Directions To Dragoon Springs Stage Station
- An Adventure To Council Rocks Near Cochise Stronghold!
- Autumn Fest 2014 To Celebrate Apache Culture
- America’s Longest War: An Apache History!
- May 1,1782: Apaches Attack Tucson Presidio
- Sonoita To Garden Canyon Petroglyphs at Ft. Huachuca: A Day Trip From Tucson.
- Eyewitness Account Of American Treachery In 1880’s Southern Arizona
- Map of Apache Country
- The Apache Wars: Key Places & People.
- Why The Apaches Were Defeated
- Could The Apache Wars Have Been Avoided?
- Fort Lowell Museum
- AHS Arizona History Museum
- Cochise Stronghold Natural Apache Fortress