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From their first forays beyond New Spain, the Spanish were able to see why the Apaches and Comanches were the most feared warriors in the North American South. These two nomadic ethnic groups had recently arrived in the area from the farthest north. The Na-Dené-speaking Apaches came from Alaska and were considered a predatory people, rivals of all their neighbors including the Spanish, the Pueblo Indians, and later the Texans, Mexicans, and Americans. The war against the Apache world would not end until Geronimo’s surrender in 1886.
The Apache voice is a Castilian transcription of “apachu” and comes from the language of the Zuni, an ethnic group of the Pueblo Indians, allies of the Spanish in western New Mexico, and literally means “enemy”.
For their part, the Apaches referred to themselves as “diné” or “tindé,” that is, “man” or “the people.” The value of their warriors structured their society, which did not mean that they were suicidal or irrational. In the words of an american captain Centuries later, the Apaches “preferred to prowl like a coyote for hours and then kill the enemy, rather than, by exposing themselves, receive a wound, fatal or not. The concerns they take show that they are exceptional soldiers.” It was better to avoid the Apaches, of whom it was said that one man was enough to form a war band.
How do you explain Edward K. Flagler In his work ‘The Spanish policy to pacify the Apache Indians at the end of the 18th century’ (Spanish Journal of American Anthropology, No. 30, year 2000), the tribes were subdivided into bands made up of groups of extended families, each with its own main man or boss. In turn, the family groups of a band used to recognize one of these men as their war chief.
The Comanches, on the other hand, came from the north of Canada and, due to different migrations, ended up scattered throughout the south of what is now the United States. An unprecedented animal on the continent helped them in such a deployment. The entrance of the horse in the scene caught the wild west as it is known. The horses abandoned by the Spaniards in the prairies of the Camino Real gave rise to the so-called mesteña breed, known in the United States as the mustang breed, small in height and robust in appearance. Through theft and barter, equine culture spread rapidly among tribes. By 1630 there were no native peoples left who did not ride horses. And in 1750, all the Plains tribes and most Indians of the Rocky Mountains they used horses with innate skill.
the entrance of the horse
The incorporation of the horse intensified the fight against white foreigners, but also between the tribes, since the warriors were now able to cover unimaginable distances on foot. Of all these peoples, the Apaches and the Comanches were the ones that made the best use of the horse. These ethnicities elevated the cinematic hit-and-run tactic to perfection. They dedicated themselves to stealing cattle from the settlers, when not looting their houses. Their only trade was through stolen animals and merchandise.
Starting in 1746, the Comanches began throwing devastating raids against the Spanish border thanks to the supply of French rifles and rifles, the same firearms that soon after would also be aimed at the rest of the Europeans. In New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, the Crown of Spain would meet with these predatory tribes, armed with gunpowder and mounted on horseback. However, the irruption in those latitudes of the Comanches, distant cousins of the Apaches, revolutionized the tribal order.
It is not clear what they were looking for with this abrupt migration, perhaps more Spanish horses or to get away from the French and British push from the north. The fact is that the Comanches fell like Mongol horsemen in the south and devastated everything in their path until they reached the border network of the Spanish Empire. Among those affected were the Apaches themselves, whose clash with their cousins almost cost them annihilation in the battle of Gran Cerro del Fiero. The ease with which they were defeated is explained by the fact that the Apaches were not yet as proficient with horses as the Comanches, in addition to not having as many firearms.
The Spanish called Comanchería to the immense wild land that extended right in front of its network of presidios, which as of 1772 was fixed at 13 fortifications and two outposts. A huge wasteland that occupied the current state of Oklahoma, eastern New Mexico, southeastern Colorado and Kansas, and eastern Texas, and was defended by only a thousand Spanish horsemen. The different religious missions tried to convert the Indians to the Catholic faith and give them an education so that they could dedicate themselves to ranching and agriculture, but progress was very slow.
Beginning in the early 18th century, the Apaches were forced into the mountains by the Comanches; a portion remained in northern New Mexico under Spanish protection, trading with the Pueblo Indians and engaged in horticulture. The Jicarilla Apaches thus became loyal allies of the Spanish, frequently fighting Comanches and even other Apache tribes. While at the other extreme, in southern New Mexico and western Texas, the Pharaoh Apaches (so called because, according to the Spanish, they fought like the ancient Egyptians) became more aggressive and increased their attacks, in alliance with the Mescaleros, against the Spanish as the Comanches deprived them of freely hunting buffalo on the plains.
A crusade between war and peace
The Apache threat ended in this way by becoming endemic in what is now the US border with Mexico. Between 1771 and 1776, these nomadic warriors killed 1,676 people in Nueva Vizcaya alone, which today occupies the Mexican states of Durango, Chihuahua and part of the state of Coahuila. In addition, between Apaches and Comanches they came to steal so many horses in New Mexico that Governor Fermín de Mendinueta had to write on May 2, 1777 to Commander General Teodoro de Croix asking for the urgent shipment of more animals to his province, since his soldiers without horses they had no chance to take the offensive against the enemy. Croix responded by sending fifteen hundred horses, but after the long walk the animals they had to recover for several weeks before going on campaign.
Allies in the north, enemies in the south, the Spanish applied a strategy of alliances according to the needs and attitude of each Indian nation. The signing in February 1786 of an important Spanish treaty with the Comanches lowered the hostility of these tribes throughout New Mexico, though not north of Texas, and placed the Plains Apache tribes in an even more critical situation. For seventy years they had suffered the Comanche onslaught that had caused them heavy demographic and territorial losses, and now they had to add that these Comanches had the coverage of the Spanish.
While the Comanches continued to attack the Apaches when they dared to venture out onto the Texas plains, the Spanish from New Mexico, Coahuila, and Texas waged punitive campaigns against them using Ceahuilteco, Navajo, Ute, Jicarilla, and Pueblo auxiliaries. The Apache tribes that still lived off the predation defended themselves in the only way they knew how: by attacking.
Alerted by the increase in attacks, the most legendary viceroy of New Spain, Bernardo de Galvez, almost invoked a crusade against the Apaches at that time. He would hunt the Indians down to their darkest hiding places, relentlessly harass their bands of warriors, and the frontier forces would raise even the most remote stone of the most inhospitable of deserts to surround them. An implacable policy that contained the violence only in some regions.
All this was accompanied by a reception strategy from the prisons for those who wanted to settle near the Spanish border. In the regions of the prisons of El Paso, Janes (Chihuahua), Fronteras (Sonora) and Tucson (Arizona) large Apache camps were set up, “the rancherías”, which periodically received rations and supplies and the supervision of the Spanish, always vigilantes to encourage them not to stop taking care of their livestock and their crops. Even some Apaches learned to read and write in Spanish, as is the case of the emblematic Apache leader Geronimo.
Fernando de la Conchagovernor of New Mexico between 1789 and 1794, was convinced that this was the only way to achieve a long peace in the interior provinces:
“The natural liveliness of the Apaches, aided by the necessary tools for farming together with cattle to establish breeding, would advance a lot and would experience the advantages of a uniform, calm and full of comfort life compared to which they constantly suffer”.
Concha hoped that the Apaches who were in the sierras “naked and without having to eat anything other than the simple productions of the fields, or something from the robberies” would see the advantages of a sedentary life and thus the Crown could save the enormous expenses that they had to pay. The military route supposed, but not all the tribes understood these incentives as positive and they did not decide, quite the opposite, to bury a hatchet which was still very lucrative.
The day after leaving Spain
The revolutionary events that precipitated the emancipation of Mexico from the Crown slowed the advances for the integration of Apaches and Comanches in the Spanish imperial system. “Although a total pacification of the Apachería was not achieved, it can be affirmed that a substantial change began in the relations with these Amerindians that allowed a coexistence between them and the Hispanics”, points out Edward K. Flagler. The impossibility of the new republican state to continue supplying rations and agricultural implements to the Apaches suddenly revived the chaos where the Apaches plunged so well. About this way of fighting, Gálvez comments admiringly: «It is impossible to explain the speed with which they attack, nor the noise with which they fight, the terror they pour out on our people, nor the depth with which they put an end to everything».
Apaches, Comanches, Navajos and the rest of the predatory tribes continued to fight bare-chested against progress when Spain left the plane. The shortage of troops the Spanish Crown it allowed these warriors to occupy immense swaths of land for several centuries. However, the next powers that dominated North America were less willing to share. None of the tribes that starred in the Far West were native to the Great Plains, but rather the direct consequence of migration caused by white settlements in the east.
The crude Indian wars that were reproduced from the second half of the 19th century they were, in truth, the confrontation of emigrant peoples, who had taken refuge in the last great wild region of the country. But the Americans and their railway routes, “the iron horses,” also expelled them from there. The white man was insatiable and had the passing of the centuries on his side.