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The present Apache population is approximately six thousand, including the Jicarillas and Mescaleros of New Mexico. It is doubtful if the number ever exceeded ten thousand. In population, therefore, the Apache seem almost too insignificant to have kept the other tribes of the vast Southwest, as well as two civilized nations, in constant dread for so long a period.

At the present time the greater part of the Apache reside on the White Mountain reservation, Arizona, comprising more than 3,500,000 acres, with agency headquarters at Whiteriver and San Carlos. This reservation is a part of the great tableland of southeastern Arizona, being a succession of mountains and high, park-like mesas, broken here and there with valleys and watered by limpid streams. The highlands are wooded with pine, cedar, fir, juniper, oak, and other trees, while in the valleys are mistletoe-laden cottonwood as well as willow, alder, and walnut, which, with smaller growths, are interwoven with vines of grape, hop, and columbine, in places forming a veritable jungle. On every hand, whether on mountain or in valley, many varieties of cactus grow in profusion; and in springtime cañon and vale, mountain-side and mesa, are all aglow with wild flowers.

In midsummer the temperature of the lower reaches seems as great as that of a furnace. At the same season in the mountain and high mesa country, especially in the shade of the beautiful forests, the atmosphere is ideal; but in winter these higher levels are covered deep with snow, swept by fierce winds that chill one to the very marrow.

The typical Apache habitation, called kówa, consists of a framework of poles loosely thatched with native grass, through which the smoke from the central fire finds its outlet and the rain and snow sift in, rendering it anything but a comfortable shelter in time of storm. The kówa is erected by the women, who are little more than drudges, and as an Apache may have as many wives as he feels able to support, he may have as many homes as circumstances require. The various wives are prone to be quarrelsome among themselves, for which reason a man usually maintains one wife on one part of the reservation and another wife perhaps many miles away.

Primitive Apache Home

In the good old days the radius of Apache wandering centred in the mountains of what is now southeastern Arizona; this was their stronghold, their lair, whence they raided to the south, well down into Sonora and Chihuahua, westward to the Colorado river, northward into the Hopi and Navaho country, and eastward as far at least as western Texas. From this mountain rendezvous they swept down upon the Mexicans and Indians of Sonora and Chihuahua, and on the Pueblo villages of the north, while in later years they terrorized the white settlers of the entire Southwest. To follow them was a fruitless task which often led to the destruction of the pursuers.

The primitive Apache was a true nomad, a wandering child of Nature, whose birthright was a craving for the warpath, with courage and endurance probably exceeded by no other people, and with cunning beyond reckoning. Although his character is a strong mixture of courage and ferocity, the Apache is gentle and affectionate toward those of his own flesh and blood, particularly his children. Fear, to him, is unknown. Death he faces with stolid indifference; yet Apache men have been known to grieve so deeply over the loss of a friend as to end their troubles by self-destruction.

No people could be better fitted than the Apache to conduct continuous predatory warfare. Every form of plant and animal life pays him tribute. An entirely naked Indian, without implements of any sort, would stop on a mountain slope and in a few minutes be sitting by a cheerful fire preparing a welcome meal. With a fragment of stone he would shape fire-sticks from the dead stalk of a yucca. Sitting with the flattened piece held firmly by his feet, a pinch of sand at the point of contact between the two sticks, with a few deft whirls of the round stick over his improvised hearth the lone traveller would soon have a fire kindled. Into the blaze he would cast a few sections of green, juicy mescal1 stalk which, when cooked, would afford him both food and drink. This part of his meal finished, the Apache might gather other dead yucca stalks, split them, and often find within small stores of honey.

Many plants furnish small seeds rich in nutriment. These are gathered in a basket, ground on a metate, and the oily mass formed into a ball with the hands. The Apache assert that a lump as large as one's two fists would subsist a man for two days; but in addition he would eat wild greens of various kinds, either cooked or raw. One of the principal vegetal foods of the Apache is the mescal—in their language, náta. Nothing can give a better idea of the economic life of these people than a description of one of their annual mescal harvests.

The mescal harvest occurs in the season of new life and growth, when the call from the wild is strong in the blood, and like a class of children—for they are but grown-up children—they pour out into the wilds. From the camp where they have passed the winter they take to the trails which lead to the mescal hills.

For some hours after leaving the huts on White river the path leads across the hot, dusty desert; then it reaches the rim of White river cañon and follows its edge so closely that a pebble tossed from the saddle would drop into the torrent more than a thousand feet below. How musical the roar of the stream, and how cool its waters look! As the trail passes some especially dizzy spot the Indian women lean away from the sheer edge in fear. For miles the trail traverses the bluff. At times the river is out of sight and hearing, then it emerges again and both eye and ear receive its greeting. At the hour when the piñon trees stretch their long shadows across the land the Indians urge their horses down a steep, winding trail and arrive at the river's bank. Here they ford, follow the course of the stream for a while, and then at a bend reach an open flat dotted here and there with shapely live-oaks. In this park-like opening the long straggling line comes to a halt.

Cutting Mescal - Apache

All the worldly possessions of the Apache woman are packed on the horse which she and her children have ridden. The mother, with the youngest in her arms, first clambers down, followed by the little girl four years of age; she then removes the blankets that cover the pack, then the burden basket containing her cooking utensils, next the water bottle, and from across the saddle seat the large rawhide carryall that contains the family supplies and extra clothing. A smaller rawhide bag holds those little essentials necessary to the comfort of the family. The unloading finished, the woman fills the water bottle at the stream and gathers fuel for preparing the simple meal, which is soon over. If anything is more simple than the cooking it is the preparation of the bed. A small circular spot is cleared and an armful of grass, if any exists, is spread over it; the blankets are laid on the grass, and the bed is made. The blankets may not be clean, and certainly the pallet is not downy, but this matters little to a people inured to hardship; they are happy.

With a laugh the children tumble upon the blankets. Being dressed in a single garment a little girl innocently exposes more of her body than meets with her modest mother's approval. The scolding is full and positive. Little Miss Apache, sitting in the middle of the blanket with her knees drawn to her chin and with scant skirt now tucked carefully about her feet, looks up with roguish smile, then down at her wiggling toes in coquettish defiance.

From far down the stream resound the splash of water and the merry laughter of matrons and maidens bathing in the clear pools, and from above the more boisterous shouts of men and boys. Surely he who says the American Indian is morose, stolid, and devoid of humor never knew him in the intimacy of his own home.

With the coming of light the women are at work building the campfires, and the rising sun finds them at their morning meal. The breaking of camp is a brief task. To-day they are to cross the divide, ford Black river, and continue on to the mountains where the mescal grows abundantly. Travel in the cool morning hours is a delight, and seven o'clock finds the party well on its way. The long cavalcade winds slowly over the mountain trail. Just ahead is a mother with two children, a little girl astride behind her and a two-year-old boy standing in her lap. The mourning dove sounds its melancholy note from the forest, and the children take up the call. The little boy is not very proficient in the imitation, and sister corrects him time after time. Truly, in Indian-land, nature study begins early in life.

There is noticeable change in the vegetation. The giant yuccas appear almost as a forest to-day; yesterday there was none. Soon the party gains the summit of the range, before which winds the valley of the Black with miles of placid stream in view. Quite different is this from White river, which is ever hurrying, rushing along. The Black flows within its grassy banks for long distances with scarcely a ripple; then a whirling rapid is passed, beyond which glides another long stretch of almost silent water.

However, mescal does not grow by cool streams, and the trail again leads up into high mountains. On a broad slope well toward the summit the final halt is made. Close by is the mescal pit, perhaps twenty feet in diameter and three feet deep; it may have been used a hundred years or a thousand, abandoned for a long period, and then brought into use again. Each time it is employed it must first be cleaned of the refuse from the last burning; this done, a large supply of fuel is gathered and thrown in, and over all are piled great quantities of stones.

Then begins the harvest of the mescal. With baskets on their backs the women go out to gather the plants. Their implements consist of a stick about two inches in diameter and three feet long, wedge-shaped and sharpened at one end, and a broad hatchet-like knife. On reaching a plant, the woman places the sharp end of the stick at its base and by a blow with a stone severs the root and pries it up. Nothing could be more primitive. The women of the Stone Age who gathered mescal on the same ground, and perhaps used the same pit, thus far must have used identical tools.

Mescal - Apache

When the plant is cut from its root it is turned over and trimmed. For the latter the women employ the hatchet-like knife, cutting off the outer ends of the leaves. The plant now resembles a large head of cabbage and weighs from five to twenty pounds. As fast as the plants are cut the women place them in the burden baskets and carry them to the pit, load after load. To make it possible for each woman to identify her mescal after the cooking, each piece is branded with a distinguishing device—a property mark. The gathering of the mescal continues for several days, an area covering a radius of perhaps two miles being stripped of its budding plants, for such only are harvested.

The pit being ready and the mescal gathered, the work of cooking commences. Just at daylight the old woman in charge takes her place at the rim of the pit and prays that the cooking may be successful and that the people may be in condition to partake of the food. In igniting the fuel the old-fashioned fire-sticks must be employed; to use matches would bring ill fortune. When the fuel in the pit becomes a blazing mass the women go to prepare breakfast, but are soon at work again gathering brush and grass to cover the mescal. Within four hours the fuel is entirely consumed and the red-hot stones have settled to the bottom of the pit. When it is certain that no fuel remains unburned, as even a small amount of smoke would spoil the quality of the mescal, the head-woman says, "It is good," and with great eagerness her followers begin to fill the pit. There is need for haste in throwing in and covering the mescal, as the steam must be confined to prevent the hot stones from scorching it. The covering consists of alternate layers of green brush, grass, dry leaves, and finally a layer of earth, about six inches in thickness. After forty-eight hours of steaming the seething mass is uncovered and each woman removes her portion.

The greater part of the product of this cooking is now to be prepared for winter use by pulling the leaves apart and pounding them into pulp. This can be kneaded and handled much the same as dough, and while in this plastic state is formed into large cakes two inches thick and perhaps three feet long. These are dried in the sun, when they have all the appearance of large slabs of India rubber, and are easily packed on horses for the homeward journey.

This dried mescal may be eaten without further preparation, but it is generally made into a gruel by mixing with water. Alone it is very sweet, and berries of the aromatic sumac, and frequently walnuts, are crushed with it to give it flavor.

The fruit of the opuntia, or prickly-pear cactus, which the Apache call hush, is much used for food both in its fresh state and dried. It is picked from the plant with pincers of split sticks. When the tú̆tza, or burden basket, is filled its contents are poured on the ground and the fruit is brushed about with a small grass besom until the spines are worn off. In preparing hush the women grind seeds and pulp into a mass, thus retaining the full food value of the fruit.

Manzanita, piñon nuts, juniper berries, acorns of the scrub oak, fruit of the yucca, wild potatoes, wild onions, mesquite pods, and many varieties of fungi also furnish food. As a drink the Apache make a tea from the green or dried inner bark of the piñon.

The intoxicant and curse of their lives is túlapai, or tizwin as it is sometimes called. Túlapai means "muddy or gray water." It is, in fact, a yeast beer. In preparing it corn is first soaked in water. If it be winter time the wet corn is placed under a sleeping blanket until the warmth of the body causes it to sprout; if summer, it is deposited in a shallow hole, covered with a wet blanket, and left until the sprouts appear, when it is ground to pulp on a metate. Water and roots are added, and the mixture is boiled and strained to remove the coarser roots and sprouts. At this stage the liquid has the consistency of thin cream soup. It is now set aside for twenty-four hours to cool and ferment, when it is fit for drinking. As the túlapai will spoil in twelve hours it must be drunk quickly. Used in moderation it is not a bad beverage, but by no means a pleasant one to the civilized palate. The Apache, however, knows no moderation in his túlapai drinking. He sometimes fasts for a day and then drinks great quantities of it,—often a gallon or two—when for a time he becomes a savage indeed.

Filling the Pit - Apache

Another intoxicant, more effective than túlapai, is made from the mescal—not from the sap, according to the Mexican method, but from the cooked plant, which is placed in a heated pit and left until fermentation begins. It is then ground, mixed with water, roots added, and the whole boiled and set aside to complete fermentation. The Indians say its taste is sharp, like whiskey. A small quantity readily produces intoxication.

Of game foods the Apache has deer, antelope, and wild turkey, with quail, some water fowl, smaller birds, rabbits, and wood-rats. Fish and bear meat are strictly tabooed.

The graphic art of the Apache finds expression chiefly in ceremonial paintings on deerskin, and in basketry. Only rarely have they made pottery, their roving life requiring utensils of greater stability. Such earthenware as they did make was practically the same as that of the Navaho, mostly in the form of small cooking vessels. Usually the pictures are painted on the entire deerskin, but sometimes the skin is cut square, and at others ceremonial deerskin shirts are symbolically painted. Occasionally the Apache attempts to picture the myth characters literally; at other times only a symbolic representation of the character is made. In addition to the mythic personages, certain symbols are employed to represent the incident of the myth. These paintings are made under the instruction of a medicine-man and are a part of the medicine paraphernalia. On some skins the most sacred characters in Apache mythology are represented symbolically—Nayé̆nĕzganĭ, the War God; Tubadzĭschí̆nĭ, his younger brother; Kútĕrastan, the Creator of All; Stĕnátlĭhăn, the chief goddess. In fact the symbolism on an elaborately painted deerskin may cover every phase of Apache cosmology.

In their basketry the Apache women display great taste in form, and in their more superior work employ much symbolic decoration. Since the beginning of the present "messiah craze" all baskets display the sacred symbols believed to have been revealed to Das Lan by Chuganaái Skhĭn—a combination of the cross and the crescent. There are many baskets, made before this new religious wave swept over the tribe, into which the symbolism has since been woven.

The basket most used is the tú̆tza, or burden basket, roughly and loosely woven, ornamented with circular lines as often painted on as woven in. Previous to a messiah craze, which had its origin with the Apache about 1901, the designs in these baskets were purely decorative, without attempt at symbolism; but now, by order of a crafty old medicine-man, every tú̆tza must display the combined cross and crescent.

The tus is a water bottle, made invariably of withes of the aromatic sumac, loosely woven, and coated inside and out with piñon gum. To use material other than sumac would be considered very bad. In the Apache deluge myth the people, instructed by Stĕnátlĭhăn, built a monster tus of piñon branches in which they floated away.

The tsa-naskú̆dĭ is a bowl or tray-shaped basket of splendid form, with symbolic decoration of intricate pattern.

The most pretentious basket is the tus-naskú̆dĭ, in general form like the tus, but much larger; it is used for the storage of grain. Its lines are most beautiful, as are also its inwoven symbolic designs.

Owing to the extremely secretive nature of the Apache, it is difficult for the casual student to learn anything of the relations between their mythology and the designs used in their basketry. Questioned, they will perhaps say, "We don't know," or "To make it look pretty." But an intelligent and trustworthy interpreter will tell you, "That woman knows, but she will not tell." A law of the cult brought about by the recent messiah religion is that every woman must have in readiness for use during the migration to the future world a tus, a tú̆tza, a tsa-naskú̆dĭ, and a gourd drinking-cup, all decorated with the cross and crescent. These are not used and are carefully preserved.

The clan and gentile systems of the American Indians have been the bulwark of their social structure, for by preventing intermarriage within the clan or the gens the blood was kept at its best. Added to this were the hardships of the Indian life, which resulted in the survival only of the fittest and provided the foundation for a sturdy people. But with advancing civilization one foresees the inevitable disintegration of their tribal laws, and a consequent weakening of the entire social structure, for the Indians seem to have absorbed all the evil, and to have embodied little of the good, that civilized life teaches.

The Covered Pit - Apache

The Coyoteros are divided into five bands, each consisting of a number of clans, although in one band there are now survivors of a single clan only, while in others as many as seven or eight clans are still to be found. Descent among the Apache generally is reckoned through the mother; that is, the children belong to their mother's clan. An exception to this rule is said by "Peaches," an old Apache scout under Crook, to exist among the Chiricahua, where the children take the gens of the father. Among the Apache some of the younger generation are inclined to disregard tribal laws respecting marriage, but in former times they were rigidly enforced, marriage within the clan or the gens being regarded as incestuous. When asked what would happen if a man and a woman belonging to the same clan should marry, one old man answered that both would be quickly put to death.

In the Appendix are given the clan names of the Coyoteros, also of the Arivaipa and the Chiricahua. Geronimo, Chato, and Cochise were members of the Aiahán, People of the East, clan. Most of the clan names are derived from localities in which the ancestors of the clan are supposed to have first lived.

With the Apache, as with other tribes, the clan organization has an important bearing on property right. Regardless of what property either spouse may hold or own at the time of marriage, the other immediately becomes possessed of his or her moiety. Should the wife die, her husband retains possession of the property held in common so long as he does not remarry, but what might be termed the legal ownership of the wife's half interest becomes vested in her clan. Should he attempt to dissipate the property the members of the deceased wife's clan would at once interfere. If the widower wishes to marry again and the woman of his choice belongs to the clan of his former wife, then he and the new wife become owners in common of all personal property held by him; but if the second wife belongs to a different clan from that of the former wife, then the husband must make actual transfer of half of the common property to the clanspeople of the deceased woman, who inherited the legal interest in it at their relative's death. The same tribal law applies in the case of a widow.

Much internal strife naturally results whenever an actual distribution of property is made. In the first place the surviving spouse unwillingly relinquishes the moiety of the property to the relatives of the deceased, and the immediate relatives often disagree with the remainder of the clan. In former times death of one or more members of contending clans often resulted when the division of much property was made. Having no tribunal for making an equitable division, the matter was left to mutual agreement, resulting in disputes and frequently murder.

With the breaking up of the clans, together with the rapid disintegration of ancient customs and laws, this property law is fast becoming forgotten; but so recently as 1906 such disputes as those mentioned occurred under both the Fort Apache and San Carlos agencies, creating no little ill-feeling. In one instance a man refused to deliver possession of half of his little herd of horses to his deceased wife's clanspeople when contemplating marriage with another woman, and appealed to the missionaries for aid. He was compelled to make the division, however, before he could remarry.