Florida Mountains, Luna County
Current Population: 670
Language: Mescalero-Chiricahua
Early Social Structure: Nomadic/Seminomadic
Location: 30 acres in Luna County (uninhabited), 4 acres in Arizona, 130 acres in Oklahoma (where Tribe is based)
Ancestral Territory: 5,000,000 acres in Texas, Arizona, Chihuahua, México and Sonora, México.
Traditional Homelands
Click to expand
The Fort Sill Apache Tribe is comprised of the descendants of the Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apaches. Originally, there were four looslely affiliated bands that were grouped together as Chiricahua: the Chíhéne, the Chukunen, the Bidánku, and the Ndéndai.
The Warm Springs Apache were also called the Mimbreños Apache, Ojo Caliente Apache, and Coppermine Apache. They formed the eastern branch of the Chiricahuas. They lived in the Mimbres Valley and the Black Range (aka Devil’s Mountains or Sierra Diablo) - a small area at the eastern side of the Gila National Wilderness.
The Apache iriginally lived on the Plains, where they had first contact with Coronado’s expedition in 1541, on the Llano Estacado (a giant mesa in eastern New Mexico and the Texas panhandle.) Soon after, the Apache moved west and south due to the Comanche. One theory claims the Apache turned to raiding to sustain themselves because of their forced migration away from the buffalo-rich Great Plains into the more austere desert and mountains of the Southwest.
The Chiricahua territory spanned from the San Francisco River in Arizona, the southwestern and southern areas of New Mexico, west of El Paso, and into Chihuahua, Mexico. They spent time at their sacred spring, Ojo Caliente, located above the the Monticello Box Canyon in Socorro County. (The Spanish called this area Cañada Alamosa).
Betrayal
The Apache and the Spanish in Mexico were in constant conflict because of raiding. When the Comanche aligned themselves with the Spaniards in New Mexico, the Apache began to make peace with the Spaniards in Mexico. By the 1790s, around 2,000 Apache had settled in the presidios and the Spanish gave them food rations.
In 1830, the governor of Chihuahua - José Isidro Madero - cut off food rations. And, in 1831, one of his generals declared war on the Apache. This began a century of violent conflict between Mexico and the Apache, and later the U.S. and the Apache. In 1835, the government of Sonora (south of Arizona and west of Chihuahua) put a bounty on the Apache: 100 pesos for each scalp of a male 14 or more years old. Later, Chihuahua offered the same bounty for males plus a bounty of 50 pesos for the capture of an adult female and 25 pesos for a child under 14. Bounty hunters were also allowed to keep any Apache property they captured. The bounty for one Apache male was more than many Mexicans and American workers earned in a full year.
This bounty likely inspired the Johnson Massacre in 1837. While trading with American settlers led by John Johnson, at least 20 Warm Spring/Mimbreños Apaches were killed near Santa Rita del Cobre, New Mexico - including their leader, Juan Jose Compa. The settlers blasted the Apaches with a canon loaded with musket balls, nails and pieces of glass and finished off the wounded. (To this day, it is not uncommon to read commentary by Anglo Americans which claims this massacre was not as bad as claimed and that “Indians exagerate the severity.”)
Kan-da-zis Tlishishen (who the Spanish called Mangas Coloradas) became the principal chief, leading the Warm Springs Apache for 25 years. He is regarded as one of the most important Native American leaders of the 19th century because of his fighting achievements against the Mexicans and Americans and for his brilliant guerilla strategies and astute leadership in uniting many disparate bands to fight for their lands and heritage.
In 1863, Kan-da-zis Tlishishen arranged a meeting with Americans to come to a peace agreement. When he arrived at Fort McLane, the U.S. military took him into custody. That night, he was tortured - poked with red hot bayonets - and then killed. They cut off his head, boiled it, and sent the skull to a phrenologist in New York.
The Apache were enraged by the United States’ illegal confinement, torture, and murder of Chief Kan-da-zis Tlishishen. It was a clear betrayal of honorable treaty protocol. But, it was the desecration of the body of Kan-da-zis Tlishishen that was the catalyst for uniting many Apache bands.
While the Apache are often blamed for it being dangerous to live in the Wold West, it was not the Apache that caused this. The increased violence against colonizers can be attributed to the betrayal by the Spaniards in Mexico and murder of murder and desecration of Kan-da-zis Tlishishen.
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In May 1877, the Warm Springs Apaches were relocated to the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona. In September, they left the reservation and returned to New Mexico. Their hatred of white colonizers continued to grow, and so their attacks became more violent.
There were mutliple battles against African American Buffalo Soldiers. In 1879, the Mimbreños ambushed Navajo scouts and Buffalo Soldiers in what is now named Massacre Canyon.
But, after losing 54 members of their band in fights with the U.S. Military, they surrendered and went to their sacred land, Ojo Caliente. They remained there for a year until an attempt was made to return them to the San Carlos Reservation. Chief Victorio and his warriors escaped and left the women and children behind, who were then moved to San Carlos.
Prisoners of War
When Chiricahua Apache religious and military leader Geronimo and his band surrendered for the final time to the U.S. government in 1886, they became prisoners of war and were sentenced to manual labor at an Army camp in Florida. About 350-400 Apache were sent by train to Fort Marion. Many of them died while in prison. Later, Apache children were taken to the flagship boarding school - the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, where at least 50 of them died. Within a year of their arrival at Fort Marion, the Apache were moved to Mount Vernon Barracks in Alabama, where they lived for seven years.
In 1894, the 296 survivors (around 70 families) were moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. They were the last tribe to be relocated to Oklahima, and they arrived with nearly no belongings. Congress released the Chiricahua Apache from being prisoners of war in 1913. They had been held captive for twenty-seven years.
The Mescalero Apache opened their reservation to the 181 Chiricahua Apache who wanted to return to New Mexico. Approximately 80 people stayed in Oklahoma. They lived on land that was purchased with money from the Kiowa and Comanche with the sale of the Apache cattle herd.
Battle With the State of New Mexico
In 1998, the Fort Sill Apache bought 30 acres in Luna County. The Tribe tried to open a casino but was unsuccessful because casino gambling on Indian lands is a highly competitive and frequently controversial business. The federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act largely prohibits gambling on lands acquired after Oct. 17, 1988, with certain exceptions.
In 2008, believing that the National Indian Gaming Commission would ultimately approve their plans, the Fort Sill Apache tried to open a temporary bingo hall.
Governor Bill Richardson ordered the state police to block access to the building, saying the tribe lacked the authority to operate a casino. The next year, the National Indian Gaming Commission issued a violation to the tribe for running a gambling operation on the site.
In 2013, the Fort Sill Apache filed a lawsuit in the New Mexico Supreme Court against Governor Susana Martinez. The Tribe assert that the Governor was violating a State statute in failing to recognize them as a New Mexico Tribe and that the Governor was discriminating against the Tribe by excluding it from consultations with other Tribes, barring it from the State’s annual State-Tribal summit, and by refusing to include it on a list of recognized New Mexico Tribes.
In documents provided to the court, Fort Sill stated:
The Fort Sill Apache Indian Reservation is not just some land in New Mexico that the Tribe happens to own. It is the Tribe's Reservation, recognition of which was hard-won only recently and after years of legal struggles. That the majority of the population of the Tribe has not yet returned to its aboriginal territory is not surprising, given Respondents' hostility and the relatively recent recognition of the Tribe's reservation in the area of its ancestral homeland. Because Respondents do not dispute that the Fort Sill Apache Indian Reservation is in New Mexico, they cannot argue that the Tribe is not located at least partially in New Mexico.
In 2014, the New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe requiring Governor Martinez to recognize the Tribe under state law and include the Tribe in the annual State-Tribal Summit. Yet, it was not until the 2017 that the State legislature finally voted to add two members of the Tribe to State committee.
Currently, the land in Luna County is uninhabited, but the Tribe operates Apache Homelands, a restaurant, cigarette shop and convenience store with a museum, next to a pecan orchard alongside Interstate 10 in Akela, 20 miles east of Deming.
There is no clear and definitive answer to the question of why Governor Martinez refused to recognize Fort Sill. But, it is worth noting that her paternal great-grandfather was Brigadier General Toribio Ortega Ramírez - one of Pancho Villa’s generals in the Mexican Revolution in 1910.
The Mexican Revolution was against the oligarchical rule of Porfirio Díaz - who favoured wealthy landowners. But the revolt was initiated at the behest of Francisco I. Madero - a man born to a long line of elite Spanish who committed acts of violence against indigenous people.
Francisco I. Madero did not follow through on promises made to the revolutionaries because he did not actually want to upset the elitist world he came from. His failure led to 30 years of instability and dictatorship in Mexico.
His grandfather was Evaristo Madero, one of the largest landowners in Mexico, having control of more than 2,742,870 acres of land. He also was the governor of Coahuila (the state located Chihuahua and Texas) for several years at the end of the Apache Wars.
Evaristo’s father was José Francisco Madero, who, in 1830, was briefly made general land commissioner in the Republic of Texas. He tried to assert the state's right to issue land titles to settlers whose grants had been previously approved. He gave away 60 land grants before Texas stopped it.
José Francisco Madero’s brother was José Isidro Madero - the governor of Chihuahua who betrayed the Apache and declaired war on them in 1831.
Governor’s Martinez’ great-grandfather likely participated in the Mexican Revolt for admirable reasons and in support of mestizo and indigenous people throughout Mexico, like his colleague Zapata. But Spanish Mexicans had consistently been at war with the Apache since the late 1600s. If anything can explain the discrimination against Fort Sill Apache, it might have something to do with that.
Indian Claims Commission Award
The Indian Claims Commission awarded the Chiricahua Apache Indians $15 million in 1975. This was for nearly 15 million acres in New Mexico and Arizona that the United States took when Geronimo surrended.
The Mescalero Apache received $11.040,000 (69%). The Fort Sill Apache received $4,960,000 (31%). They were issued an award for $6 million in 1980, distributed at the same percentages.
Unrecognized
There is a group in Sierra County that has filed as a nonprofit with the New Mexico Secretary of State multiple times, each time with a different name. They are currently named the Sovereign Nation of the Chiricahua Apache Band. They have also gone by the names:
Chiricahua Apache National Foundation
Chihene Nde Warm Springs Band of Chiricahua Apache
Chiricahua Apache National Order Mission and Alliance
Ojo Caliente Chiricahua Apache Band
Ojo Caliente Tcihene Chiricahua Apache Band
Ojo Caliente Tcihene Chiricahua Band of New Mexico
Chiricahua Apache Alliance
Chiricahua Apache Nation
This group appears to be distinct from the Fort Sill Apache, they have never petitioned the BIA for federal recognition, and their website does not list any information about their heritage or history.
World Renowned
Allan Capron Haozous, commonly known as Allan Houser, was a sculptor who lived in Santa Fe County. He was not only one of the most renowned artists to live in New Mexico - he is considered one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.
Ha-oz-ous, in the Apache language, describes the sound and sensation of pulling a plant from the earth and the point when the earth gives way.
Allan's grandfather was first-cousin to Apache leader, Geronimo, and a member of the Warm Springs Apache. Allan's father was among those held as prisoners of war in Florida. Allan's mother, Blossom, was born in the prison camp in Alabama. Sam and Blossom both ended up in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where they lived as prisoners for 20 years. Allan was the first Chiricahua born after the tribe was released from their long captivity.
From 1934-1938, Allan attended the Painting School at the Santa Fe Indian School. "I was twenty years old when I finally decided that I really wanted to paint. I had learned a great dealabout my tribal customs from my father and mother, and the more I learned the more I wanted to put it down on canvas." It was here when he changed his name to Houser - a suggestion made by school officials.
Within two years of graduating, he had art at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Golden State International Exposition, and the New York World's Fair and he was commissioned to paint murals at the U.S. Department of the Interior. And, he studied with Swdish muralist Olle Nordmark, who encouraged him to become a sculptor.
He lived in Los Angeles, then spent 11 years teaching in Utah. He then moved to Santa Fe and joined the faculty at the Institute of American Indian Arts. During his most prolific years as an artist, Houser lived on a rural property in south Santa Fe County.
Allan Houser was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1948 and the Palmes d’Academique from the French Government in 1954. In 1992, he became the first Native American to receive the National Medal of Arts. His work can be found at several national museums as well as museum collections in Europe and Japan. On 2004, he was honored with a retrospective as an inaugural exhibition of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. And, when President Biden revamped the Oval office in 2021, he removed a painting of Andrew Jackson and installed a small sculpture made by Allan Houser.
