The Chiricahua Apaches settled in southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico, and northern Mexico in the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts. They fielded fierce warriors with agile, athletic builds that proved a formidable fighting force in the desert Southwest. Apaches constructed easily built dome-shaped wickiup dwellings made of thatch and poles and covered with animal skins.
Few Americans entered Chiricahua territory before the gold rush. The 1851 discovery of gold in the Pinos Altos region of New Mexico, which lay at the Southern end of the Black Mountains, homeland of the Warm Springs Band of Chiricahua, was an early source of conflict. Apaches did not understand the allure of this metal to Americans. The endeavor to mine for gold was purposeless and sacrilegious to their nation. Nonetheless, miners were determined to invade their territory and take its resources and the Chiricahua successfully resisted those efforts for several decades. The federal government attempted to create peace through several treaties, but both sides had difficulty adhering to the terms.
Many battles ensued between the Chiricahua, settlers, and American troops. While the Americans had better developed equipment and weapons, the Apache knew the land better and had more experience fighting to defend their homeland. They evaded and defeated military forces hundreds of times their size. Despite their best efforts to protect their sovereignty, the Chiricahuas knew they could not continue to thwart the efforts of the American militia indefinitely. The Apache wars brought great hardships to their people, so Apache leaders Geronimo and Nachiz, met with Lieutenant Gatewood to discuss the future of their people. The Lieutenant explained that if they surrendered, their families would be sent to Florida to await the final decision of the President. If they did not surrender, they would have to fight to the bitter end. After some discussion, Nachiz and Geronimo decided to surrender in order to preserve their people. Despite many years of successfully resisting American encroachment, the Chiricahua Apaches capitulated to the government’s demands in Skeleton Canyon on September 4, 1886, a location now known as the Last Stand of the Chiricahua Apaches. The Chiricahua Apaches were evicted from their ancestral homeland, temporarily assigned to Florida and Alabama, before being the last Indigenous nation the U.S. Congress relocated into present-day Oklahoma in 1894.
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