Derek Stavarski's List: Apache

• The coming of American settlement after the Civil War brought the American  capital economy to Arizona and transformed the region into a producer of raw  materials for distant markets. Mining, agriculture, lumbering, construction, and  transportation became, and remain, the chief enterprises of the state

• In short, it appears that the maintenance of social relations, rather than the  acquisition of property was the primary objective in Apache culture beyond the  minimum subsistence level

• Dependence on world commodity markets makes for an unstable economy, and  Arizona's raw material industries have had their share of ups and downs in the  past seventy-five years. Mineral strikes have come and gone, agricultural prices  have fluctuated widely, and construction projects have been temporary by nature
• The state's industry has come to rely heavily on two basic sources of labor: a  highly mobile and essentially rootless labor force and a series of localized  parttime labor forces.
• That such a demand can be made is a reflection of the fully capitalized quality  of the American economy, with its concomitants of specialization and  interdependence.
• These characteristics have become commonplaces  of American life, but they  obviously represent a radical departure from the economic traditions and  motivations of the prereservation Apache.
• Again in 1883 the agent's report indicates that the services of Apaches were  often sought by nearby ranchmen for ditching, woodchopping. adobe-making, and so  forth.
• The agent goes on to present a stereotype of the Apache as a laborer: indolent.  shiftless, and undependable
• The report for 1897 mentions an increase in the number of Apaches employed in  Globe and notes that their behavior was generally good

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• More or less concurrent with the end of construction on Coolidge Dam came the  Great Depression, and overnight the Apache lost their position in the Arizona  labor market.
• Off-reservation wage work in the 1930s was virtually nonexistent. During this  decade nearly every member of the Apache Tribe returned to the reservation,  where economic support was provided by a large-scale program of construction and  development and by the founding of the modern cattle industry.
• While the Apache were absent from the labor scene, a number of important changes  took place in the Arizona economy which affected their future stake in it.

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• Prior to early European contacts the Chiricahua were frequently involved in  raiding neighboring tribes for food and other kinds of booty, especially the  farming villages of the Pueblo people
• By the mid to late sixteenth century and beyond, the Chiricahua found a new  enemy in the Spanish settlers and missionaries who settled in the area.
• After three centuries of fighting, the Chiricahua still held on to their sacred  homeland. Other enemies of the time included the Comanches and Mexicans. In 1821  the independence of Mexico from Spain resulted in a decline of Spanish power in  the Southwest and a few years of uneasy truce between the Spanish and Chiricahua
• With the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 bringing a cessation to the war  between Mexico and the United States, a vast new land area in the Southwest was  opened up for exploitation of the natural resources
• With the increased presence of trappers and gold miners in Chiricahua territory,  more and more violent clashes between the Indians and Euro-Americans took place  resulting in the eventual establishment of forts by the U.S. government in  Arizona and New Mexico as a means of protecting travelers and settlers.
• During the latter half of the nineteenth century the U. S. government and the  Chiricahua were engaged in an extended period of warfare that finally ended in  1886 with the surrender of the Chiricahua chief Geronimo and his followers and  resulting in their twenty-seven year term as prisoners of war
• They were finally freed in 1913 and given the option of remaining in Oklahoma or  returning to the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico. On the Mescalero  Reservation the Chiricahua first attempted to keep their tribal identity  separate, but eventually they intermarried with the Mescalero and Lipan Apache

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• The solution which  was originally conceived for the Apache, as for most other Indian groups, was   the  reservation system. In theory the Indians were granted for their exclusive use,  and in perpetuity, a tract of land sufficiently large to permit them to maintain  an independent, agrarian society
• The Indians would not or could not settle down to a life as small farmers at a  time when such a means of livelihood was already becoming outmoded in  surrounding America. For Apache and Anglo alike, a growing dependence on  manufactured goods created a need for cash, which could not be provided through  subsistence  farming