Chiricahua ( ) is a band of Apache Native Americans.
Based in the Southern Plains and Southwestern United States, the Chiricahua historically shared a common area, language, customs, and intertwined family relations with their fellow Apaches. At the time of European contact, they had a territory of in Southwestern New Mexico and Southeastern Arizona in the United States and in Northern Sonora and Chihuahua in Mexico.
Today Chiricahua live in Northern Mexico and in the United States where they are primarily enrolled in three federally recognized tribes: the Fort Sill Apache Tribe, located near Apache, Oklahoma, with a small reservation outside Deming, New Mexico; the Mescalero Apache Tribe of the Mescalero Reservation near Ruidoso, New Mexico; and the San Carlos Apache Tribe in southeastern Arizona.
Name The Chiricahua Apache, also written as Chiricagui, Apaches de Chiricahui, Chiricahues, Chilicague, Chilecagez, and Chiricagua, were given that name by the Spanish. The White Mountain Coyotero Apache, including the Cibecue and Bylas groups of the Western Apache, referred to the Chiricahua by the name Ha'i’ą́há, while the San Carlos Apache called them Hák'ą́yé which means ″Eastern Sunrise″, or ″People in the East″. Sometimes they adapted this appellation and referred to themselves also as Ha’ishu Na gukande ('Sunrise People'). The Mescalero Apache called the Western Apache and Chiricahua bands to their west Shá'i'áõde ("Western Apache People", "The People of the Sunset", "The People of the West"), when referring only to Chiricahuas they used Ch'úk'ânéõde ("People of a ridge or mountainside [made of loose rocks]") or sometimes Tã'aa'ji k'ee'déõkaa'õde ("The Ones who are Covered [with breech cloths]"). Navajo refer to the Chiricahua as Chíshí ("Southern People").
The Chiricahua autonym, or name by which they refer to themselves, is simply (depending on dialect) Nde, Ne, Néndé, Héndé, Hen-de or õne ("The People, Men", "the People of"); they never called themselves ″Apaches". The Chiricahua referred to outsiders, such as Americans, Mexicans or other Indians, as Enee, ⁿdáa or Indah / N'daa. This word has two possible meanings, the first being "strange people, non-Apache people" or "enemy", but another being "eye". Sometimes it is said that all Apaches referred to the Americans and European settlers (with exception of the Mexicans) as Bi'ndah-Li'ghi' / Bi'nda-li'ghi'o'yi ("White Eyes"), but this seems a name from Mescalero and Lipan Apache bands, as the Chiricahua bands called them Daadatlijende, meaning "Blue/green eye people" or Indaaɫigáí / Indaaɫigánde meaning "White skinned or pale colored people" or literally "Strange, non-Apache people, which are white-skinned"). Łigáí means "it is white" or it can be translate as "it is pale colored". The í on the end usually translates as "the one that is", but in the context of human beings, can mean "the group who are".
Language The Chiricahua language (n'dee biyat'i) is a Southern Athabaskan language from the Na-dene language family. It is very closely related to Mescalero, and more distantly related to Western Apache. It's considered a national language of Mexico and is regulated by the Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas.
Culture and organization Several loosely affiliated bands of Apache came improperly to be usually known as the Chiricahuas. These included the Chokonen (recte: Tsokanende), the Chihenne (recte: Tchihende), the Nednai (Nednhi) and Bedonkohe (recte, both of them together: Ndendahe). Today, all are commonly referred to as Chiricahua, but they were not historically a single band nor the same Apache division, being more correctly identified, all together, as "Central Apaches".
Many other bands and groups of Apachean language-speakers ranged over eastern Arizona and the American Southwest. The bands that are grouped under the Chiricahua term today had much history together: they intermarried and lived alongside each other, and they also occasionally fought with each other. They formed short-term as well as longer alliances that have caused scholars to classify them as one people.Debo, pp. 9–13.
The Apachean groups and the Navajo peoples were part of the Athabaskan migration into the North American continent from Asia, across the Bering Strait from Siberia. As the people moved south and east into North America, groups splintered off and became differentiated by language and culture over time. Some anthropologists believe that the Lipan Apache and the Navajo were pushed south and west into what is now New Mexico and Arizona by pressure from other Great Plains Indians, such as the Comanche and Kiowa. Among the last of such splits were those that resulted in the formation of the different Apachean bands whom the later Europeans encountered: the southwestern Apache groups and the Navajo. Although both speaking forms of Southern Athabaskan, the Navajo and Apache have become culturally distinct.
The "Chihenne (Tchihende)", "Nednai/Nednhi (Ndendahe)" and "Bedonkohe" intermarried sometimes with Mescalero Bands of New Mexico and Chihuahua and formed alliances with them; therefore their Mescalero kin did know the names of Chiricahua bands and local groups: Chíhéõde ("The People of Red Ceremonial Paint", "The Red Ceremonial Paint People"), Ndé'ndaa'õde / Ndé'ndaaõde ("The Apache People (who live among) Enemies") and Bidáõ'kaõde / Bidáõ'kahéõde ("The People whom We Met", "The People whom We Came Upon"), The Mescalero use the term -õde, -éõde, -néõde, or -héõde ("the people of") instead of the Chiricahua Nde, Ne, Néndé, Héndé, Hen-de or õne ("the people of").
Dances Chiricahuas from Mexico participate every year in the Fiesta de los Remedios in Comonfort, Guanajuato representing and performing their traditional dances and other ceremonies.
Religion The major Chiricahuan deity is called Ussen, an all-powerful creator figure. Other figures in Chiricahuan mythology include White Painted Woman, a virgin who offered herself in sacrifice to end a drought, and her son, Child of the Waters.
Hoddentin, ceremonially prepared cattail pollen, is used in many Chiricahuan rituals. John Gregory Bourke recorded that the Chiricahua offered hoddentin to the sun, threw it after snakes, and used it in medicine dances and around dying people.
Other traditional practices include death rituals and puberty ceremonies for young women. Caves, waterways, and birthplaces hold special spiritual significance.
History
Great Migration The Athabaskan ancestors of the Chiricahua people migrated south from Canada along the Rocky Mountains. Historians disagree on the exact dates of the migration, with estimates ranging from the early 1100s to about 1500. Historian Jack D. Forbes speculates that there may have been two or more mass migrations during this time period.
18th century The Tsokanende (Chiricahua) Apache division was once led, from the beginning of the 18th century, by chiefs such as Pisago Cabezón, Relles, Posito Moraga, Yrigollen, Tapilá, Teboca, Vívora, Miguel Narbona, Esquinaline, and finally Cochise (whose name was derived from the Apache word Cheis, meaning "having the quality of oak") and, after his death, his sons Tahzay and, later, Naiche, under the guardianship of Cochise's war chief and brother-in-law Nahilzay, and the independent chiefs Chihuahua, Ulzana, Skinya and Pionsenay; Tchihende (Mimbreño) people was led, during the same period, by chiefs as Juan José Compa, Fuerte also known as Soldado Fiero, Mangas Coloradas, Cuchillo Negro, Delgadito, Ponce, Nana, Victorio, Loco, Mangus; Ndendahe (Mogollón and Carrizaleño / Janero) Apache people, in the meanwhile, was led by Mahko and, after him, Mano Mocha, Coleto Amarillo, Luis, Laceres, Felipe, Natiza, and finally Juh and Goyaałé (known to the Americans as Geronimo). After Victorio's death, Nana, Gerónimo, Mangus (youngest Mangas Coloradas' son) and youngest Cochise's son Naiche were the last leaders of the Central Apaches, and their mixed Apache group was the last to continue to resist U.S. government control of the American Southwest.Thrapp, p. 366.
European-Apache relations From the beginning of European-Apache relations, there was conflict between them. The two groups contested the control of land and trade routes in Apacheria, and their cultural differences made it oftentimes difficult to negotiate treaties and policies between. Their encounters were preceded by more than 100 years of Spanish colonial and Mexican incursions and settlement on the Apache lands, which pushed Apache tribes northward and exacerbated the martial nature of their society.Thrapp pp. 6–8 The United States settlers were newcomers to the competition for land and resources in the Southwest, but they inherited its complex history, and brought their own attitudes with them about American Indians and how to use the land. By the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, the US took on the responsibility to prevent and punish cross-border incursions by Apache who were raiding in Mexico.Thrapp p. 7
The Apache viewed the United States colonists with ambivalence, and in some cases enlisted them as allies in the early years against the Mexicans. In 1852, the US and some of the Chiricahua signed a treaty, but it had little lasting effect.Thrapp p. 19 During the 1850s, American miners and settlers began moving into Chiricahua territory, beginning encroachment that had been renewed in the migration to the Southwest of the previous two decades.
This forced the Apachean people to change their lives as nomads, free on the land. The US Army defeated them and forced them into the confinement of reservation life, on lands ill-suited for subsistence farming, which the US proffered as the model of civilization. Today, the Chiricahua are preserving their culture as much as possible, while forging new relationships with the peoples around them. The Chiricahua are considereda part of the greater American whole and yet distinct based on their history and culture.
Hostilities
Although they had lived peaceably with most Americans in the New Mexico Territory up to about 1860,Debo p. 42. the Chiricahua became increasingly hostile to American encroachment in the Southwest after a number of provocations had occurred between them.
In 1835, Mexico had placed a bounty on Apache scalps which further inflamed the situation. In 1837 Warm Springs Mimbreños' head chief and famed raider Soldado Fiero also known as Fuerte was killed by Mexican soldiers of the garrison at Janos (only two days' travel from Santa Rita del Cobre), and his son Cuchillo Negro succeeded him as head chief and went to war against Chihuahua for revenge. In the same 1837, the American John (also known as James) Johnson invited the Coppermine Mimbreños in the Pinos Altos area to trade with his party (near the mines at Santa Rita del Cobre, New Mexico) and, when they gathered around a blanket on which pinole (a ground corn flour) had been placed for them, Johnson and his men opened fire on the Chihenne with rifles and a concealed cannon loaded with scrap iron, glass, and a length of chain. They killed about 20 Apache, including the chief Juan José Compá.Roberts: p. 36. Mangas Coloradas is said to have witnessed this attack, which inflamed his and other Apache warriors' desires for vengeance for many years; he led the survivors to safety and subsequently, together with Cuchillo Negro, took Mimbreño revenge. The historian Rex W. Strickland argued that the Apache had come to the meeting with their own intentions of attacking Johnson's party, but were taken by surprise.Strickland, Rex W. (Autumn 1976) "The Birth and Death of a Legend: The Johnson Massacre of 1837"], Arizona and the West, Vol. 18, No. 3. pp. 257–86. In 1839 scalp-hunter James Kirker was employed by Robert McKnight to re-open the road to Santa Rita del Cobre.