[Music] Howdy. All right, so today's topic is the Apaches. And uh I imagine that most of you have a little bit of a stereotype of what Native Americans look like. So, I thought I'd put this out there just to sort of break that a little bit because the Apaches had a very distinct style. Actually, every Native American group has a very distinct style. It's just I think at some level this one's even a little bit more distinct. Um, so that was a crown dance and uh there are three Apache religious ceremonies left in the world. We we don't know how many there were at one point, you know, probably something like a dozen. But the genocide that they underwent caused not just a loss in life, but it also caused a catastrophic cultural destruction as well. And the three ceremonies, I'm actually not sure which one that was. Uh it it what the three ceremonies are when boys become a man, there's a gan dance. I'll explain that later. And then the most important ceremony in Apache society is when a woman when a girl becomes a woman. So the Apaches are matrinal and matrinal. In other words, your family comes through your mother, not through your father. And so when you're with your mother's family, you say Mr. and miss to your aunts because you have to and uncles because you have to show them respect. But when you were his father's family, you use first names because you don't have to show them respect. It's that kind of a society. That's the matrinal part. The matrolo part is when you marry, you move in with your wife's family. And uh as a result, divorce is actually kind of interesting because only women can own property. Men can't own property. So when you get divorced, if a woman initiates the divorce, she takes your saddle and your equipment and she puts it outside. So when you come home and you see your equipment in front of the door, you know you've been divorced and you take your stuff and you go. If you want if you're a man and you want to divorce your wife, you grab your stuff, all of it, and you pack it on your horse and you leave and never come back. And that's that's the way that that goes. So in Apache culture, you want to have girls because as soon as your boys become adults, they marry and leave the house. But if you have girls, then when they marry, they're going to bring you sons to. So you want to you want to mix obviously, but uh it made it so that the Apache culture really revolved around women at some level. I'm going to show you that it it ends up being upended when they go to war. But still to this day, they have this feature of being matrinal, matrinal, and the woman's ceremony is still the most important ceremony. It is also a giant economic event. So, the family is expected to put out huge amounts of money, give gifts, and and to this day, they're still doing this. Uh, and so it's actually very expensive. So I I should do some disclosure things before I go too deeply into this. Um I first actually did live in Apacheria uh in 1987. Um I lived in a few towns in the area of the Churikawa which is the Apache group that I'm going to be focusing on. Um I lived in Herford and uh Alfreda and Pierce uh Willox area. So if you look at a map later on, I was in southeast Arizona and that's when I started to get interested in in Apaches and Apache culture cuz it became painfully clear that I was living in a space that had been gone through ethnic cleansing. And and then as I became aware of that, it it became this, oh, I should know something about the population of people who were living here before. Um, I'm I'm not Native American. I don't have any Native American ancestry. So, I'm coming at this as an outsider looking in. So, I'm probably going to make mistakes and it but I'm going to do it anyway as a fool because that's part of being a historian anyway is you assume you know enough that you should be able to talk about a subject in the hope that at least it starts a conversation if nothing else. Um, all right. So having gotten that disclosure out of the way, uh let me start with a little bit of background. So the Apache are a type of Aabaskcan. The Aabaskcans are the second to the last group of people to cross from Asia into North America. The last people are the Enoit. They're right in front of the Enowit. They were living in uh northwestern Canada until sometime around seven or so hundred years ago and then they split into two groups. One group is still there. They still live in northwestern Canada. The other group migrated south and went into the great plains and then about 600 years ago they arrived in what is today Arizona and New Mexico. And I'm saying about 600 years ago. We don't really have a firm date of when the Apache arrived. It could have been more recent than that. Maybe 500 years ago. It may be further back. There's just no real evidence that it is further back. The one thing some people point to is northern Arizona, northern New Mexico, southern Colorado, and southern Utah had a massive confederacy that lasted for a few centuries there that most people call the Anastasia, although some people call Anastasia. There's no T in it. It's Anastasia. Um, the the people who are the descendants call them the Hatsanome. So, I'll refer to them as a hisatenome. Um, the Confederacy was actually a giant food insurance policy when they first established it. They they were living in an area that had plenty of agricultural land, but the rainfall wasn't consistent all the time. And so, it was entirely possible that you would get a great crop for 10 years in a row and then the 11th year you you had drought, but a few miles away everybody's fine and they had plenty of rainfall. So what they began to do is cooperate. If we get into trouble, we'll tell you, you send us food. If you get into trouble, you tell us, we'll send you food. And they actually built roads to connect themselves all together. They built stone cities. And they built towers and they would do fire and smoke signals on the towers and they could just communicate right across the Confederacy for hundreds of kilometers almost instantaneously. Right? It's it's going to take a few hours to get across the Confederacy. But in this way, they could talk about whatever crisis is going on and then send signals back. Okay, we'll help you manage this crisis. That confederacy built beautiful cities. They're they're all over southern Colorado, southern Utah, northern Arizona, northern New Mexico. You could spend months traveling around the area, bouncing from place to place. I've tried to see as much as I ca I can and I know I've seen a lot of it but there's still more because some of it's hasn't been you know worked on archaeologically. They suddenly collapsed and by the way there was a civilization south of that uh they were called the Mogon or we call them the Mogon. Um that that was southern New Mexico, southern Arizona and then northern Chihuahua and northern Sonora and they also collapsed right about the same time right around the year 1200 give or take 50 years. We don't really know why both civilizations went down. One hypothesis is that they ended up in warfare and the warfare their economy was too fragile and they couldn't sustain the warfare and they collapsed. I'm not convinced of that for a couple of reasons. There isn't enough evidence for violence. There's evidence that they took defensive positions, but there isn't, you know, like I want to see burnt towns with broken arrowheads and fractured skulls here and there. And I don't think there's enough of that. Um, but one hypothesis that's out there is the Apaches arrived and they brought down those two civilizations. I think it's much more likely that the uh climate changed in part because we have the evidence that it's it's 100% the climate changed and rainfall suddenly became really scarce in the area. And what I think they did was they just simply abandoned the Confederacy and moved to better agricultural land that had more consistent access to water. They probably also suffered from population decline because their agricultural system failed and so uh it was easier to support a smaller population on less land and so they just simply abandoned their their civilization. Uh their descendants are still around. The Zouri are probably the descendants of the Moon. The Hopi and the PBLO are probably the descendants of the Hatsenom. So, if you're ever in the area, you can go actually make direct contact with the descendants of those two civilizations. Um, it's what's very likely is that the Apaches after getting into the Great Plains weren't welcome and were sort of nudged out and ended up going into Arizona, New Mexico and then ended up going to the parts of Hisatenome and Mogon territory that had effectively been abandoned and then occupied it. Well, the reason that the Hisatenome and the Mogon had abandoned it was it wasn't good land. In other words, the Apaches got the reject land. And if they did really move there 600 years ago, this is before there are horses, right? Because European contact eur the European genocide hasn't begun yet and there's no cows and there's no chickens. They're hunting deer and they're trying to survive in this kind of harsh environment where there's a little bit of agricultural land but not much. Uh there are about three pockets of land that you could grow stuff on. It wasn't good enough to support the Apache population. So they're gathering, they're hunting, and they're doing marginal agriculture. Pretty quickly, the Apache begin raiding. So the Apache have possibly the fiercest uh reputation of all the Native American nations in what is today the United States. Um they're they maybe even have the worst reputation of all the Native American nations. Um they're they're competing. There's others. So uh the Comanche they got their name from the Utes. Comanche in Ute means enemies. But the Apache have the same name. Apachu in Zouri means enemies. So when we call the Apache the Apache, we're literally calling them the enemies. Um they called themselves NDay. So the Apache began raiding which made them extraordinarily unpopular with the people around them. So I want to clarify something. Apaches had two very distinct institutions, hostile institutions. One was raiding and one was war. They did not think they were the same in any way, shape or form. So, the Apaches had an extraordinarily democratic society. When it was time to go hunting, they would elect the leader for the hunt. If they were going to do some basket weaving, they would elect a leader to run the basket weaving. If they were going to go gather nuts, they would elect a leader to to to be in charge of the nut gathering. If they were going to go raid, they would have a raider leader. That guy might not become the war leader because they're two completely different things. raiding. It's the objective in raiding was not to allow violence to happen. Your goal was to sneak in, steal, get out. If if violence does occur, it is very likely that raider won't be elected for the next event. That was right because he failed. Nobody's supposed to get hurt. Not the other side, not the Apache side. Because think about it, if you do get into a fight, not only does it risk your life, which you know, you're trying to get some wealth or some food and you're risking your life for it. Why? But also, what happens if you kill the other guy? He's not going to continue to produce or she's not going to produce goods for you for your next raid. So, you don't want to do violence. Your goal is get in, get out. War was something the Apaches very reluctantly did. You had to really put it to them. And if you did it enough times, because the first few times they would, oh, okay, they didn't understand. There was a cultural miscommunication. We have to give them the benefit of the doubt. They were a very patient culture. And they would allow multiple incidents before they would go, "Okay, that's it. We have to get rid of these people. They're they're they're too bad." And then they go to war. Then the objective is killing. So, just so we're clear, they didn't start when they would raid, they they were annoying because nobody wants to be stolen from, but they weren't doing this out of malice or they weren't doing this as a as a brutal thing. They they weren't being violent. So, there are multiple Apache groups, let me say rephrase that, tribes. There are multiple Apache tribes. Um, the Plains Apache. So some of the Apaches actually stayed in the Great Plains. They stayed they they their homeland is Oklahoma which is you know where the United States piled a bunch of Native American nations. They were already there so they didn't have to be relocated. They were really great friends with the Kya and for the longest time the Plains Apache were called Kya Apache. um they don't go by that anymore, but they're still friends with the Kaioa and they they they sort of merge the two nations, but without merging them. So, they still speak their own language, have their own culture. They just hang out together. Um to the south of that in Texas were the Leipen Apache. Uh they're actually quite far east. They were east of the POS River and they sometimes would go all the way into the Austin area. So, they would go right into central Texas. To the west of them are the messcalero. They the way to think of their area was a bit of western Texas and then the south uh east corner of New Mexico. To the west of them are the Churikawa. That's the focus of tonight's talk. They were southwest New Mexico, southeast Arizona, uh northwest Chihuahua and northeast Sonora. So they were on both sides of the the current US Mexico border. uh to the north of them or the northwest were the Coyotero. They're still there. They're in the San Juan and uh White Mountain Apache reservations. And then to the north of that is the largest nation in uh the United States, the largest Native American nation. They are the Navajo. They own about a quarter of Arizona, about 10% of New Mexico, and about 5% of Utah. They are fabulously well off. They've done great and they have a massive population. They're about 400,000 people. They've passed the Cherokee and are in first place. The Cherokee are about 400,000 people as well. I you can see their style is actually very different than I think what most people when you think of Native Americans what they look like. Um this is Geronomo here. That's Niche. He's actually the leader of this group. We'll talk about this group later. And I believe this is fun. Fun N. That was his name. It wasn't really his name, but that's what the white soldiers called him. He was great. Everybody loved him at parties. Uh I'm sure that's how that worked. Uh this is actually quite late in our story. This picture, I believe, was taken in 1885 in Mexico. And uh they were at war. So the the pictures that were taken during this time period, I believe, I could be wrong about this, but are the only pictures ever taken of Native Americans while they were at war with the United States. Usually the pictures are taken after the surrender. And uh I don't know about you, but they look really scary and intimidating to me. U I wouldn't want to go to war with them by any means. So to the east of the Navajo are the Hikaria and they have a reservation. It's right in the center of northern New Mexico. Um there are other Apache reservations, the Yavapai Apache, the Tanto Apache, but we don't need to go into all that detail. I just wanted to give you the big tribes. The tribes then got broken down into bands. And since I'm focusing on the Churikawa, I'll tell you the four Churikawa bands. So the eastern one is the chihen. And by the way, it's sometimes pronounced chiende. I don't know uh if chennai is right or chai is right. I'm just going to go with what I know and just keep saying chenn. Uh they were large in population and they had a lot of influence over what the Cherikawa did and and and the decision-making, the leadership for the Cherikawa. to the uh west of that were the Taconan and they occupied southwest corner of Arizona and then part of what is now Mexico inside Mexico where then uh Nednai they're they never really wanted to be in the United States and so they kind of had this tendency to just stay in Mexico and then to the north of the chonan were the badon so one of the first contact events the Apache had with the Spanish was indirect contact and it is through oral traditions that we know about this but it's not confirmed. So right there's no archaeological evidence for this. Um, so it's just simply part of Apache legend and that is that when the Aztecs were conquered by the Spaniards, according to the Apache, a group of Aztecs moved north and entered into Apacheria and tried to settle there and the Apaches fought them and defeated them and drove them off. And that may or may not have happened. But you when you think about what it must have been like for the Apache as they're fighting the Aztecs to go to have to be told probably by the by the Aztecs, you should see what just destroyed us because everybody knew of the Aztecs there. The trade routes that were that existed in North America stretched from Central America all the way into Wyoming. So there, in other words, it wasn't that these different Native American nations had no contact with each other. When the Aztecs showed up, the Apaches were probably thinking, "Oh, I think I know who these guys are. Why are they here? We better fight them." And uh so that's possibly true. You know what? I forgot to talk about religion a little bit. I wanted to point that out real quick. The Apache were monotheists. They had one god, the god Usen, and then they had this concept of Gan. And Gan were spirits that inhabited mountains. So you could you could get access to power through the GAN if you did a ceremony or if you knew how to tap into that power. Um, it's hard to describe what power is. It's it's like um maybe you could think of it as like blessing or luck, but it it's more than that. It's also charisma. I think a lot of people would try to apply the term magic to it, but a person who has power can influence people. They can lead people. They can predict things. So, it's also a little bit of intelligence. And so, but it's dangerous. You want to be really careful with power. In other words, if you get access to power through a corrupt means, it'll corrupt you. If you get access to power and you're a corrupt person, you'll corrupt it. So, you you your goal is to try to be a good person and do the right thing. They did have a concept of the afterlife, but I'm unclear what that looked like. Uh Geronomo says Gono said that he didn't understand what the afterlife in their religion was like either. So, I might not be the only one who is unclear about that. In any case, after this contact with the Aztecs, there really isn't any meaningful contact with the Spanish until the 1600s. And the reason it happens is by that point, the Spanish Empire has been slowly conquering north, expanding, ethnically cleansing and genociding its way towards California, towards New Mexico. and they get to Chihuahua and at that point they're now starting to make contact with the with the Apaches. The Apaches are probably getting horses right around then uh because horses have been getting free and wild and the Apache take to horses like there's no tomorrow. They become amazing horse riders. They would travel just extraordinary distances in one day. Now they would switch the horse they were riding with other horses to stay on the saddle. But, you know, there are rumors that the Apaches could go 70 miles in a single day, which blows my mind. They in an emergency, they would just ride their horses to death and then switch to a next horse and just keep going. But I can't comprehend staying in the saddle that long and and being alive at the end. Um, so I don't know how they did it. And of course, this is rough terrain. It's desert. It's filled with cactus. There's mountains. You're right. It's they're not going through, you know, pleasant Irish countryides or something. This is this is a rough place. Rattlesnakes. Although I have to say I love rattlesnakes. They are the politest thing the world has ever seen. You get too close and you're like, "Oh, okay. That's cool. Thanks for warning me." Like, I don't know why people kill them. If they didn't have the rattle, maybe kill them cuz like what? You're not going to at least warn me you're here? Uh, one of the cool things about killing them is the rattlesnakes that are born with birth defects that have rattles that don't make sound don't get killed. Maybe stop killing the ones that are making the sound. Just kill the ones that didn't. Same. That's why you should learn about evolution so you can apply it in your daily life. Anyway, uh, it's going to be really bad in in 20 years when there's no rattlesnakes rattling. They're just biting people. Honestly, they don't want to bite you, right? That's why they have the rattle. They're like, "Look, I'm here." You know, the first time you walk up on that, it is alarming. The a friend of mine, we were It was this big. I swear it was this M. And it was coiled up. It was like out of a scene out of a movie. And I'm like, I know that sound. What is that sound? As we're getting closer and closer, I know what And then I see it finally and I'm like, "Oh, hi." And we walked like half a kilometer just to go around them. All right. So they they make contact. The Apaches are raiding because that's what they do. They're raiders. And this of course really annoys the Spaniards. But the Spaniards build forts and they try to prevent the raiding. And it's not a particularly interesting time period in part because we don't really have many records. We don't really know what happened. The next major change though takes place right around the year 1800. Copper is discovered right in the middle of the Chihenn uh area, the area that the Chenn live in at a place that will in 1803 become Santaita del Cobra. So the Mexican and Spaniards, Mexicans are Native Americans who speak Spanish and are Catholic and Spaniards who are from Europe and are, you know, like genetically like one-third Roman, one-third Arab, and one-third Kelt with a Sorry, I forgot the German. They're like one quarter German, one quarter Arab, one quarter Kelt, and one quarter Roman. Uh, and they eat Arab food and use Arabic words. So, um, the the Spaniards and their genocidal maniacs, uh, probably, I mean, the Mongols were would have been jealous, you know what I mean? Like, oh, you took this to a whole new level. I'm so mad. Why couldn't we have found the Americas first? Um, so the Spaniards and Mexicans begin to move into Senorita del Cobra. And at first the Apaches are like, "Okay, let's see what comes out of this." And before long, things go bad. And then in 1810, Mexico declares its independence from the Spanish Empire and fights an 11-year brutal war of independence. In 1821, they get their independence. At by that point, the relationship between the settlers in Satia del Cobra and the Apache has completely fallen apart and it's become violent. The Mexican the brand new Mexican state which was originally the empire of Mexico and then it three years later they they changed their constitution and they become the United Mexican. Th those two states decided they hated the Apaches and began fighting them really hard. In 1835, the tyrant who's just overthrown the Mexican democracy and installed him he he was actually the president. He overthrew himself. He's the first person to my knowledge to overthrow himself and install a tyranny. His name was Santa Anna. Worst worst ruler in North American history at least until recently. Um, so Santa Anna, by the way, he kept coming back. Like he kept getting back into power. He'd get taken out of power. He'd come back. He just wouldn't go away. And he introduced chewing gum to the United States. That's like his great cultural legacy is he was chewing gum in New York. Well, Staten Island hadn't been annexed by New York yet, but you get the idea. And somebody went, "What's in your mouth? You've been chewing it for like an hour." and he pulls it out and then next thing you know everybody's chilling in. So, uh, Santa Anna decides he's done with the Apaches and he puts out a hit on them for their scalps. If you brought home, if you brought to the government a male scalp, it was $100. A female scalp, it was 50 bucks. And a child's scalp was 25. Uh, they apparently didn't know how babies were made. I would have made the women $500 and then $5 for the men, you know, just just just for grins and giggles. Get the men. But really should be f anyway. You know, it's weird how people don't think these things through. Like if you're going to do genocide, at least try to figure out how this works first. I just I've never understood this. So that goes into effect in 1835. In 1837, a group of white people from the United States have had been moving into the area to do fur trapping, and they went, "Oh, this is sort of like an alternative form of fur." And they got involved. A guy named John Johnson lures a group of Apaches to Santaita del Cobre for a for a trade event. And then once they're sitting down, because they he brought he bought them food and he sets up the food. Once they're sitting down, he attacks them and he murders about 20 of them, including their chief, a guy by the name of um Compa, Juan Jose Compa. We'll get to this picture later, too. Uh this is Geronimo over here. Uh and this guy is General George Crook. We'll talk about him later though. We don't need to talk about him now. Um, so they kill Compa and he he gets replaced um by a guy named Mangus Colorus which means red sleeves. I've only ever seen black and white pictures of him obviously and it looks like his shirt was red and he had white sleeves so I'm very confused by his name but we're going to go with it anyway. Mangas Colorado. He was 6'6. I don't know what that is in centimeters. Uh and he he definitely had power. By the time he is done sort of establishing himself as the chief of the chahane, he's no longer just the chief of the chenn. He is the the local chief for the area and he had a lot of daughters and what he did with his daughters was he actually married them off and sent them to other chiefs so that he could link into them. So Coochis marries one. He sends a daughter to the Mescalerero. Um and so there's all these guys running around with Mangus Colorado, his daughters, and they're they're influencing, right? Because this is a matrinal matrolo society. It's the women have enormous authority, enormous power and enormous influence. So um Mangus Colorado goes to war against the Mexicans and over the next few years basically destroys most of the communities in the area. At one point uh the Mexican population realizes it's not sustainable. They can't stay and they start trying to flee and Mangus Colorado hunts them down and kills like 80 of them as they're escaping. that creates a type of peace because there's just nobody to be in conflict with that lasts really until about uh 1851. What happens is in 1835, remember that Santa Ana guy? So he in his desire to destroy his democracy triggers a re series of revolutions across Mexico and a bunch of states go into rebellion. In fact uh three of them will declare their independence. Yucatan, the Republic of Rio Grande and the Republic of Texas and Santa Ana will fight all of them and get defeated by the Republic of Texas in 1836. So all of a sudden now there's this new state, the Republic of Texas. United States is especially interested in this because the Republic of Texas's first president, a man named Sam Houston. By the way, it's also their third president. He doesn't want Texas to be independent. He wants Texas to turn around and immediately join the United States. And the United States not only wants Texas, it wants the northern half of Mexico. And when I say northern half, I'm not trying to be like exaggerating or inflammatory. I mean they wanted to cut Mexico 50/50 and they were going to take the northern half. And before we go any further, I just want to point out they succeed in doing this. The two largest states in population in the United States are California and Texas, both formerly Mexico. They're not just the largest in population, they're the largest in GDP. Those two states combined are 25% of the United States's GDP. In other words, literally the best real estate in the United States is former Mexico. So at this point, the United States is trying to figure out how it can drum up a fake war against the Mexican population so that they can carve off the northern half. And uh they succeed in 1846. We the United States goes to war with Mexico. And as as US troops are traveling through Arizona and New Mexico, they make contact with the Apaches. And the Apaches go, "Enemy of an enemy is a friend. Welcome. You're you just travel through freely. Go get them. We'll just be here watching. We're sick of fighting them." And so, a new form of peace sort of sets in. And then in 1851, a group of white settlers from the United States show up in Sanarita del Cobra because they heard there was copper there. And so the Aztecs are like, I'm sorry, the Aztecs, the Apaches are like, "Oh my god, are we doing this again? I don't know that we want to do this again." And they enter into a series of negotiations with the um with with the American settlers and they end up making a deal and everything is smoothed over and the copper miners begin to work on digging the copper up. But that also happens to be the year that violence with Mexico is re-triggered. A group of Chiian and Badonah Apache go to a town called Hanos in northern Chihuahua thinking that there's peace between them and the Mexican population to do trade. They set up a camp and the men go out hunting to hunt they're hunting deer. And while they're hunting deer, the Mexican army shows up and slaughters the women and children in the camp. So when the men come back, they find their families killed. One of those men is a guy named Goyakla. Goyakla will get the name Geronimo. Goyakla's mother, wife, and three children were at the camp and all five were slaughtered. Alopee was his first wife's name. He will marry another eight times. He was a widowerower eight times. Mostly his wives got killed by the Mexican army. And so for Geronimo, he was in a permanent state of war against Mexico because he was constantly trying to get vengeance for the deaths the repeated deaths of his families. Um, so that's 8 1851. So now there's a new war against the Mexican population, but there's sort of this nice little peace thing going on with the United States and everything seems okay. 1854 though, there's a political shift. So when the United States conquered the northern half of Mexico, they messed up. And after they took it and made the treaty and drew the borders, they sent survey teams out to figure out where the the railroads were going to go to to California. And they realized that they didn't annex enough of Mexico. There was a there was a really bad set of mountains that would make for an ugly railroad track, but if they had just moved the border a little bit further south, they'd have a perfect spot to run the railroad. So, the United States went back to Mexico and said, "Hey, sorry to bring this up. you're probably kind of still bitter about us taking the northern 50% of your country, but we want a little bit more. And Mexico goes, "Well, let's talk." So, they work out a deal. And the deal is that the United States will retroactively pay for the northern half of Mexico. They don't pay enough, obviously, but it it does mean a cash infusion into the Mexican economy. And they will take responsibility for the one thing driving Mexico bonkers, the Apache. The Cherikawa Apache to be precise. So up until this point, the Cherikawa Apache were mostly in Mexico. The the Chihen were actually largely in the United States, but the other three uh bands were actually in Mexico. When they draw the new border, it's called the Gadsden purchase. When they draw it, they drop New Mexico and Arizona's border down a little bit further south and they end up grabbing all of the bands except the net and I and then a little bit of cha chic and land gets left in Mexico. And so the United States promises that even the net and will be their responsibility that they're going to manage this Apache problem for Mexico. And so, um, the Apache don't fully get what this means yet, right? Because they're, what does this mean? The border just moved again, but they're going to figure it out soon. In 1861, well, 1860, there's a town called Pinos Altos. Uh, it's not actually far from Santaita. By the way, Santaita doesn't exist anymore. It is a giant open pit copper mine. If you do this later, get on your favorite map application and type in Santaorita, it'll take you there. So, you can go and then just make sure you put it in satellite and you will just see this giant hole. There's actually three more of these in Apache. There's another one in Bisby, another one in Clifton, Morreny, and then there's one that's like halfway between Santa Mar s uh Santaita and Clifton Moreny. And uh it turned out the Apache were sitting on top of a lot of copper. So anyway, they find gold in Pinostos and the Apaches are like, "Well, okay, another group of miners. The the ones in Sanarita are fine, so we can leave them alone." One of the things the Apaches did was they didn't see all people from the United States as being the same. They saw them in categories. So they were cattle ranchers, fur trappers, miners, the army. They did. And so for example, they never had a hostile relationship with the cattle ranchers. That didn't mean they didn't raid them. They did, but they were always careful not to take too many cattle. You know, like a cow here or there. Never anything crazy. The cattle ranchers were cool. And then the cattle ranchers just saw it as Apache tax and everybody got along. And in a way it was good because then the Apaches were keeping bandits from taking the cattle, right? Because the Apaches are like, "No, no, those are ours. You can't have these." So in the in the midst of this by 1861 the gold miners don't understand the Apache and the Apache don't have the concept of trespassing. So when the Apache are like hanging out in the Posalus area they and the miners start shooting at them because the miners are thinking you want our gold the Apache don't get it and it starts a new wave of violence and now there's shooting back and forth. Um it and then to make matters more interesting at the same time there's an event in Arizona. In Arizona the Chicon chief is a guy named Coochis and uh Coochis has a lot of respect. People really like him. He clearly is focused on peace. He likes trade. He's all about making relationships. He's a just ruler. And so he he's been moving up in the ranks. He's married to Mangus, Colorado is his daughter. So that's been helping him gain even more prestige. And a boy is kidnapped from the Ward Ranch in Arizona by a group of Apache who are then seen heading east. Well, east from the Ward Ranch was the direction of the Chakonan. So the white authorities in the area went, "Oh, it must have been the Cherikawa who attacked this ranch. They captured horses. They captured cattle and they captured the stepson of Ward, a boy, a 12-year-old named Felix Ward. Well, when a guy named Bas shows up to get Felix Ward back, Coochis goes, "I don't know what you're talking about. We never did this raid, that wasn't us." It turns out it was the Coyoteros. Felix Ward gets found years later. He was raised by the Coyoteros and he will become a scout for the United States Army. uh because he basically was an Apache at that point because he'd spent, you know, a decade of his life living amongst them. Um but at that moment, Baskam is convinced Coochis is lying. Coochis is like, "I would give you the 12-year-old kid. I don't want him. He's not here. We didn't do this." Bas arrests Coochis. Coochis had come in with family members because he just assumed this was something they could talk away. He didn't he didn't realize this was this would possibly turn into an ambush. Coochis cuts his way out of the tent they've been confined in, but leaves his family members behind. He escapes and then he says, "Please let my family go." Baskam wants nothing to do with letting the family go. He's 100% certain Coois is lying. Coois attacks a group of people traveling. There's a group of Mexicans and uh users. He keeps the users, kills the Mexicans, and then since I have three of these guys, if you want them back, release my family. Bas then takes a military force and starts hunting down Coochis. Coochis flees. Long story short, the hostages are killed. Not not the women, but the men on both sides are killed. And Coochis goes to war. He's now at war with the United States Army. the United States Army comes in to Spinos Altos because where property is involved, the United States will get involved. You know what I mean? Like it was just loss of life, no big deal. No one cares. But if there's like gold or silver, something, a broken window, a car's on fire, the authorities will definitely be there. And so they show up in force. And this war is starting to get worse and worse and worse. In 1863, the army tells Mangus Colorus, "Why don't you come? Let's negotiate out a peace deal. We'll work something out." So Mangus shows up. He's arrested. And then during the night, the soldiers take their bayonets and they put them in the fire. And then they go and they keep touching the bottom of Coochis's feet. Coochis finally after being tortured for hours tries to escape and then they shoot and kill him saying he was trying to escape. And then they're not done. They cut off his head, boil off his flesh, and send his skull to a a phronology guy in the northeastern part of United States. They would touch your skull and they would tell you like things about you like, "Oh, you have a bump here. That means you you have I don't know what." and and this guy describes the skull in his book. So, we know what Mangus Colorus' skull looks like cuz he drew it and he took all these measurements. And then, uh, he lost his skull. We know Mangus Colorado's skull is in some super rich American's basement right next to his Hitler paintings. Um, it's lost. What is that? So, um, now there's a power vacuum. Coochis steps into it and he fills the gap that Mangus Colorado's had. Eventually, the Channing will have their own wararchief. His name is Victoriao. Um, but at that point, Coochis has sort of filled the the the gap of being the the Churikawa wide leader. And they're going to do a war that will last until 1872. So, it'll go another nine years, 11 years all total. By the time they're done, hundreds of US settlements are destroyed. I've seen a stat where it said 5,000 people were killed. I I feel like that's too high. It's definitely at, you know, at least 500 would be my guess. It's probably in the 1,200, maybe 2,500 range. A lot of people die on both sides. So, we don't have great numbers for the Cherawa. It is very plausible that 225 years ago, so right about the point when copper is found in Sanorita, there were around 5,000 Churikawa. By the time we get to 1872, there's about,00 left. So in other words, over the course of a 70-year span of time of fighting Mexico and fighting the United States, they've lost close to 80% of their population. So this is when I said, you know, we lost all these cultural features for the Apache. When you lose that large of a portion of your population, you're going to lose culture in the process. In 1872, both sides are exhausted. Like the United States isn't winning this. It's just the Apache are slowly being ground down. And so a group of people try to figure out how to make a peace deal. There's a a a a white American named Jeffs who had become friends with Coochis and he talks Coochis into going to the reservation. So the United States created a reservation for the Chennai, a small reservation on the Rio Grande River. And then they made a really big reservation for the ch the Chicon in what is now southeastern uh Arizona. It's almost the size of Coochis County. Isn't that cool? We did the genocide and then named the county after their their leader. It just warms the heart. Um, I have a horrible joke I shouldn't do. Are genocide jokes inappropriate? Okay. What would have What would Germany have named its helicopters if it had won World War II? The Pole, the Ukrainian, the Russian, right? The Blackhawk, the Shinook, the Apache. I mean, it is genocide humor. So, uh, why does it make me feel uncomfortable? I was the one telling the joke. Anyway, thanks. Thanks. I That's my joke, too. I take responsibility. So they make this deal where they're going to end up in this big chunk of Arizona. It's actually a really big reservation. It's their homeland and they're excited that this might just work. But more importantly, they want a break from the war. They just they're exhausted. They need a pause. In other words, the Apaches weren't completely convinced this is it. We're going to do this reservation thing for all eternity. They but they know that they have to do something to get a break from the constant warfare. The United States under supplies this reservation on a regular basis. They don't send them enough food. They don't send them enough uh m material. They don't send them like they're they need to build buildings for the reservation agency. They need to have some kind of law enforcement agency. They don't ever provide any of that stuff. Jeffs, who is madly in love with the Cherikawa, starts looking for gold. He finds gold deposits. He starts mining them. He enlists some of the Apaches to help him. And they're using the gold just to fund the reservation. Like he's not doing this to get rich. He's just trying to break even. He doesn't. He He can't keep up. There's no way to do this. They struggle like this for two years and then Coochis dies. At that point, there is no chance Jeff is going to be able to hold on to this thing. He tries and for two more years he manages to just keep this thing afloat with no central leadership. He's having to let the the Cherikawa raid Mexico cuz they're literally on the verge of starvation and if they don't start raiding they're not going to have food. And so he's turning a blind eye to this. The guy who's running the Western Apache reservations at the time called Fort Apache in in San Carlos, his name is Clum. He comes and he says that why don't you just bring the Churikawas to my reservation I have police. What he did was he actually went to the his Apaches the Coyotater Apaches the Tanto Apaches and he went I will give you badges. I will give you handguns. I will make you into police and I will I will have Apache judges. I will set up an entire Apache legal system. And they went, "Yeah, let's do it." Jeffs was worried that the Cherika would turn on each other if he did it. So he rejected it. In the end, Clum gets his way. In 1876, after just four years, the Cherika reservation is shut down and the Churikawa are relocated to the San Carlos reservation. San Carlos is not good real estate. They are put into a really bad place and they are just not making it. in 1878 after just two years in San Carlos. They can't stand being in this concentration. I mean, reservation. Oh, I always get them confused. Maybe it's cuz they're so similar. Um, they can't stand it anymore and they leave. They being Gonimo and Victoriao. Victoria ends up running around with a guy named Cabayro. Cabayro is a messero. He's got about 200 men. By 1870, he's actually in direct conflict with the United States Army. They're fighting battles against the United States cavalry. He fights six battles and wins each one in a row in the beginning of um 7 1880. Uh like from January to to April, he wins these six battles. He then goes to a town called Alma and murders 41 US people. And then he the army is coming to get him. He takes off and he heads to Mexico. He does a couple of fights in Mexico and then me the Mexican army catches him off guard. He let his guard down and at a place uh called T Castillos, they actually ambush the Victoriao and his men. Uh they kill about 70 of them. They capture about 80. The rest escape. The 80 they captured they sold into slavery. Mexico had long since gotten rid of slavery. Isn't that sucky? When the whole world has gotten rid of slavery, yet slavery still exists on the planet. We should do something about that. Uh the United States apparently has 1.1 million slaves and is ranked as one of the least enslaved populations on the planet. I'm thinking, what does that mean? Anyway, so they they got enslaved. The 50 escape, a new leader pops up for the chihenn. His name was Nana. Nana put together a force of messcalero, chihen, and even two Navajos just to bring it home. And he continues to fight. And he is one of the fiercest warriors. He was in his 80s. He was bent over from arthritis. They had to help him get into a saddle. And he's riding around combating the United States Army. And he just wouldn't surrender. Gonimo quits. He He went off reservation in 1878. He quits. He comes back in 1871. He goes off reservation a second time. Um at that point, shortly after that, or I guess right around that point, Crook comes into the picture. So he was the guy that we I showed you earlier. So George Crook had been a soldier in an officer in the US Civil War. After the Civil War, he began fighting Indians. So I should clarify, I've been trying to say Native American, but most people in the United States who identify as Native American call themselves Indians or American Indians. So, uh, I've been trying to say Native American because I'm in the UAE and like more than 25% of the population is Indian and I realize if I said Indian that would be really confusing from time to time. So, and I just did it. I said it. Uh, so anyway, um, he had been fighting the Indians from 1867 all the way uh to this point which is the 1780s. He gets assigned the duty of taking care of the Cherikawa. I want to give you just a brief story about Crook to make him make sense in your head. So Crook was assigned to go get a guy named Standing Bear. So Standing Bear was a punka. The punka were in Nebraska. The United States went to them and said, "Look, you guys have been really peaceful. You're wonderful, but we really don't want you here. we want this land in Nebraska to be transferred over to white people and so you need to leave. And so they had told him um they had told him, "We'll put you on a reservation." He thought the Omaha reservation in Nebraska, the next thing he knows his family is being marched to Oklahoma and his his nation is being marched to Oklahoma to the Ogba reservation in Oklahoma. Actually, I think they also went to two other reservations. By the way, Oakba is spelled Q U A P A W. Obpa, just like it sounds. You never have any trouble spelling. It's Q A Q U A P A W. It's perfect. People from the US are really good at spelling. I am awful, but I feel like it's really important to learn how to spell those words. So, I've gone out of my way to figure it out. So, Crook is dispatched to get standing bear because when the panka showed up at the Ogba reservation, they got hit by color or dysentery, I don't remember which, and a bunch of them die. And one of the people that dies is Standing Bear's son. And he wants to bury his son in Nebraska. So he goes off reservation and starts heading back to Nebraska with, you know, like 20 or 30 other people and his son's body on a horse. And so Crook shows up with the army. And he and Standing Bear isn't hiding. He's just walking in the open. And Crook goes, "What are you doing? You're off reservation." And Stunning Bear goes, "Yeah, I want to bury my son in Nebraska." And Crook goes, "Wait, what is that? That's why you've you've left?" He goes, "Yeah." He And Crook goes, "You mean they called out the United States Army because a grieving father wanted to bury his son in his homeland?" And Standing Bear goes, "I don't know. You're the one that got the orders." And Crook loses it. He takes Standing Bear to the spot to bury the son. Gives him $50. Takes him to Missouri. Goes over to the court and says, "This man needs to hire an attorney." So they hire the attorney with the $50 and then he tells the attorney, "Sue me." So it creates a Missouri state court case called Standing Bear v. Crook, 1879. The United States's position was that Standing Bear had no basis to sue because Standing Bear claimed that his habius corpus rights were being violated because he was Indian and Indians aren't persons under the law. And the judge went, "That's BS. I'm not going that way." He overruled the federal case and said, "No, American Indians are people under the law." And habius corpus applies and ruled in favor of Standing Bear. And of course, Crook and him are giving each other high fives and they and Standing Bear casually walks back to the Ogba reservation. In in a really weird way, this guy ends up becoming as a Indian fighter, Indian civil rights activist. And so the Native Americans didn't hate his guts. They fought him. They they fought him tooth and nail that this was war, but they respected him. They thought he was operating on a different level. When he's assigned the job of going and getting the 130 or so Apache who have gone off reservation, he's like, I can I could bring a thousand men. I'll never capture Gono and his 130 men. That's not possible. So he goes to Clum's police and he goes, "I know you're Apache, but you're the only people on the planet that could possibly go get those Apaches. Can I hire you to go do this?" And the Apache agree because they believe that Toronto be Toronto being at war is is causing the death of too many Apaches. They want to just surrender. Their thinking is if we surrender, if we pitch this thing, maybe the United States will genocide us at a slower pace. It won't be this full-fledged pace. And so they agree and they go and they start looking for Geronimo. Uh long story short, because there's a few events um that are probably worth talking about, but I want to get to some some of the aspects of Gono's leadership. So first of all, he's a medicine man. He was not a war leader. Nichche who is uh Coochis's second son. Taza was his first son. He actually took over but then dies young. So Nichche takes over. Nichche was in charge. What Geronimo was was he was a guy who had power. He was a guy who knew how to make good decisions. And so he gave Nichche great advice. And then one of his powers was he believed he could not be killed by a bullet. He could be killed by an arrow or drowning or falling but no not a bullet. So in warfare, Dono would just charge through a hail of bullets because he can't be killed. And so it made him an amazing warrior. Like whether you believe that he could be killed or not doesn't matter. He's going to live to 86 and doesn't die from a bullet. And he he was shot multiple times. Like he had bullet wounds all over his body. He he did he was unstoppable. In addition to Geronimo, Niche had something else. Victoriao's sister, her name was Lozen. Apaches allowed women to become braves, and she was a brave. She was on a whole different operating level. You could not sneak up on the Churikawa Apache if she was with them. She was always queued in to where the US or Mexican army was at any given moment. She was the scout of scouts. she operated on a whole different level. And so as the US army is approaching, Lozen would be like, "All right, let's go, guys." And they would they would move and they it was exhausting, but they could always stay ahead of the US Army or the Mexican army. They just couldn't be captured. It was not possible. So after a while in 1885, uh, a group of Apache scouts do make contact with with Geronimo and they they talk him into coming and surrendering. He eventually will do it. Uh the the two scouts uh were Kayata and his brother Martin. They were Gono's cousins, so they're family members at this point. They're Churikawa Apache. They come in, they talk him into coming in and talking about surrendering. They work out a deal with Crook. This is this event here, in fact. They work out a deal and Crook says, "Here's how this is going to go. you have to surrender unconditionally. Dono goes, "That's fine as long as you give me the following conditions." At which point, Crook goes, "Okay, sure." So, they're going to Crook insisted that they had to leave the area for two years. In that two years, the hope was that the Apaches would figure out how to do farming or something so they wouldn't need to raid and then the white people in Arizona and New Mexico would be calmed down and wouldn't need to kill them. And then they would be returned and they would be given a reservation or they would be put into one of the already existing Apache reservations probably San Carlos or Fort Apache. Dono agrees. He's one of the braves with him another amazing warrior was named Chihuahua. Chihuahua takes about aund 130 of the braves and starts heading to San Carlos. And there was a white guy in the group who was um selling alcohol illegally. He wasn't supposed to be doing this to the Apaches. And he tells Geronimo, "When you get to Arizona, you'll be hanged. You're being betrayed." And Jono takes 35 warriors, including Lozan and Niche. And they take off. They escape. Phil Sheridan was the commander of the army at the time. He was a cavalry general in the Civil War who rose up the ranks and is now commander of the army. He tells Crook, "I need you to change your tactics." Crook says, "No, I just need to try this again and not bring along treacherous people telling lies to Dono. I have no intention of killing him. Just let me try this again." Phil Sheridan goes, "No, I want war, not scouts running around trying to negotiate a surrender. I want you to fight him." And Crook says, "I will not do it. I I want you to fire me and reassign me to a different position. And so that's exactly what Phil Sheridan does. He replaces Crook with a guy named Nelson Miles. Miles is all about the fight. He will bring in 5,000 US soldiers. He is going to just chase them through Mexico. They've gotten permission to enter into Mexico from Mexico's president, Piio Diaz. And the goal is to just hunt them down, harass them, make it so they can't stay in one place for very long and exhaust them. And if they do catch them, fight them, kill them, exterminate them, lie to them, cheat them, whatever it takes, this has to end in in M Nelson Miles's mind. Um, eventually they do uh get contact with him again. And I think I messed up. This is when uh Kayatar and Martin show up. I I'm I think I just messed up the two surrender events. And they anyway, they go to a place called Skeleton Canyon in southern Arizona and Nelson Miles says, "We are going to give you the same surrender option that Crook gave you." This is 1886. And uh Donaga goes, "All right, fine." because of one thing they told him. They told them that the rest of the Chiakawa were being loaded up into trains and being sent away from Arizona and New Mexico. That they were going to be if they stayed in the war path and they continued to fight. This is at this point 25 years of war. If they stayed at war, they would be fighting for nothing because there would be no no Cherika, Apache anywhere in Arizona or New Mexico. And so they they accept while they're walking to the railroad track, the chur cow, this is true, they really were loaded up. They were sent to Hullbrook, Arizona, and put on cattle cars and sent east. They end up first going to Texas and then from there they end up going to Florida. Um, this is the moment when they're about to be loaded. No, they they've already been loaded up. They've actually gone to Texas to stop for supplies. Uh, this is Nichche. This is Geronimo. That's Lozen. That's I believe that's the only picture known picture of Lozen. Uh you can see she's giving the side eye to the camera. So she's always in scout mode. It's I don't trust it's a very untrusting look. I'm probably wrong, but I think this is Kaya and this is Martin. The scouts, all of them were arrested and put on the cars and sent to Florida. So when their the scouts are being put in with the rest of the war prisoners because these are now all war prisoners. It didn't matter how young or old you were, didn't matter what your gender was, everybody is now a war prisoner. Uh Geronimo immediately turned to everybody and went, "We forgive all the scouts. We are not Nobody's mad at the scouts." So they end up in Florida. They put them in two different places. One uh Fort Pickins, which is just outside of Pensacola, and then the other one is a fort outside of um St. Augustine. And they're not used to humid, right? They're from a dry place. Their health is bad. The supplies are bad. There's massive overcrowding. The overcrowding is on purpose, of course, because that way if a disease hits, it'll spread quicker. They then get relocated after a year, year and a half to Fort Marian. in Alabama. But now their children are being separated and taken away. The children end up going to Carlile Barracks, Pennsylvania. By this point, there's 450 Churika left. So if if the 5,000 is right, then well over 90% of the population of the Churikawa have effectively been exterminated by this point. 112 of them are children. So, a quarter of their population has been sent to Pennsylvania to go to school. I don't know what kind of schools y'all went to. 33% of the children in Pennsylvania died. 10 we are told died of tuberculosis. That seems high to me. That's about 9% tuberculosis fatality. Feels really high. And I don't know what how many other 27 children. When I say 33%, it's like 33.1%. It's I'm not exaggerating. It's 33%. Um, after seven years in Alabama, they're then sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, Lton, Oklahoma, where they're put on the same reservation with the Kiwa and the Comanche. And the Kiwa and the Comanche hated the Churikawas. So even though the Kiwa liked the Plains Apaches, they hated the Churikawa Apaches. And so they're they're literally put in the same reservation with their enemies with bitter enemies and everybody go everybody decides look we have a bigger enemy and that the white guys. So they they work it out and uh at one point Dono does experiment with Christianity. He's a Christian for about four years and then he gets kicked out of his church for gambling and decides he didn't really like Christianity and goes back to worshiping the one true God, Usen. And that's uh that's how that went down. Um but many of the Cherikawa do convert to Christianity. In 1909, Dono finally dies. He was uh let's see, he was born in 29. So he was uh 80 years old. Um and then four years later after 27 years of being prisoners of war, the Churikawa are finally released from their prisoner of war status. When they're released, 78 decide that they their home now is Lton, Oklahoma. So they stay. That group will become federally recognized in 1976. Um their first ever chair person is a woman named Mildridge Klehorn. Um and then the rest of the Churikawa which was I want to say like 198 by this point uh moved to the Mescalero reservation and end up integrating into the Mecaler reservation really well. About 20 years ago, the Churikawa, I don't know how they did this, managed to buy a tiny tiny tiny piece of land in their homeland called Aala. Um, it's a truck stop. And I'm not exaggerating, that's all it is. It's a truck stop and maybe like a little bit of dirt around it. Uh, but they now have official Native American Sherikawa land in New Mexico that isn't part of the Meascala reservation. And you know they're they're they survived this genocide. They made it through to the other side, but it was it was really brutal. For the record, Crook uh will serve for another year or two in the army dealing with Native American stuff. He retires and then becomes an activist pushing back against the cruelty the United States had inflicted on Native Americans. And then a couple years later mysteriously dies at age like 62. We don't know why. He was in Chicago working on Native American issues and he just keels over. Um I feel like we should exume his body and see if he was poisoned, but that's just me. Anyway, uh I this this picture is both painful, but at the same time compelling. I don't know about you, but I I feel like somehow they held on to their dignity even in this moment as prisoners of war, having been finally defeated in the end. They are the last Native Americans from the 19th century to actively fight the United States government. Um, the United States of course have other events. There's the massacre at Wounded Knee, which takes place in 1890. And then the Battle of Wounded Knee, which was in 1973, but that's for another time. That's the last battle United States had with Native Americans was in 1973. Isn't that cool? It was still recent. All right. Thank you for being a fantastic audience. Also, I just want to point out I can't believe we're doing this at the Museum of the Future. I feel like that is just so cool. This is such an incredible magical space. I just feel really lucky and fortunate to have you as an audience in this space. So, thank you again. [Applause] [Music]