HOMELAND AND LIFE
The present Apache population is approximately six thousand, including the Jicarillas and Mescaleros of New Mexico. It is doubtful if the number ever exceeded ten thousand. In population, therefore, the Apache seem almost too insignificant to have kept the other tribes of the vast Southwest, as well as two civilized nations, in constant dread for so long a period.
At the present time the greater part of the Apache reside on the White Mountain reservation, Arizona, comprising more than 3,500,000 acres, with agency headquarters at Whiteriver and San Carlos. This reservation is a part of the great tableland of southeastern Arizona, being a succession of mountains and high, park-like mesas, broken here and there with valleys and watered by limpid streams. The highlands are wooded with pine, cedar, fir, juniper, oak, and other trees, while in the valleys are mistletoe-laden cottonwood as well as willow, alder, and walnut, which, with smaller growths, are interwoven with vines of grape, hop, and columbine, in places forming a veritable jungle. On every hand, whether on mountain or in valley, many varieties of cactus grow in profusion; and in springtime cañon and vale, mountain-side and mesa, are all aglow with wild flowers.
In midsummer the temperature of the lower reaches seems as great as that of a furnace. At the same season in the mountain and high mesa country, especially in the shade of the beautiful forests, the atmosphere is ideal; but in winter these higher levels are covered deep with snow, swept by fierce winds that chill one to the very marrow.
The typical Apache habitation, called kówa, consists of a framework of poles loosely thatched with native grass, through which the smoke from the central fire finds its outlet and the rain and snow sift in, rendering it anything but a comfortable shelter in time of storm. The kówa is erected by the women, who are little more than drudges, and as an Apache may have[pg 014] as many wives as he feels able to support, he may have as many homes as circumstances require. The various wives are prone to be quarrelsome among themselves, for which reason a man usually maintains one wife on one part of the reservation and another wife perhaps many miles away.
Primitive Apache Home
From Copyright Photograph 1903 by E.S. Curtis
In the good old days the radius of Apache wandering centred in the mountains of what is now southeastern Arizona; this was their stronghold, their lair, whence they raided to the south, well down into Sonora and Chihuahua, westward to the Colorado river, northward into the Hopi and Navaho country, and eastward as far at least as western Texas. From this mountain rendezvous they swept down upon the Mexicans and Indians of Sonora and Chihuahua, and on the Pueblo villages of the north, while in later years they terrorized the white settlers of the entire Southwest. To follow them was a fruitless task which often led to the destruction of the pursuers.