The Mystery Apaches

Apaches were living along the Pecos and Canadian rivers long before the Spanish explorer Coronado entered the region in 1540. They've gotten little attention from historians, but they're every bit as interesting as Geronimo. Lipan Apaches, as well as groups of unnamed and unknown Apaches, continued to live in Eastern New Mexico and West Texas over hundreds of years. The Spaniards gave them various names, and American military officers, not knowing who they were, referred to them simply as "Apaches." When the Comanches drove other Apache groups from the buffalo plains, some held their ground for decades. Well into the 1800s the Pecos region was little known and unexplored. Even after the arrival of the U.S. Army, the Pecos provided refuge not only to the people who considered it their country but also to numbers of renegades, as the Army attempted to move tribes onto reservations. Who were these people? Several scholars have attempted to identify these shadowy groups. Sherry Robinson, in years of research on Eastern Apaches, will share her knowledge, which is based on the written record and Apache oral history.

Funded project of the New Mexico Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.