Apache

Apache, Native American tribe of North America's Southwest (since c. 1100), from Athabascan linguistic family. Members of a nomadic hunting culture whose men lived with and worked for their wives' families, these strong fighters repelled the Spanish, only to face the Comanches and other tribes and eventually the westward expansion of the European Americans. They rejected repeated federal attempts to confine their tribes to reservations. In the bloody conflicts that followed, they were decimated, and in 1896 Geronimo, their chief, was captured. Most present-day Apaches live on 3 million acres of federal reservations in Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona, supported by income from timber, tourism, cattle, and mineral resources. In 1982 the Apaches won an important Supreme Court case that tested their right to tax resources taken from their lands.