Apache

The Apache are a group of culturally and linguistically related Indigenous peoples of the American Southwest, speaking Southern Athabaskan languages related to Navajo, and traditionally divided into several distinct tribes, including the Chiricahua, Mescalero, Jicarilla, Western Apache and Lipan, each with its own territory across present-day Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico. Historically a mobile people combining hunting, gathering and raiding with limited farming, the Apache mounted decades of sustained resistance to Spanish, Mexican and later United States expansion, most famously under leaders including Cochise and Geronimo, whose 1886 surrender is often marked as the end of large-scale armed Indigenous resistance in the American Southwest. Apache communities today live chiefly on reservations in Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma, and Apache identity remains closely tied to ceremonies including the girls' puberty Sunrise Dance.