Deconstructing the "Apache" Identity: A History of the San Carlos Apachean Peoples

Abstract

Historians of “Apache” history have continuously told the stories of the Chiricahua Apachean peoples and Goyathlay’s (Geronimo) resistance to the incursion of the U.S. Army. However, the attention afforded to these peoples and the lack of understanding regarding the cultural contingencies of Apachean history, leaves the story incomplete and unfulfilled. Consequently, academics fail to provide two very important and necessary components of the Apachean and Indigenous histories at the San Carlos Reservation. First, that the issue of identity remained a point of contention for the Indigenous peoples consolidated near the San Carlos Agency during the nineteenth century, and second, the history of the Western Apachean peoples, specifically, continues into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Apachean peoples of the “San Carlos Apache Tribe,” as they are known in the modern-era, experienced a series of events that culminated in the creation of a “San Carlos Apache” identity. This adherence to a manufactured political identity dissuades members from incorporating traditional concepts of identity that, in conjunction with a Westernized tribal government, undermines traditional Apachean identifiers in favor of a colonial designation.