Chiricahua Apache: the 1872 reservation abolished (1876) and 27 years as prisoners of war (1886-1912/14)

What happened

In 1872 General O.O. Howard and Tom Jeffords negotiated with the Chiricahua leader Cochise, and the National Park Service says Cochise secured a reservation spanning much of present Cochise County in southeast Arizona. It brought a peaceful period that lasted four years. Settlers disliked its loose authority. This was an arrangement with the government, not a ratified treaty.

Cochise died in 1874. The Park Service says the government saw a chance to close the reservation, "fired Agent Jeffords and abolished the reservation." Deep Roots magazine says the Chiricahua were forcibly removed in 1876 to San Carlos in eastern Arizona.

After Geronimo's surrender in 1886, the Chiricahua were held as prisoners of war in Florida and then Alabama. The Fort Sill Apache Tribe's own history says it was moved to Oklahoma in 1894 "after nearly a decade of imprisonment and exile." At Fort Sill the prisoners were told the fort would be their permanent home, but by 1910 local politicians and officials pushed to remove them.

On April 2, 1913, the Oklahoma Historical Society says, 180 Apache prisoners were relocated to the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico. About eighty-one others in roughly twenty families were released and resettled on small allotments in Oklahoma by the end of 1914. In November 2011, the tribe's history says, a reservation proclamation was issued for Fort Sill Apache land in New Mexico.

Good to know. The 1872 reservation came from an arrangement with the government, not a ratified treaty. Sources date the prisoners' release to 1913 or 1914.

Summarized with AI assistance from 4 sources and checked against their words; not yet reviewed by historians or by the nations. Report an error