While the Navajos spread terror and desolation through the north and east of New Mexico, the Apaches followed the same system of plunder in the southern part of the state and throughout Arizona and Northern Sonora, with this great difference -- that amongst the former booty was their only object, and they spared life unless resistance was offered, but with the latter war to the death was, and still is, their undeviating practice. In battle the Navajo never stoops to scalp his fallen enemy, and many acts of true generosity are related of him; but the cowardly Apache creeps upon his victim like a snake in the grass: if he can capture him he invariably tortures him to death; but otherwise he scalps and mutilates him in the most horrible manner, and has never been known to show the smallest trace either of humanity or good faith.

Several independent though kindred tribes are rightly classed under the term Apaches ; the following table gives their names, the localities in which they are usually encountered, and the probable population of each : --

Jicarrilla Apaches. Maxwell's reservation and Toas district -- 500
Mescalero Apaches. Mountain south of Fort Stanton -- 525

MOGOLLON TBIBES, COMPRISING THE

Miembres Apaches. Miembres Mountains -- 400
Coyotero Apaches. Sierra Blanca of Arizona -- 700
Pinal Apaches. Pina-leno Cordillera -- 2000
Tonto Apaches. Between the Rio Salinas and Verde -- 800
Chi-ri-ca-hui Apaches. Chi-ri-ca-hui Mountains -- 500

The first of these tribes is now quite harmless; and as its members are too few and cowardly to hold their own against the other tribes, they willingly submit to being fed and taken care of at the expense of the government. The second tribe was formerly a very warlike one, and it is chiefly owing to its ravages that the fertile valley of the Rio Grande, from San Antonio, north of Fort Craig, to La Mesilla, a distance of over one hundred miles, is now an uninhabited waste. War, disease, and scarcity of food have of late years so thinned their ranks that the government succeeded a short time ago in collecting them together and placing them on the Bosque reservation with the Navajos. As these tribes were sworn enemies, they did not long live together; for on the night of November 3, 1866, the Apaches deserted, and have since that time been committing depredations on the government stock, and murdering and plundering the settlers so far north as Los Vegas and Galistro. We heard much of their ravages while passing through that district.

All the Mogollon bands are still at large. They mostly inhabit the vast region formed of lofty tablelands and mountain-ranges in which the headwaters of the Rio Gila rise; and from these fastnesses, still unexplored, they have for ages been making raids upon their more civilized neighbours on all sides of them.

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adapted from A. W. Bell
"On the Native Races of New Mexico"
1869 (Journal of the Ethnological Society of London)