Chiricahua is a band of Apache Native Americans.
The Apache are several Southern Athabaskan language–speaking peoples of the Southwest, the Southern Plains and Northern Mexico. They are linguistically related to the Navajo. They migrated from the Athabascan homelands in the north into the Southwest between 1000 and 1500 CE.
Mescalero or Mescalero Apache is an Apache tribe of Southern Athabaskan–speaking Native Americans. The tribe is federally recognized as the Mescalero Apache Tribe of the Mescalero Apache Reservation, located in south-central New Mexico.
Jicarilla Apache, one of several loosely organized autonomous bands of the Eastern Apache, refers to the members of the Jicarilla Apache Nation currently living in New Mexico and speaking a Southern Athabaskan language. The term jicarilla comes from Mexican Spanish meaning "little basket", referring to the small sealed baskets they used as drinking vessels. To neighboring Apache bands, such as the Mescalero and Lipan, they were known as Kinya-Inde.
The Comancheria or Comanchería was a region of New Mexico, west Texas and nearby areas occupied by the Comanche before the 1860s. Historian Pekka Hämäläinen has argued that the Comancheria formed an empire at its peak, and this view has been echoed by other non-Comanche historians.
Lipan is an Eastern Southern Athabaskan language spoken by the Lipan Apache in the states of Coahuila and Chihuahua in northern Mexico, some reservations of New Mexico and parts of southern Texas. Lipan belongs to the Na-Dene languages family and it is closely related to Jicarilla language, which is also part of the Eastern Southern Athabaskan languages.
The Tonkawa are a Native American tribe who now live in Oklahoma. Their Tonkawa language, now extinct, is a linguistic isolate.
Spanish Texas was one of the interior provinces of the colonial Viceroyalty of New Spain from 1519 until 1821. Spain claimed ownership of the region in 1519. Slave raids by Spaniards into what became Texas began in the 16th century and created an atmosphere of antagonism with Native Americans (Indians) which would cause endless difficulties for the Spanish in the future. Spain did not attempt to establish a permanent presence until after France established the colony of Fort Saint Louis in 1685. In 1688, the French colony failed due to internal dissention and attacks by the Karankawa Indians. In 1690, responding to fear of French encroachment, Spanish explorer Alonso de León escorted several Catholic missionaries to east Texas, where they established the first mission in Texas. That attempt to establish a Spanish colony failed due to the hostility of the Caddo Indians.
Comanche history – in the 18th and 19th centuries the Comanche became the dominant tribe on the southern Great Plains. The Comanche are often characterized as "Lords of the Plains." They presided over a large area called Comancheria which they shared with allied tribes, the Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache, Wichita, and after 1840 the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho. Comanche power and their substantial wealth depended on horses, trading, and raiding. Adroit diplomacy was also a factor in maintaining their dominance and fending off enemies for more than a century. They subsisted on the bison herds of the Plains which they hunted for food and skins.
The Texas–Indian wars were a series of conflicts between settlers in Texas and the Southern Plains Indians during the 19th-century. Conflict between the Plains Indians and the Spanish began before other European and Anglo-American settlers were encouraged—first by Spain and then by the newly Independent Mexican government—to colonize Texas in order to provide a protective-settlement buffer in Texas between the Plains Indians and the rest of Mexico. As a consequence, conflict between Anglo-American settlers and Plains Indians occurred during the Texas colonial period as part of Mexico. The conflicts continued after Texas secured its independence from Mexico in 1836 and did not end until 30 years after Texas became a state of the United States, when in 1875 the last free band of Plains Indians, the Comanches led by Quahadi warrior Quanah Parker, surrendered and moved to the Fort Sill reservation in Oklahoma.
Mission Santa Cruz de San Sabá was one of the Spanish missions in Texas. It was established in April 1757, along with the Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas, later renamed Presidio of San Sabá, in what is now Menard County. Located along the San Saba River, the mission was intended to convert members of the Lipan Apache tribe. Although no Apache ever resided at the mission, its existence convinced the Comanche that the Spanish had allied with the Comanche's mortal enemy. In 1758 the mission was destroyed by an estimated 2,000 warriors from the Comanche, Tonkawa, Yojuane, Bidai and Hasinai tribes. It was the only mission in Texas to be completely destroyed by Native Americans. The Indians did not attack the nearby presidio.
Teyas were a Native American people living near what is now Lubbock, Texas, who first made contact with Europeans was the 1541 Francisco Vásquez de Coronado Expedition.
Jumanos were a tribe or several tribes, who inhabited a large area of western Texas, New Mexico, and northern Mexico, especially near the Junta de los Rios region with its large settled Indigenous population. They lived in the Big Bend area in the mountain and basin region. Spanish explorers first recorded encounters with the Jumano in 1581. Later expeditions noted them in a broad area of the Southwest and the Southern Plains.
The Yojuane were a people who lived in Texas in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. They were closely associated with the Jumano and may have also been related to the Tonkawa. They have no connection to the Yowani in Texas, a Choctaw band.
The Salinero Apaches were an Apache group closely associated with the Mescalero Apaches who lived in the area of what is now western Texas, eastern New Mexico and northern Chihuahua in the 18th century.
The Coahuiltecan were various small, autonomous bands of Native Americans who inhabited the Rio Grande valley in what is now northeastern Mexico and southern Texas. The various Coahuiltecan groups were hunter gatherers. First encountered by Europeans in the 16th century, their population declined due to European diseases, slavery, and numerous small-scale wars fought against the Spanish, criollo, Apache, and other Indigenous groups.
Alsate, also known as Arzate, Arzatti, and Pedro Múzquiz, was the last chief of the Chisos band of Limpia Mescalero Apaches.
Carnoviste was a southern (Guadalupe) Mescalero chief, his band—presumably Tsehitcihéndé or Niit'ahénde—lived in the Texan Big Bend Country, ranging on both sides of the Rio Grande from the Guadalupe Mountains towards east of the Limpia Mountains onto the edge of the Southern Plains.
The Lipan Apache Band of Texas is a cultural heritage organization of individuals who identify as descendants of Lipan Apache people The organization LABT is based in Edinburg, Texas; however, members live in Texas, Louisiana, California, and Mexico.
Spanish peace treaties with the Comanche in 1785 and 1786 resulted in a permanent peace between the Comanche and the Spanish colony in New Mexico and a lengthy, albeit interrupted, peace between the Comanche and the Spanish in Texas. Since their first contacts with the Spanish in 1706, the Comanches had raided the colonies and been a threat to their continued existence. In the 1780s several factors combined to give both sides the incentive to negotiate peace treaties which resulted in expanded trade between the Spanish and the Comanche and a combined effort to defeat their mutual enemy, the Apache.
