| Ojo Caliente band, preferred southern New Mexico, but they and the Chiricahuas considered themselves virtually the same people, although by whites they are often held to be distinct. Many parallel cases could be cited. The Apaches, never numbering more than about six thousand, approximately their population today, were not a cohesive tribe, but were gathered in certain rather large groupings. |
| The Gilenos, centered on the broken country about the upper Gila River, included the Chiricahuas, the Warm Springs, the Mogollon band, and the Mimbrenos. The San Carlos group included many bands formerly unassociated directly with that river. Among them were the Aravaipas, the Pinalenos, the Coyoteros, the White Mountain or Sierra Blanca Apaches, and many local bands. The Mescaleros, sometimes included with the Lipans among the Llaneros, or plains Apaches, were usually associated more closely with the Warm Springs Indians. And there were the Navahos, usually regarded as a separate tribe, although with a closely related language. |
| To his primordial weapons of rocks, bows with stone-tipped arrows, lances,2 knives, and clubs (but no tomahawks), the Apache added by theft or trade the weapons of the white man. Apaches solved their perennial problem of obtaining ammunition in many ways. They traded for it with the Zuni villages, or with renegade whites. They stole much ammunition. Many of the murders and ambushes had as their reason the Apache need for ammunition. One young white man wrote that he had seen Indian bullets of lead, gold, and stone.3 Some believed the Apaches used silver bullets, silver being easier to come by than lead. The traditional Apache weapon, however, was the bow, usually made of mulberry, the bowstring of the sinew of deer or, later, of cattle or horses, the arrows of cane, fletched with hawk or eagle feathers, the heads of flint or obsidian; the maximum effective range was about one hundred and fifty yards. An experienced warrior usually carried a spare bowstring and perhaps an extra bow stave as |
 | | | | 2 Daniel Ellis Conner, Joseph Reddeford Walker and the Arizona Adventure, denies that the Indians ever used lances or poisoned arrows, but the evidence is strongly against him. |
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