Background of The Fort Sill Apache Tribe

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  • Background of The Fort Sill Apache Tribe
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The Chiricahua Apache were taken as prisoners of war in 1886. The tribe’s original territory covered much of what is now the American Southwest, including eastern Arizona and western New Mexico, along the United States border with Mexico.

The Chiricahua were moved to Oklahoma in 1894 after years of imprisonment and exile at U.S. Army installations in Florida and Alabama. The Chiricahua were the last American Indian group to be relocated to Indian Territory.

In 1913, the Chiricahua were given a choice: stay in Oklahoma or return to their homelands. The majority returned to New Mexico to live on the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation and became a part of the Mescalero Apache Tribe.

The Chiricahua who remained in Oklahoma, numbering approximately 80 individuals in about 20 families, were released in 1914. They resettled on small allotments of farmland scattered around Apache and Fletcher, on land allotted in trust for the benefit of members of the Kiowa, Comanche and Apache tribes (the “KCA Reservation”), and organized as the Fort Sill Apache Tribe of Oklahoma.

In 1976 the Commissioner of Indian Affairs formally approved the tribe’s Constitution and acknowledged the tribe as federally recognized, records reflect. The United States and the Fort Sill 

Apache Tribe have maintained a government-to-government relationship in the 44 years since.

The tribe’s territory includes trust lands in southwestern Oklahoma and southeastern Arizona. Its “ancestral homelands” are at Akela, New Mexi- co, but the tribal headquarters is located two miles north of Apache, Oklahoma. The tribe operates a hotel and casino in nearby Lawton.

Today the tribe has approximately 670 members, about half over the age of 18, whose lineage extends to famous Apache leader and medicine man Geronimo. Roughly 300 live in Oklahoma and the rest are spread across the United States, England and Puerto Rico, the tribe reports on its website.