THE CHIRICAHUA AND WARM SPRINGS APACHES IN OKLAHOMA, 1913

294 Pages·2016·2.91 MB·English

CULTURAL SURVIVAL AND A NATIVE AMERICAN
COMMUNITY: THE CHIRICAHUA AND
WARM SPRINGS APACHES IN
OKLAHOMA, 1913-
1996
By
CLIFFORD PATRICK COPPERSMITH
Bachelor of Arts
Brigham Young University
Provo, Utah
1988
Master of Arts
st. Bonaventure University
st. Bonaventure, New York
1992
the
Submitted to Faculty of the
Graduate College of the
Oklahoma State University
in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for
the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
December, 1996
COPYRIGHT
BY
Clifford Patrick Coppersmith
December 1996
CULTURAL SURVIVAL AND A NATIVE AMERICAN
COMMUNITY: THE CHIRICAHUA AND
WARM SPRINGS APACHES IN
OKLAHOMA, 1913-
1996
Thesis Approved:
Thesis Advisor
Dean of the Graduate College
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This is a true story about a Native American community
using, as much as possible, sources which reveal that
community's perspective on the past. While I have had to
rely to a great extent on traditional sources to tell the
story, I have also enjoyed the collaboration and cooperation
of many members of the .Fort Sill (Chiricahua and Warm
Springs) Apache Tribe without whose help this project would
not have been possible. If this is a worthy addition to
Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apache historiography it is due
to their contributions. Until the day when a Chiricahua or
Warm Springs Apache historian writes a definitive account of
his or her people's experience in Oklahoma I offer this as
an attempt to tell a new and truer version of their history.
I wish to thank Michael Darrow, a Chiricahua and Warm
Springs Apache and an American national treasure, for his
assistance and guidance during the entire process of
researching, interviewing for, and writing this
dissertation. I also wish to express appreciation to Mrs.
Ruey Darrow, Tribal Chairperson, Mrs. Mildred Cleghorn,
Former-Tribal Chairperson, Mrs. Pat Haozous Regan, Vice
Chairperson and members of their staff, especially Lupe
Gooday, Jr. for their assistance in allowing me the use of
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tribal facilities and resources for research. I thank
members of the Chiricahua Language Class, especially Sam
Eagleshield and Pam Eagleshield, for welcoming my presence
and being patient with my questions. I also wish to thank
Mr. Harry Mithlo for sharing his perspective with me and for
inviting me to the Watson Mithlo Annual Memorial.
I travelled far and wide conducting research for this
project in archives located in Oklahoma, Texas, and North
Carolina. I thank archivists at the Federal Records
Depository at Fort Worth for their assistance, especially
Kent Carter. Special thanks go to Tawana Spivey of the Fort
Sill Museum and Archives for his personal knowledge of
events and places and for the assistance of his staff in
finding materials pertaining to my work. Archivists at the
Oklahoma Historical Society, the Phillips Western History
Collection at the University of Oklahoma, and at Oklahoma
State University were also indispensable in the task of
finding materials relating to the Chiricahua and warm
Springs Apache experience in Oklahoma. Special praise goes
to Carl Bornfriend of the Native American Museum in Frisco,
North Carolina for his hospitality and generosity in
allowing me to work in his collection of Chiricahua papers
and photographs.
I owe a profound debt to my intellectual mentors, Dr.
Laurence Hauptman and Dr. George Moses for their advice and
gifts of inspiration in the methodological and historical
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aspects of my work. Dr. Hauptman has exercised an
incredible influence in my perception of Native American
history and the way it should be researched and written. I
also thank members of my committee for their guidance and
advice, especially Dr. Ronald Petrin, Dr. Michael Smith, and
Dr. Donald Brown. I also express appreciation for grants
and scholarships given to me by the Oklahoma State
University History Department that funded portions of my
research. Thanks go, as well, to my parents, JoEllen and
Jay Don Coppersmith, who contributed in many ways to my
work.
A final debt of gratitude is owed to my wife, Kathleen,
who has, in greatest measure, provided me with the
opportunity to complete this project. I am eternally
grateful for her contribution and for her patience through
all the times I was away from home. To her and my children,
Cory and Katie, I dedicate this work.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
I . Introduction . ....................................... 1
II. Origins ............................................ 32
III. Exile and Captivity ••.•............••...•.•.•..•... 77
IV. Life at Fort Sill . ............................... . 100
V. Diaspora: Removal Again ..•••..•.....•.....•..•.••. 136
VI. The Post Allotment Period: Accommodation and
Leadership . ...................................... . 170
VII. Case Study in Identity: The Fort Sill Apache and
the Indian Claims Commission ............•..•••.•.. 196
VIII. Case Study in Cultural Continuance: The Chiricahua
and Warm Springs Apache Mountain Spirit Dance ....• 220
IX. Organization, Government, and Revival ....•........ 242
X. Epilogue .......................................... 263.
Bibliography . ..................................... 267
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I. Introduction
On a cold autumn morning before the sun appeared in the
eastern sky the people began to stir and the noise of camp
life could be heard. Fires that burned throughout the night
now heated coffee and the food that would be served for
breakfast. Haphazardly parked cars, trailers, and tepees
designated the area around which a sacred ceremony would
soon begin. This ceremony, which marked the passage of a
Chiricahua Apache girl to womanhood, had not been celebrated
here for many years. Even among the local Chiricahua and
Warm Springs Apache community there was no small amount of
controversy over whether the rite should take place at all.
However, the celebration of this ritual, both ancient and
sacred to the Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apache people,
testifies to the resilience and survival of a people who
have faced many challenges throughout the past century.1
Paradoxically, just several weeks before this event
unfolded a local newspaper, The Lawton Constitution, ran a
feature article on the one-hundredth anniversary of the
arrival of the Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apaches in
Oklahoma. The article, entitled, "Apaches Remember Arrival
at Fort Sill" comprised nearly a full-page story and
included several photographs about the Apache experience in
those early days.2 Oddly, the journalist responsible for
the story failed to interview any Apaches in the local
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community who presumably remembered their own captivity or
that of their parents or grandparents. There are three
surviving members of the Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apache
Tribe in Oklahoma who were born before the tribe was
released from captivity in 1913.3 Apparently, the reporter
did not know that Chiricahuas still live in Oklahoma. That
newspaper story--which left so much out of the story--is a
parable of the way outside observer~ including journalists,
anthropologists, and historians have treated the continued
lives and existence of the Chiricahua and Warm Springs
Apaches in Oklahoma.
This work addresses two themes. on the one hand
investigators and observers of Native American culture and
history have largely ignored this Indian group in Oklahoma,
while on the other Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apaches have
maintained their tribal identity and elements of their
culture. In one aspect this treatment of modern Chiricahuas
in Oklahoma reflects a trend in the general field of Native
American history in which historians have largely avoided
the twentieth century. Fortunately, in the past few years,
historians have reversed that trend and more attention has
been paid to the writing of modern Native American history.
This "New Indian history" centers on the Indian
experience, the definition of community, and the maintenance
of culture. Not so long ago historians wrote history of
Indians largely without Indians. At first historians simply
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ignored America's aboriginal inhabitants or addressed them
largely as yet another obstacle to settlement in the
inexorable flow of Euroamerican civilization to the West.
The trend of writing Native American history which placed
Indians at the center of study began in the 1950s mostly
with anthropologists, although late nineteenth-century
ethnographers began the process.4 Methods associated with
this kind of history made use of traditional historical
sources, such as government documents, and those previously
overlooked or ignored, such as ethnographic studies,
ethnographic sources within journals, memoirs, and
explorers' reports, archeological studies, artifacts, and
oral histories. Statistical records, agency reports, Indian
school records, allotment documents, and census data
provided other pertinent information.
Early ethnohistorical work attempted to reconstruct the
cultural past through narrative and often focused on the
prehistoric, discovery and conquest, and early colonial
periods. In essence, anthropologists and historians
concentrated on the "ethnographic present," limiting their
perspective on Indian history to their preconceived concepts
of what it meant-to be an Indian. Many historians wrote
Indian history that continued to focus on traditional lines
of inquiry such as Indian-White relations, Indian policy,
and military history.
In the larger context of the civil rights era that
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