ABSTRACT
Although most Indian tribes drew a distinction between raiding and warfare, the Apaches who roamed the deserts and mountains of the American Southwest and northern Mexico appear to have drawn a sharper line than most. While Plains Indians, for instance, raided in order to acquire wealth, in horses particularly, or to win glory, the Apaches tended to lump raiding in with hunting and gathering as a means of sustaining themselves. Raiding thus took on the status of an economic activity and one which grew in scope and importance throughout Apache history. It first became an urgent necessity for Apaches in the eighteenth century when Plains tribes, particularly the Comanches, used their temporary advantage in gunpowder weapons to drive the Apaches off the plains. This not only cost the latter access to buffalo meat, but meant that, unlike the Plains peoples, they had no buffalo hides, meat or tallow to trade to other Indians or to whites for horses or guns, and were obliged to raid to get them. But raiding was also closely linked to hunting and gathering, as we have seen. As long as there was enough territory for these pursuits, Apaches could get along without seizing the goods of others. But as white settlements and mines spread in Apachería, raiding took on a much greater importance to the Apache economy and thus increased in volume.2
