A social development made possible through the use of the horse was the setting up of a large midsummer encampment. Here a thousand or more people could gather for several days and be assured of ample food for that period. And with the new leisure, ceremonies became more elaborate, culminating in the sun dance.
With ample leisure time and with horses to carry them to distant places, the men turned more and more to warfare, horse stealing, and raids in faraway lands. These activities became an elaborate game, with complicated rules, in which many ritual honors and economic rewards could be won. It is difficult to determine how far this warrior cult had developed before horses reached the plains, but certainly it became more complex once the warriors had time for such activities. This cult was common throughout the entire plains country, and each tribe counted coups, dressed its warriors in the regalia of the successful fighter, and adopted horse stealing as an honorable pursuit.
The vain, proud warriors, posturing in their finery, lounging in the sun and feasting, never even considered helping the women, who worked long hours each day at heavy tasks. But the women would have been shocked at the offer of help. Those indolent males, resting on the nearby hill, were always alert, watching for game and, more important, for enemy raiders. Any sensible woman preferred safety for herself and her family to being subjected to surprise attacks because her man was helping with family chores.
6. The Southern Plains: Apache and Comanche
In 1541 a small body of spanish soldiers with a large following of Mexican Indians, all under the command of Francisco Coronado, set out from the Pueblo villages along the Rio Grande to explore the plains country to the east. After the Spanish had crossed the Pecos River they soon found themselves in buffalo country, and from then on, during three months of travel over more than a thousand miles, there was not a single day that they did not see a herd.
As they moved eastward along the Canadian River near the Texas border, they crossed a curious trail. Many small poles had been dragged over the ground, leaving furrows in the dust. The Spanish followed the trail and soon came to a camp of buffalo-hunting Indians with their skin tipis set up for the night, the first such structures the Spanish had ever seen. The furrows had been made by the butts of the tipi poles as they were dragged along by dogs.
The Indians were friendly and showed no fear or surprise at the appearance of a body of mounted men in armor: they had heard reports of the Spanish from the Pueblo Indians along the Pecos. The Spanish were the more surprised. They had never seen Indians like these, and Coronado's scribe, Pedro de Castañeda, recorded the strange ways of these people:
These Indians subsist entirely on cattle, for they neither plant nor harvest maize. With the skins they build their houses; with the skins they clothe and shoe themselves; from the skins they make ropes and also obtain wool. From the sinews they make thread, with which they sew their clothing and likewise their tents. From the bones they shape awls, and the dung they use for firewood, since there is no other fuel in all that land. The bladders serve as jugs and drinking vessels. They sustain themselves on the flesh of the animals, eating it slightly roasted… and sometimes uncooked. Taking it in their teeth, they pull with one hand; with the other they hold a large flint knife and cut off mouthfuls, swallowing it half chewed, like birds. They eat raw fat without warming it, and drink the blood just as it comes from the cattle…. They have no other food.
They are a gentle people, not cruel, faithful in their friendship, and skilled in the use of signs. They dry their meat in the sun, cutting it into thin slices, and when it is dry they cook it in a pot, which they always manage to have with them. When they put a handful in the pot, the mash soon fills it, since it swells to great size.
When the Indians kill a cow, they clean a large intestine, fill it with blood, and hang it around their necks, to drink when they are thirsty. Cutting open the belly of the animal, they squeeze out the chewed grass and drink the juice, saying it contains the substance of the stomach.
They cut open the cow at the back and pull off the hide at the joints, using a flint the size of a finger, tied to a small stick, doing this as handily as if they used a fine knife. They sharpen the flints on their own teeth, and it is remarkable to see how quickly they do it.
They tan the hides well, dressing skins to take to the pueblos to sell since they go to spend the winter there. For their tents they fasten the poles at the top and spread them apart at the base, and cover them with tanned and greased hides.
They load their dogs like beasts of burden and make light pack saddles for them like ours, cinching them with leather straps. The dogs go about with sores on their backs like pack animals. When the Indians go hunting they load them with provisions, and when they movefor they have no permanent residence anywhere for they follow the cattle to obtain foodthe dogs transport their houses for them. In addition to what they carry on their backs, they transport the poles for the tents, dragging them fastened to their saddles. The load may be from thirty to fifty pounds, depending on the dog.
These seminomadic buffalo hunters were members of the Apache tribe, which at that time consisted of a great many small bands occupying a wide strip of the Great Plains from the Platte River in the north to the Texas Panhandle, and from the foothills of the Rockies eastward about 200 miles into Nebraska and Kansas. The southern bands were usually seminomadic, and they did not change their way of life appreciably in the next ninety years. Here is a report by Fray Alonzo de Benavides on the same bands about 1628:
By these cattle, then, all of these Vaquero Apaches sustain themselves, for which they go craftily to their watering places, and hide themselves in the trails, painted with red earth, and stained with the mud of that same earth; and stretched in the deep trails which the cattle have made, when they pass they employ the arrows which they carry. And as these are dull cattle, though very savage and swift, when they feel themselves wounded they let themselves fall after a few paces. And afterward the Indians skin them and carry off the hides, the tongues, and tenderloins and sinews to sew with, and to make strings for their bows. The hides they tan in two ways; some leave the hair on them and they remain like plush velvet, and serve as a bed and as a cloak. Others they tan without the hair, and thin them down, of which they make their tents and other things after their usage. And with these hides they trade through all the land and gain their living…. These Indians then go forth through the neighboring provinces to trade and traffic with these hides. At which point I cannot refrain from telling one thing, somewhat incredible, however ridiculous. And it is that when these Indians go to trade and traffic, the entire rancherias go, with their wives and children, who live in tents made of these skins of buffalo, very thin and tanned; and the tents they carry loaded on pack trains of dogs, harnessed up with their little pack saddles; and the dogs are medium sized. And they are accustomed to take 500 dogs in one pack train, one in front of the other, and the people carry their merchandise loaded, which they barter for cotton cloth and for other things which they lack.
The Apaches were the southern prong of the large Athapascan migration. The other Athapascan groups had remained in Alaska and northern Canada and might have pushed the Apaches south, or the Apaches may have moved on of their own accord. They reached the plains country about A.D. 1300 in many small, scattered bands of roving hunters, whose survival depended on securing game almost daily. The bands were usually about twenty people or less, as it would be difficult to kill enough game each day to feed a larger number except in very good hunting country.