Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/616

 580 APACHES No mission was ever established among them, and they drew to them tribes who shook off the Spanish yoke. A document on Sonora in 1762 estimates the mining towns, stations, and missions depopulated by the Apache inroads into that province at 174. Since the annex- ation of the Apache territory to the United States the tribe have given great trouble, es- pecially those under Mangas Colorado, who for 50 years led very large bands to war, till he was finally captured and killed while attempt- ing to escape, in 1863. Within a few years an effort has been made by the government to gather the Apaches upon reservations under the superintendency of New Mexico, and there feed them. The sum of $125,000 was appro- priated for the support of these Indians in 1871, and the experiment of confining them to particular localities is believed to have been attended with some success. The commis- sioner estimates that in the event of a com- plete adoption of the plan, it will require an expenditure of $25,000 a month, or $300,000 a year. The plan of establishing the Apaches on reservations and feeding them for a time was much opposed by the people on the frontiers, Mexican and American, who had long been victims of their ravages. This led to a massacre at Camp Grant, Arizona, April 30, 1871, of more than 100 Apa- ches who were actually prisoners in the hands of the United States troops. Cochise, the great Apache chief, however, submitted, visited Washington, and seemed well dis- posed. The numbers of the Apaches proper in the United States are variously estimated. Mr. Bartlett thought Schoolcraft's statistics too high. By the Indian commissioner in 1871 they were estimated at 7,500, though Cremony in 1868, from eight years' stay in their country, thinks their number at least 25,000. The language of the Apaches abounds in guttural, hissing, and indistinct intona- tions. Mr. Bartlett in his "Report on the Boundary Commission," and others, give vo- cabularies that establish its connection with the Athabascan family. Their lodges are built of light boughs and twigs. The captain of the band wears a kind of helmet made of buckskin, ornamented with a feather. Their arrows are very long, usually pointed with iron. All are mounted on small ponies, capable of great en- durance. The Spanish bit, or simply a cord of hair passed between the jaws, forms their bridle. Panniers for holding provisions are generally carried on the horses of the women. The shells of the pearl oyster, and a rough wooden image, are the favorite ornaments of both sexes. Their feet are protected by high moccasons of buckskin, and the smallness .of the foot resulting from this has always dis- tinguished their trail from that of other Indians. Then* principal articles of clothing, formerly of deerskin, are now made of coarse cotton cloth. Many of them dress in the breech-cloth only, but they are beginning to wear the blanket APE and straw hat. The women wear a short pet- ticoat, with their hair loose. Those in mourn- ing for husbands killed in battle cut their hair short. The younger children go almost entirely naked. Those under the age of two years are carried in a kind of osier basket by the mother, in which the child is fastened in a standing posture. When on horseback, the basket is fastened to the saddle. They do not scalp their enemies. They are fond of card-playing and of smoking, and when idle are given to a mo- notonous kind of singing. When fighting they keep their horses in rapid motion, and are never at rest in the saddle. In their religious ideas they seem to favor the belief in one God ; and Montezuma, or his spirit, is blended in their minds with a certain crude religious as- piration. They have a superstitious reverence for the eagle and owl, and for all perfectly white birds. They equally respect the bear, and refuse to kill it or to partake of the flesh. To the hog they have the same repugnance as the Jews and other Asiatic tribes. APE, a quadrumanous animal of the class mammalia, nearly approaching the human race in anatomical structure. A common distinc- tion between the monkey, baboon, and ape is, that the first has a long and prehensile tail, the second a short one, and the third none at all. According to the modern zoological definition, however, the genus ape, or pithecw, comprises those quadrumanous mammals which have the teeth of the same number and form as in man, and which possess neither tails nor cheek pouches. This definition, while it excludes certain tailless baboons and monkeys, compre- hends the three sub-genera of orangs, chim- panzees, and gibbons. Their arms almost touch the ground when they stand erect on their hind legs ; but the legs are scarcely a third part of the entire height. The legs are not on the same line with the thighs ; the knees are turned outward, and the soles of the feet turn inward, so as to be opposed to one another. The apes are thus enabled to grasp the trunks of trees with much greater force than if their members were constructed like man's. The fingers and toes are long, flexible, and deeply separated from one another; and the thumb, or anterior finger, is completely op- posite to the other four, as well on the hind as on the fore limb. Thus their hands and feet are equally well formed for grasping, and can be used indiscriminately. Hence, apes are neither two-legged and two-handed, like the human race, nor four-footed, like quadrupeds, but four-handed (quadrumanous). When they walk erect, which they rarely do without the aid of a staff or of their forearms, owing to the oblique articulation of the lower extremi- ties, they rest only on the outer edge of the feet. This gives them a tottering and uncer- tain motion, to remedy which they place the fists of their long arms on the ground, and move in the attitude and at the pace of a lame man going on crutches. Consequently, while