See Part 1.
Interestingly, the Apache used teams of dogs to pull sleds called travois. In this way they could move about freely with their few essential possessions. These dogs were white with black spots, and slightly smaller than the huskies used by the Inuit and other Northern tribes, which are certainly the source of the practice. Francisco Coronado wrote of the Apache as "dog nomads" when he encountered them in eastern New Mexico in 1541.
"After seventeen days of travel, I came upon a 'rancheria' of the Indians who follow these cattle (bison). These natives are called Querechos. They do not cultivate the land, but eat raw meat and drink the blood of the cattle they kill. They dress in the skins of the cattle, with which all the people in this land clothe themselves, and they have very well-constructed tents, made with tanned and greased cowhides, in which they live and which they take along as they follow the cattle. They have dogs which they load to carry their tents, poles, and belongings."
Paul Dyck Collection: Arikara - Buffalo Bill Center of the West
The Apache also shared similar gender-role practices with the nomads of the Mongolian Steppe. The men spent their time hunting or raiding, all the day-to-day work fell to the women. The women were in charge of any cultivation, cooking and home construction, which would have been either a teepee on the plains, a wickiup in the highlands or a earthen hogan in the Sonoran desert. Anthropologist Morris Opler writes, "The woman not only makes the furnishings of the home but is responsible for the construction, maintenance, and repair of the dwelling itself and for the arrangement of everything in it. She provides the grass and brush beds and replaces them when they become too old and dry."
Apache Wickiup.
The social organization of the Apaches is in many ways built around these views of the differences between the sexes. Extended family units lived close together in a matrilocal system, where men leave their families to join his wife's household. A matriarch of each lineage is in charge of the residence, and new space was built to accommodate the families of each daughter. It was also common practice for a man to marry his wife's sister if she died or was barren, and for a wife to marry her husbands brother in the event of the husbands death. A most interesting aspect of these relations is the varying degrees of institutionalized avoidance that an Apache man would display toward his wife's family, especially female members. In the most highly ritualized systems, the husband was obliged to avoid his female in-laws completely, and only speak of them in a formal and indirect manner.
