The Apache Diaspora

Across four centuries, Apache (Ndé) peoples in the North American West confronted enslavement and forced migration schemes intended to exploit, subjugate, or eliminate them. While many Indigenous groups in the Americas lived through similar histories, Apaches were especially affected owing to their mobility, resistance, and proximity to multiple imperial powers. Spanish, Comanche, Mexican, and American efforts scattered thousands of Apaches across the continent and into the Caribbean and deeply impacted Apache groups that managed to remain in the Southwest.

Based on archival research in Spain, Mexico, and the United States, as well Apache oral histories, The Apache Diaspora brings to life the stories of displaced Apaches and the kin from whom they were separated. Paul Conrad charts Apaches' efforts to survive or return home from places as far-flung as Cuba and Pennsylvania, Mexico City and Montreal. As Conrad argues, diaspora was deeply influential not only to those displaced, but also to Apache groups who managed to remain in the West, influencing the strategies of mobility and resistance for which they would become famous around the world.

Through its broad chronological and geographical scope, The Apache Diaspora sheds new light on a range of topics, including genocide and Indigenous survival, the intersection of Native and African diasporas, and the rise of deportation and incarceration as key strategies of state control. As Conrad demonstrates, centuries of enslavement, warfare, and forced migrations failed to bring a final solution to the supposed problem of Apache independence and mobility. Spain, Mexico, and the United States all overestimated their own power and underestimated Apache resistance and creativity. Yet in the process, both Native and colonial societies were changed.

"The first comprehensive history of the Apache nations, this is a revelatory book of enormous importance. Ranging from North America to the Caribbean, Paul Conrad illuminates four centuries of violence, enslavement, resistance, diaspora, and survival. Reading The Apache Diaspora is to see American history itself anew."

"The study of America's borderlands history is as incomplete as it is inadequate without consideration of Apache peoples and their centuries-long struggles for survival and autonomy. With breathtaking range and focus, The Apache Diaspora provides a powerful overview of nearly four centuries of Apache history and offers a series of sobering analyses into the varied phases of enslavement, warfare, and forced migrations that structured much of colonial and nineteenth-century history. A vital addition to the field."

"In an important [and] moving contribution to both Native and diaspora studies . . . Conrad, a non-native, begins by respectfully acknowledging his outsider status and then weaves stories of the Apache across history by using extensive archival resources in multiple states as well as Mexico and Spain to put names (and, when he can, faces) to many figures who have been lost within White-dominated textbooks. By focusing on the personal sides of these stories, the author connects readers directly to a history that should be better known."