Indé

The Indé are the Western Apache, who call themselves Ndee or Indé, the people, in Southern Athabaskan. Their home is the broken mountain and plateau country of east-central Arizona, running south into Sonora and Chihuahua; of its several divisions, the Tonto groups lived and intermarried closely with the neighboring Yavapai.

Linguistic kin of the Navajo, from whom they separated centuries ago, the Western Apache descend, like other Apacheans, from the great Athabaskan migration out of the Canadian north. Along streams such as the Gila they raised corn, beans and squash in irrigated fields, hunting and gathering across the surrounding ranges.

Their lands formed the western heart of the country the Spanish called Apacheria; from the 1690s raiding parties reached into Sonora, and through the eighteenth century they fought, traded and made temporary peace with presidios of the Spanish northern frontier.