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Welcome to the Territories page for the Ndé Kónitsąąíí Gokíyaa (Lipan Apache). This is a page managed by Native Land Digital.

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Last updated on June 12, 2021

The Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas is the continuation of the historical Lipan Apache Tribe that has called the Southern Great Plains, Mapimi Basin in Northern Mexico, and the Gulf of Mexico coast home for many centuries. Our tribe has always functioned as a confederation of different bands of Plains Apaches living independently yet allied with each other for mutual aid and the common defense of our homeland. The confederation held together until pressure from northern plains tribes and the Spanish empire peaked and the leader of the confederacy at that time, Strong Arm Lipan, died in battle in the early-1800s. After that point, the bands fought for survival by allying with neighboring tribes like the Mescalero, Tonkawa, and Kiowa, and by settling into enclaves intertwined with the changing social-economic landscape surrounding them. Some of the bands, like the Sun Otters, established successful niches for themselves and even took in refugees from other less fortunate bands in an enclave in San Antonio that in the early-1900s was known as Indian Town, which evolved from an old Lipan camp at the junction of Apache and Alazan Creeks in what today is known as the West Side. The Little Breech Cloth and Tall Grass Bands also survived as distinct historical communities in different regions in Texas, the former in the Southern Rio Grande Valley and the latter in the Big Bend Region.

Today the Lipan Apache Tribe is made up of these three bands. The other bands of the old confederacy broke up into remnants that either fused with the surviving bands or were forcibly removed to reservations in New Mexico and Oklahoma.