Pueblo tribes; but the moment that the latter determined to throw off the galling yoke which had been placed upon their necks, the Apache became their warm friend, and received the fugitives in the recesses of the mountains, where he could bid defiance to the world. Therefore, we can always depend upon finding in the records of the settlements in the Rio Grande valley, and in Sonora and Chihuahua, that every revolt or attempted revolt, of the Pueblos or sedentary tribes meant a corresponding increase in the intensity of the hostilities prosecuted by the Apache nomads.
In the revolts of 1680, as well as those of 1745 and 1750, the Apache swept the country far to the south. The great revolt of the Pueblos was the one of 1680, during which they succeeded in driving the governor and the surviving Spanish colonists from Santa Fé down to the present town of Juarez (formerly El Paso del Norte), several hundred miles nearer Mexico. At that place Otermin made a stand, but it was fully twelve years before the Spanish power was re-established through the efforts of Vargas and Cruzate. The other two attempts at insurrection failed miserably, the second being merely a local one among the Papagoes of Arizona. It may be stated, in round terms, that from the year 1700 until they were expelled from the territory of Mexico, the exertions of the representatives of the Spanish power in "New Spain" were mainly in the direction of reducing the naked Apache, who drove them into a frenzy of rage and despair by his uniform success.
The Tarahumaris, living in the Sierra Madre south of the present international boundary, were also for a time a thorn in the side of the European; but they submitted finally to the instructions of the missionaries who penetrated into their country, and who, on one occasion at least, brought them in from the war-path before they had fired a shot.
The first reference to the Apaches by name is in the account of Espejo's expedition—1581—where they will be found described as the "Apichi," and from that time down the Spaniards vie with each other in enumerating the crimes and the atrocities of which these fierce Tinneh have been guilty. Torquemada grows eloquent and styles them the Pharaohs ("Faraones") who have persecuted the chosen people of Israel (meaning the settlers on the Rio Grande).
