"A historic land return is reconnecting the Fort Sill Apache Tribe with part of its ancestral homeland in southeastern Arizona.
The Trust for Public Land has transferred a 55-acre privately owned parcel in the Cochise Stronghold region of the Dragoon Mountains to the Fort Sill Apache Tribe. According to reporting shared by Yahoo News, the parcel was formally signed over on September 10 and the transfer was announced on September 23.
The land lies within the boundaries of Coronado National Forest, in a landscape long associated with Chiricahua Apache history. The Fort Sill Apache Tribe is made up of descendants of Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apaches, whose homelands extended across southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico, and northern Mexico.
Cochise Stronghold is widely known as a rugged refuge connected to Chief Cochise and his people. In 1872, Cochise and General Oliver O. Howard negotiated a peace agreement that established a reservation in Chiricahua homelands. By 1876, Chiricahua people were moved to the San Carlos Reservation, and in 1886 Apache bands, including those associated with Geronimo, were made prisoners of war and sent to Florida, Alabama, and later Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The tribe was not released from prisoner-of-war status until 1914.
Today, the Fort Sill Apache Tribe has a land base in Oklahoma and a 30-acre reservation in Akela, New Mexico. Tribal leaders described the Arizona parcel as a meaningful return to a place connected to culture, ceremony, memory, and future generations.
The Dragoon Mountains are also part of the Sky Islands region, where mountain ranges rise above the desert and support remarkable biodiversity. For Chiricahua Apache descendants, the area carries both cultural and environmental significance."
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