When the United States claimed the frontier territories of Mexico in 1848, Mangas Coloradas signed a peace treaty, respecting the Americans as the conquerors of the Mexicans' land.

An uneasy peace between the Apache and the Americans persisted until an influx of gold miners into the Santa Rita Mountains of present-day Arizona led to conflict.

In 1851, near the Pinos Altos mining camp, Mangas Coloradas was attacked by a group of miners; they tied him to a tree and severely beat him.

In December 1860, thirty miners launched a surprise attack on an encampment of Bedonkohe on the west bank of the Mimbres River in retaliation for the theft of numerous livestock.

In early February 1861, a group of Coyotero Apaches stole cattle and kidnapped the stepson of the rancher John Ward near Sonoita, Arizona.

Bascom set out to meet with Cochise near Apache Pass and the Butterfield Overland Stagecoach station to secure the cattle and Ward's son.

He took Cochise and his group of family members, including his wife and children, under arrest while under a white flag in the negotiating tent.

[7] With Bascom unwilling to exchange prisoners, Cochise and his party killed the members of a passing Mexican wagon train.

Their campaigns against the Confederates were the battles of Tubac, Cookes Canyon, Florida Mountains, Pinos Altos and Dragoon Springs.

They thought that they had achieved some success when the Americans closed the Butterfield Overland Stagecoach and Army troops departed, but those actions were related to the beginning of the Civil War.

The United States military leadership decided to move against the Arizona Confederates in what the Union considered part of the New Mexico Territory by dispatching a column of Californian volunteers under Colonel James Henry Carleton.

In January 1863, Coloradas agreed to meet with U.S. military leaders at Fort McLane, near present-day Hurley in southwestern New Mexico.

Coloradas arrived under a white flag of truce to meet with Brigadier General Joseph Rodman West, an officer of the California militia.

He enlisted Kit Carson, one-time friend of the Navajo, to round them up by destroying their crops and livestock, and forcing them on the Long Walk to Fort Sumner.

Carson led an army of 400 soldiers and Ute scouts to the Texas panhandle and captured an encampment from which the inhabitants had fled.

The war culminated with the Yavapai's removal from the Camp Verde Reservation to San Carlos on February 27, 1875, an event now known as Exodus Day.

[10][11] In 1871, a group of 6 white Americans, 48 Mexicans, and almost 100 Papago warriors attacked Camp Grant and massacred about 150 Apache men, women, and children.

Victorio and many of his followers met their end on October 14, 1880, when they were surrounded and killed by Mexican soldiers at the Battle of Tres Castillos in Chihuahua, Mexico.

In the middle of July, Na-tio-tisha led his war-party up Cherry Creek to the Mogollon Rim, intending to reach General Springs, a well-known water hole on the Crook Trail.

Noticing they were being trailed by a single troop of cavalry, the Apache lay an ambush seven miles north of General Springs, where a fork of East Clear Creek cuts a gorge into the Mogollon Rim.

Then they were ready to begin the Battle of Big Dry Wash. After two decades of guerrilla warfare, Cochise chose to make peace with the U.S.

Charles B. Gatewood and his Apache Scouts found Geronimo in Skeleton Canyon in September 1886 and persuaded them to surrender to Miles.

An 1887 letter from Charles Winters from Troop D of the 6th Cavalry Regiment describes a soldier's experiences during the Apache Wars in New Mexico:Dear Friend!

I was made Corporal when i first enlisted, but have now got high enough to be in Charge of Troop D. 6th U.S. Cavalry and it requires a good man for to get that office, and that is more than i expected.

Northerners vacationing in St. Augustine, where Fort Marion was located, included teachers and missionaries, who became interested in the Apache prisoners.

Volunteers participated in teaching the Apache to speak and write English, about Christian religion and elements of American culture.

Eventually, after 26 years, the Apache in Florida were released to return to the Southwest, but Geronimo was sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where he died.

U.S. forces went on search and destroy missions against the small war parties, using tactics including solar signaling, wire telegraph, joint American and Mexican intelligence sharing, allied Indian Scouts, and local quick reaction posse groups.

[16] The last Apache raid into the United States occurred as late as 1924 when a war party of natives, who were later caught and arrested, stole some horses from Arizonan settlers.

Several resistance groups supposedly remained in the Sierra Madre Occidental, with sightings reported from 1952 to 2017 by local ranchers, hikers, or explorers.