Lipan Apache

The Lipans ranged across what is now eastern New Mexico, west Texas, and northern Chihuahua, Mexico. The Lipans got along well with their western cousins, the Mescalero Apaches, and poorly with their northern relative, the Jicarillas, with whom they were bitter enemies. Their relationship with the Comanches alternated between peaceful coexistence and open warfare. The Lipans became noted for conducting raids against Mexican and American settlements following the war with Mexico. They hunted buffalo during the fall and spring in a pattern reminiscent of other plains peoples.

Spanish colonists felt the brunt of Lipan attacks when these Indians joined with Comanches in a general onslaught against the frontier settlers. By the mid-1840s, the Lipans had become a factor in United States Indian policy affecting Texas. During that period, the tribe was arbitrarily disrupted and occasionally falsely accused of depredations actually wrought by

Comanches. Such wrongful charges culminated in an effort by the army to defeat the Lipans. The Lipans were concentrated on a reserve near Fort Mason in 1852 and on a reservation along the Brazos River in 1854. Many Lipans who escaped reservation confinement fled to Mexico and conducted raids into the United States in the 1860s and 1870s.

Never a large tribe, the Lipans were eventually consolidated with the Mescalero Apaches.