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Apache Tribe - Oklahoma (U.S.)

Native American

image by Donald Healy, 22 December 2007

The band
The flag

See also:

The Band

map image by Peter Orenski based on input from Don Healy

Apache Tribe - Oklahoma

With fewer than 600 enrolled members, the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma is one of the smallest of the nearly forty different tribes based in modern Oklahoma. Its membership consists not only of Apaches but also those of Kiowa ancestry. The Tribe was once known as the Kiowa-Apache.

The Apache Tribe is composed mainly of descendants from the Plains Apache, an offshoot of the Apache of New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico. They had very close ties with the Kiowa Tribe of the Plains and had a similar lifestyle. That lifestyle was as different from their fellow Apaches as the grasslands of Kansas and Oklahoma are from the deserts of Arizona.

In celebrating the unique cultural ancestry of the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma, one can find the numeral two occurring over and over in the flag of the Apache and Kiowa people that make up this modern Nation.

The Flag

Their flag is divided in two. The left half is red, the right blue. The colors combine with white elements to incorporate the colors of the United States, but red and blue also recall the colors of the blankets used by Plains Indians (see the Comanche). Centered on the flag is a white or light buff-colored map of the State of Oklahoma.

In front of the map are four busts of Indian warriors, two in the attire of the Apache, two wearing Kiowa headdresses (combs plus feather). Each warrior is adorned with "war paint" in red, white and blue, but also showing natural skin tones. The foursome is bracketed by two coup sticks and behind them are two other lances. Each coup stick bears two pairs of two feathers. The warrior to the fore bears a yellow kerchief tied around his neck, and the two Apache each wear a single feather in their hair.

White lettering is used to display "Apache Tribe" across the top of the flag and "Oklahoma" across the base of it.

A flag of two's - sets of warriors, coup sticks, colored sections, pairs of feathers - all reflect the dual nature of the Apache of Oklahoma, a Tribe of two worlds, the Great Plains and the Great Southwest.

© Donald Healy 2008
information provided by Peter Orenski, 22 December 2007