A Chiricahua Band Hidden in the Clans, Part II: Ash Flat and the Return of the Tsiltaden


By Ruben Leyva

Some stories are whispered through ritual, while others are remembered in the soil. For the Apache, both forms of memory endure.

This is not a new story. It is the continuation of one that has been waiting to be fully remembered. In "A Chiricahua Band Hidden in the Clans," I described the Tsiltaden (pronounced roughly: SEEL-tah-den)—a Chiricahua band whose memory endured through ceremonial and kinship systems. In this second part, we return to them again, but not by name alone. At Ash Flat, an elder described the arrival of the Iya-áye (pronounced: ee-YAH-ah-yeh), those whose presence was necessary before a burial could proceed. He did not name them as a distinct people, but he did say, "most of them were Tsiltaden...." It is possible, then, that the Iya-áye was a similar group that played a ceremonial role, remembered within or aligned with the Tsiltaden group—those whose presence was as vital as the grayish-green, leafy sand sagebrush plant used as medicine or in ceremony.

To understand the Tsiltaden within their proper cultural context, we must be precise. Chiricahua Apache society was structured into bands, each tied to leadership, territory, and kinship. Within each band, multiple local groups operated independently, both geographically and in terms of leadership. These included the Chokonen (Cochise's people), the Chihene or Warm Springs (Victorio, Loco), the Nednhi (Juh), and the Bedonkohe (Geronimo and Mangas Coloradas). The Western Apache, by contrast, were organized into local groups nested within broader dialect communities, such as the Cibecue, San Carlos, and White Mountain Apache. This difference wasn't merely administrative—it reflected different patterns of mobility, dialect, and ceremonial practice.

When a Chiricahua band like the Tsiltaden appears within the Western Apache clan system, it does not mean they became Western Apache. It may mean that women from outside the Western Apache were taken in, and that their children, born into new ceremonial structures, carried forward the memory of their band's origin—even if under a slightly altered name.

In Part I, I introduced the name Tsiltaden—a spelling preserved in oral memory by Chiricahua (Gila) and Western Apache families. A White Mountain Apache elder later confirmed the spelling Dzilt'aadn as a more accurate representation within Western Apache speech. For the sake of clarity and continuity, I continue using Tsiltaden in this article, as ethnologists have recorded it. Still, that elder's confirmation affirms the deeper phonological and ceremonial roots of the name.

This helps explain a moment recorded by Keith Basso in *The Cibecue Apache*, when an elder described a funeral gathering at Ash Flat. When some present suggested burying the deceased immediately, others objected. "No," they said. "His relatives are not here yet." Those relatives were the Iya-áye—"those who came." But Basso's informant goes further: he recalls that most of those who came were Tsiltaden. The implication is striking. Perhaps the Iya-áye were not entirely separate from the Tsiltaden. They were the Tsiltaden kin, remembered not just by name but by what they did: they came, not as outsiders, but as extended family who fulfilled the final, sacred obligation of presence.

And so we return to the Tsiltaden, not only in name, but in function. Their presence at death rites was not incidental. It was expected. They were the ones called when mourning could not begin. They were the ones whose arrival signaled that a ceremony could finally proceed.

The categories Tsiltaden and Iya-áye may date to before U.S. occupation and reservation concentration. When the Apaches were rounded up and placed on distant reservations, their old identities became confused, sometimes collapsed, and sometimes strategically concealed. As Ralph Ogle notes in *Federal Control of the Western Apaches,* families at Fort McDowell developed dialects "not easily understood by other Apaches." Their isolation—and the ambiguity surrounding it—helped shield families like Frank's. He could live under a different tribal name. He could be forgotten in one archive while living quietly in another.
Frank Leyva, a Warm Springs Apache descendant, was listed alone in the June 30, 1890, San Carlos Apache Agency Census conducted by Captain John L. Bullis of the 24th Infantry. There, he appears under the Mojave-Apache classification as "Lava," a phonetic misspelling of Leyva, pronounced Lay-vah. This solitary listing, without his Bedonkohe wife or family, reflects the reservation's administrative practices at the time. As Grenville Goodwin noted in *The Social Organization of the Western Apache,* the tag-band system imposed patrilineal registration and issued identification numbers based on post-marriage residence. These external structures often failed to reflect the actual kinship realities of Apache families and may explain why Frank was recorded without his wife. It also suggests how names like "Lava"—a Spanish surname—served to mask deeper affiliations, such as his connection to the Chiricahua, while complying with imposed categories of identity.

Similarly, ancestral Chiricahua Apache group names, such as the Tseyiden (pronounced TSAY-yee-den), meaning "those of the canyon," functioned as ceremonial kin identifiers, often carrying with them ancient territorial or ecological references. These were not simply directional names—they invoked memory, kinship, and place. Just as the Tsiltaden's presence was expected in mourning, the Tseyiden group was recognized through speech and relation, their names anchoring lineage to land.

In fact, both the Tsiltaden and Iya'aiye appear on the Cibecue clan charts recorded by Keith Basso, listed under Phratry Number One, among the most established and ceremonially active lineages. While Basso offers no definition for Iya'aiye, its inclusion affirms that the name was not symbolic, but structural—a recognized component of the Western Apache kinship system. That absence of definition, in itself, reveals something: a name remembered, perhaps, only through what it signified. They were the ones who arrived. The ones whose presence, like smoke and sand sagebrush, confirmed the sacredness of the gathering.

The Bedonkohe-Chiricahua, like Frank, may not have existed as an independent band any longer, but they were not erased. They were renamed, reassigned, sometimes hidden—but never gone. They were the ones who arrived. Their name, like ìyà'ái (ee-YAH-ah-ee), the sagebrush used in mourning, lingers in the air. Íyà'ái, clarified by Opler, refers to Artemisia filifolia, a soft sage native to the Mogollon uplands. Burned or waved at burials, it is not just a plant—it is a signal. A sign that something sacred is underway. Like the Tsiltaden, the sage completes what mourning begins.

The language Basso preserved—Iya-áye—resonates with kinship speech among the Chiricahua (Gila) Apache and neighboring Southern Athabaskan dialects. Like the informal Apache kin-counting for Tseyidén for Tseyi' Ndee ("Canyon People") in San Carlos usage, Iya-áye is likely a condensed form of a much older ceremonial phrase. But more than linguistics, this term carried ceremonial weight. The mourning ceremony described was not limited to the deceased—it was a reaffirmation of presence.

As the mourners gathered at Ash Flat, it wasn't just the body they waited for—it was memory. A name spoken upon arrival. A presence felt through smoke.

This is reflected in the testimony of Joseph Hoffman, a Western Apache elder interviewed by Grenville Goodwin in 1932. Originally from Cibecue and estimated to be over eighty-five, Hoffman identified as Tsiltaden—"foot of the mountain people." However, Hoffman also explained that his ancestors came from the north, settling in a place called kį nandune (keen NAHN-doo-neh), meaning "concealed houses." This origin story suggests migration and the potential integration of outsiders into Cibecue society. In one account, Hoffman mentions seven chiefs killed in a Navajo conflict, including one Tsiltaden and one Tseyiden. This confirms that Tsiltaden, like the Tseyiden, was not only a clan but also a politically important lineage.

The absence of the Tseyiden from the clan and phratry charts compiled by ethnographers like Keith Basso and others—including the Cibecue, White Mountain, and Coyotero records—supports this interpretation. If the Tseyiden had originated within these Western Apache societies, we would expect them to appear among the established ceremonial lineages. Their omission suggests instead that they arrived from elsewhere—likely from neighboring Chiricahua or Bedonkohe territory to the east. And yet, their ceremonial presence endured.

In this light, it becomes clear: Tseyiden and Iya'aiye may refer to the same or overlapping ceremonial group. One name spoke of geography—those who came from the canyon. The other side of the ceremony—those who came to mourn. The records do not contradict each other; they illuminate a truth about braided identity: these were people whose presence transcended a single label.

In one preserved oral history, a leader of the Tseyiden addressed Joseph Hoffman, a Dziltadn elder, as "brother." Among Apaches, this was not metaphor. It was a declaration of kinship, often spoken across clan lines to honor shared ancestry or ceremonial responsibility. That a Tsiltaden elder would be recognized in such terms by a Tseyiden leader confirms what the records omit: that these were not isolated groups, but remembered relations—affirmed in ritual and held together by presence. Hoffman's presence, like the name he carried, was not forgotten. It was welcomed. His memory—like that of the Tsiltaden—reminds us that not all who came to Cibecue were born there. Some were received, remembered, and ritualized.

For this reason, the Tsiltaden endure. Their name lives on—not only in San Carlos clan registries, but in the stories of who came, who stayed, and who remembered. They were known not by paperwork but by relational ceremony. They walked into mourning, like wind carrying sage, and the land remembered their arrival.

So, we must.

Frank Leyva's path did not end at San Carlos. Though listed in 1890 as "Lava" under a Mojave-Apache tag band, his memory traveled west—into Bá̱ch'i circles of southern Arizona and northern Sonora, where ceremony endured even when tribal names were obscured. His descendants, remembered today as Pinaleño Apache based on their relocation south of Tucson, carried on a legacy shaped by convergence: marrying into the Nednhi of the Sierra Madre, walking with the San Carlos Apache, and recalling the songs of the Tsiltaden—the Chiricahua. But these kinship ties never meant they ceased to be a people of the U.S. Southwest. Leandro Leyva, Frank's son, married Praxedis—a Nednhi-Chiricahua woman—and their family reappears on record in Ysleta, Texas.

This was not a coincidence—it was kinship. As Allan Radbourne's research on the Apache scout known as "Mickey Free"—the boy whose 1861 abduction sparked the confrontation between Lieutenant Bascom and Cochise at Apache Pass—suggests, these identities, once dismissed as anomalies, were deliberate survivals. The Pinal Apache Mansos—or Bá̱ch'i of Tucson—was never just a term of erasure. It was a re-rooting. What emerged in the Huachuca Mountains and the San Pedro River Valley was not a broken lineage but a braided one, shaped by land, ritual, and quiet endurance. The people called Tsiltaden—and later, some as Bá̱ch'i—were not forgotten. They became the ones who remained.