The Apache relationship to this land was not simply possession in the legal sense that the Anglo-American tradition understood it.

It was a deep and specific familiarity that made survival possible in conditions that would have been lethal to people without that knowledge.

The Apache moved through this landscape in ways that seemed inexplicable to the Army officers pursuing them — appearing and disappearing, finding water in apparently waterless terrain, crossing mountain ranges in conditions that the Army could not follow.

This knowledge was not merely practical.