_From Copyright Photograph 1906 by E.S. Curtis_
The Coyoteros are divided into five bands, each consisting of a number of clans, although in one band there are now survivors of a single clan only, while in others as many as seven or eight clans are still to be found. Descent among the Apache generally is reckoned through the mother; that is, the children belong to their mother’s clan. An exception to this rule is said by "Peaches," an old Apache scout under Crook, to exist among the Chiricahua, where the children take the gens of the father. Among the Apache some of the younger generation are inclined to disregard tribal laws respecting marriage, but in former times they were rigidly enforced, marriage within the clan or the gens being regarded as incestuous. When asked what would happen if a man and a woman belonging to the same clan should marry, one old man answered that both would be quickly put to death.
In the Appendix are given the clan names of the Coyoteros, also of the Arivaipa and the Chiricahua. Geronimo, Chato, and Cochise were members of the Aiahán, People of the East, clan. Most of the clan names are derived from localities in which the ancestors of the clan are supposed to have first lived.
With the Apache, as with other tribes, the clan organization has an important bearing on property right. Regardless of what property either spouse may hold or own at the time of marriage, the other immediately becomes possessed of his or her moiety. Should the wife die, her husband retains possession of the property held in common so long as he does not remarry, but what might be termed the legal ownership of the wife’s half interest becomes vested in her clan. Should he attempt to dissipate the property the members of the deceased wife’s clan would at once interfere. If the widower wishes to marry again and the woman of his choice belongs to the clan of his former wife, then he and the new wife become owners in common of all personal property held by him; but if the second wife belongs to a different clan from that of the former wife, then the husband must make actual transfer of half of the common property to the clanspeople of the deceased woman, who inherited the legal interest in it at their relative’s death. The same tribal law applies in the case of a widow.