Final answer:
The Apache subsistence altered due to contact with Europeans, adopting horses and firearms, engaging in prolonged conflict, and ultimately being confined to reservations where traditional lifeways were restricted.
Step-by-step explanation:
After contact with Europeans, the Apache subsistence strategies changed significantly. The introduction of European goods, such as firearms and horses, altered traditional Apache life, leading them to adapt their practices. Initially, as nomadic hunter-gatherers, the Apaches moved around the Southwest, hunting and gathering available resources, occasionally engaging in conflict with neighboring agricultural communities by raiding crops. The Spanish conquest led to a violent period, where the Apaches fought in prolonged conflicts such as the Apache wars, which continued until the capture of Geronimo in 1886. Throughout colonization, Indigenous peoples like the Apaches had to navigate the devastating impacts of European settlement, which included warfare, disease, and forced migration. Some Apache groups were able to incorporate European material culture into their own to ensure survival, using metal weaponry and adopting the use of Spanish horses, which improved their mobility and warfare capabilities. As for many Native American tribes, by the 1700s and 1800s, the pressures of colonization confined many of them to reservations, where their subsistence activities were heavily restricted and monitored by European settlers, resulting in a drastic change from their previous nomadic lifestyle.