My grandfather, an Army veteran of the Pancho Villa campaigns, grew up on the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico. When I was 13 or 14, he took me to the “Rez” to meet some of his friends and talk about tribal history. Although my great-grandmother was Mimbres/Mimbreno, not Mescalero, the two bands shared a lot of history. I’ll never forget what one of the elders told me one evening: “Before the white man came, we were doing to one another what the white man did to us.” The Apache especially hated the Mexicans and I was told of the many horrors that they inflicted on Mexicans who ventured into Apache lands well before non-Spanish Europeans settled the Southwest.
With respect to this Native American PC term coined by Caucasian liberals, go to the Mescalero, Jicarilla, Acoma, White Mountain, San Carlos or probably any other reservation in the Southwest and you’ll see bumper stickers and license plates with the words, “Indian and Proud” on most of the cars and trucks on the rez.
I just finished this book. It confirms that tribal elder’s statement very clearly: https://www.amazon.com/Apache-Wars-Geronimo-Captive-American/dp/0770435815