First official American notice
The official history of the Apache begins nearly a hundred years later. In 1805 the explorers Lewis and Clark describe the “Ca´takâ,” whom they apparently did not meet, as living between the heads of the two forks of Cheyenne river, in the Black Hills region of northeastern Wyoming, and numbering twenty-five tipis, seventy-five warriors, and three hundred souls. This appears to be a singularly close estimate. The Kiowa lived near them, on the North Platte, and both tribes had the same alliances and general customs. They were rich in horses, which they sold to the Arikara and Mandan, but had no trader among them, and the mouth of Cheyenne river was suggested as a suitable place for the establishment of a trading post for them both (Lewis and Clark, 6).