Men participated in hunting and raiding activities, while women gathered food, wood, and water. Western Apache tribes were matrilineal, tracing descent through the mother; other groups traced their descent through both parents. Polygamy was practiced when economic circumstances permitted and marriage could be terminated easily by either party. Their dwellings were shelters of brush called wickiups, which were easily erected by the women and were well adapted to their arid environment and constant shifting of the tribes. Some families lived in buffalo-hide teepees, especially among the Kiowa-Apache and Jicarilla. The Apache made little pottery, and were known instead for their fine basketwork. In traditional Apache culture, each band was made up of extended families with a headman chosen for leadership abilities and exploits in war.  For centuries they were fierce warriors, adept in wilderness survival, who carried out raids on those who encroached on their territory.

Religion was a fundamental part of Apache life. Their pantheon of supernatural beings included Ussen (or Yusn), the Giver of Life, and the ga’ns, or mountain spirits, who were represented in religious rites such as healing and puberty ceremonies. Men dressed elaborately to impersonate the ga’ns, wearing kilts, black masks, tall wooden-slat headdresses, and body paint, and carrying wooden swords.

Trade was established between the long established Pueblo peoples and the Southern Athabaskans by the mid 16th century, exchanging maize and woven goods for bison meat, hides and material for stone tools.

The Apache and the Pueblos managed to maintain generally peaceful relations; however this changed with the appearance of the Spaniards. Arriving in the mid 1500s, the first Spanish intruders drove northward into Apache territory disrupting the Apache trade connections with neighboring tribes.

In April 1541, while traveling on the plains east of the Pueblo region, Francisco Coronado wrote:

After seventeen days of travel, I came upon a rancheria of the Indians who follow these cattle [bison.] These natives are called Querechos. They do not cultivate the land, but eat raw meat and drink the blood of the cattle they kill. They dress in the skins of the cattle, with which all the people in this land clothe themselves, and they have very well-constructed tents, made with tanned and greased cowhides, in which they live and which they take along as they follow the cattle. They have dogs which they load to carry their tents, poles, and belongings.