Not sure how this topic (Apaches of the Southwest) ties in with whom or which group of humans arrived in the Americas "first", but like everything that IS related,
it is COMPLICATED.
The land bridge THEORY seems like a good 'pat' answer as to how the American continents got peopled. However according to geologists, there never was any "ice free corridor" down through the continent-wide glacier that covered most of Canada, making an utterly impassible roadblock to any migrations (including by mammoths, horses etc) across Canada in the right time period to fit the Bering strait land bridge theory. I have NO doubt that animals DID cross that land bridge, but only when it was relatively ice-free. The genetic differences between American species of mammoths and mastodons from their Eurasian cousins are fairly solid proof that the species must have been separated for a long enough time to become different species.
The alternate THEORY has the first Americans coming by sea, and while crossing the open oceans probably was a very bad idea circa 10,000 BC, by simply following the coastlines, and edges of the ice pack (the northern polar ice cap extended well south into the Atlantic during the Ice Age) AND with the lower sea levels, the distances from Asia, and from Europe coming from the opposite direction, were shorter. Recent DNA studies have shown that up to one third of all Amerindians have EUROPEAN ancestry, and two thirds have Asian origins.
"Great Surprise"?Native Americans Have West Eurasian Origins
Even these ancient Ice Age colonists were NOT the first to arrive in the Americas and make it a home either. The oldest human remains found in the Americas appear to be most closely related to the Australoid peoples, (the Aborigines of Australia) and based on where these remains have been found, must have colonized South America first!
The suggested origin of the pre-Clovis Australoid population of the Americas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luzia_Woman
Even if we assign the Amerindians as having come,
"from China", that is no clear cut genetic closed case! There were "west Asian" (European) people living in what is today China at least by the Bronze Age:
<This one was on Forbes magazine website but has been pulled, likely due to the politically correct issues it raised but is still available as a Google cache>
DNA Reveals These Red-Haired Chinese Mummies Come From Europe And Asia
Evidence that a West-East admixed population lived in the Tarim Basin as early as the early Bronze Age | BMC Biology | Full Text
Analysis of ancient human mitochondrial DNA from the Xiaohe cemetery: insights into prehistoric population movements in the Tarim Basin, China | BMC Genetics | Full Text
Bottom line is that the Americas have been a mixing bowl of the various races and peoples over the millenia. Still are. Who got here first? It is complicated! Oh and side thing here but saying "whitey" all the time is just like saying "redskins" or "darkies" other racist epithets. You can call it PC etc but if you are going to be against racism it helps if you are not being that way yourself. Humans apparently all started out from AFRICA, although there are alternate theories as well, and spread out from there.
Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas,
Oroblanco
The Continental Rift theory where the continents split after the great flood has some merit. There is more than 1 creation story among Apaches (& most other tribes). One put the 'sacred cave where man entered this world' in the Grand Canyon, another in the northern Superstitions. Personally I don't totally buy into any of the theories but think there's some truth in many & a lot of BS also... sort of like get any number of people to tell the same story & all will come out somewhat different.
