FORT SILL HAD DENIED Geronimo the chance to pose before the public and sell his craftwork, as he had done at Mount Vernon. That changed only a few weeks after the scare of an Apache uprising swept Fort Sill as the garrison marched off for the Spanish American War. The Trans-Mississippi International Exposition of 1898 opened in Omaha, Nebraska. A major segment of the exposition was the “Indian Congress,” which drew five hundred Indians from thirty-five tribes and opened in August. Over the objections of their overseer, Lieutenant Francis H. Beach, Geronimo and Naiche headed a Chiricahua delegation of twenty-two from Fort Sill. They lived in tents, guarded by soldiers since they were still prisoners of war, displayed themselves to the public, and sold their craftwork to eager fairgoers. Most of the fair attendees demanded Indians in their native state, contrary to the attitude of those who pushed the “civilization” agenda. But the fair managers ensured that all the tribes engaged in war dances, ceremonials, and sham battles. Geronimo was the star attraction. “Whenever he appears in the procession,” noted a reporter, “the beholders cheer him wildly.”1
Geronimo rewarded another reporter with an account of the past and future as he conceived it. “For years I fought the white man,” he began,
thinking that with my few braves I could kill them all and that we would again have the land that our Great Father [Spirit] gave us and which he covered with game. I thought the Great Spirit would be with us, and after we had killed the whites then the buffalo, deer, and antelope would come back. After I fought and lost and after I traveled over the country in which the white man lives and saw his cities and the work that he had done, my heart was ready to burst. I knew that the race of the Indian was run.
The newsman then asked about the future. “The sun rises and shines for a time,” Geronimo replied, “and then it goes down, sinking out of sight and is lost. So it will be with the Indians.”2
The Omaha exposition launched Geronimo to new heights of fame. For the rest of his life, he was in constant demand as an attraction at fairs large and small.
The two largest were the Pan American Exposition at Buffalo, New York, in 1901, and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at Saint Louis in 1904. At both, Geronimo played his usual role, dressed in his traditional bonnet and a mix of civilian and Apache clothing. He posed for photographs and sold his craftwork. At Buffalo the assassination of President William McKinley overshadowed Geronimo and other celebrities. Even so, at seventy-eight and still under guard, Geronimo participated in mock skirmishes between Indians and cavalry. The New York Times commented that the Buffalo exposition presented an imposing array of Indian chieftains, “but among them all will hardly be found a more imposing figure than that of old GERONIMO.”3
At the exposition in Saint Louis in 1904, Geronimo played his customary role. There, however, he was introduced to a feature of the Palace of Agriculture—the motion picture. With 150 other Indians, Geronimo was escorted into the Nebraska Theater and shown a film promoting agriculture. “While interested in the general farm scenes that show planting, cultivation and harvesting, the cattle scenes and especially those depicting the wild life on the range are most to his liking.” This experience cultivated in Geronimo a “special fondness for the Nebraska Theater.”4
Saint Louis also provided an opportunity for Geronimo to demonstrate his Power as a medicine man and healer. In a contest between Apaches and whites over whose medicine was more effective, Geronimo performed many of the incantations and gyrations that formed part of his healing ceremony. When the hats were passed, however, the whites had more dimes and pennies than the Apaches.5
Dimes and pennies had nothing to do with healing powers. Although Geronimo had once turned to an army doctor to treat him for incipient syphilis, he never in his own mind and the eyes of his people lost his healing Power. A better example of a “contest” had taken place in 1901 in the army hospital at Fort Sill. Geronimo took his daughter Eva to the hospital with a large boil on the back of her neck. Geronimo told the doctor that the boil should be opened. The doctor said that it should not. When the doctor turned his back, Geronimo pulled out his jackknife and lanced the boil. For this offense he was thrown in the guardhouse for three days. But the boil speedily healed. “Among the Apaches Geronimo is called an excellent doctor,” concluded this account, “and they will have no other.”6
The Saint Louis exposition provided the stepping-stone to Geronimo’s next triumph as a celebrity. The assassination of President William McKinley elevated to the presidency Vice President Theodore Roosevelt. He won the election of 1904, and he ensured that his inauguration would showcase American Indians.
As the parade of marching bands, West Point cadets, and army regiments made their way past the presidential reviewing stand on March 4, 1905, the hyperactive president applauded, waved his hat, and vigorously pumped his arms. Then suddenly, around the corner, came a spectacle that brought the people in the stand to their feet—a rank of six mounted Indian chiefs riding side by side in front of the next band. They represented six tribes: Ute, Comanche, Blackfeet, two tribes of Lakota Sioux, and the Chiricahua Apaches. Next to Geronimo rode his neighbor, the Comanche chief Quanah Parker. Geronimo stood out among the six because the others sported colorful feather bonnets and traditional native paint and garb. Geronimo wore a broad-brimmed hat and dark clothing with no ornamentation. White horses flanked Geronimo’s dark horse. The chiefs created a sensation, eclipsing the intended symbolism of a formation of 350 uniformed Carlisle students led by a marching band in which Colonel Richard H. Pratt took inordinate pride.7
As a newsman noted, the Indians seemed to interest the president more than any other parade feature except the cowboys. “When old Geronimo, as if carried away by the cheers which he and his companions received, brandished his spear and gave a wild whoop, the President acknowledged it by waving his hat.”8
For Geronimo, the inauguration was not all triumph. On March 9, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Francis E. Leupp escorted Geronimo and the other chiefs into the president’s office in the White House. After exchanging greetings, a tearful Geronimo begged President Roosevelt to “take the ropes from the hands” of his people. “The ropes have been on my hands for many years and we want to go back to our home in Arizona.”
Through the interpreter, the president replied: “When you lived in Arizona you had a bad heart and killed many of my people. I have appointed Mr. Leupp the Indian Commissioner to watch you. I cannot grant the request you make for yet awhile. We will have to wait and see how you act.”
As the group left the president’s office, Geronimo told Commissioner Leupp he wanted to go back “and speak again to the father.” Leupp denied the request and said that anything further Geronimo had to say would have to be submitted in writing.9
Geronimo returned home more bitter than elated. But his appearance in the inaugural parade may be considered his “Last Hurrah.”
As Geronimo traveled about the country appearing at local celebrations, fairs, and other public events, the relentless opening of Indian reservations to white settlement continued. The Chiricahuas had little to worry about as the Territory of Oklahoma took shape after repeated land rushes beginning in 1889. The Fort Sill Military Reservation would become the Chiricahua Indian Reservation once the army abandoned the fort. In 1901, as Geronimo appeared at the Buffalo exposition, the sale by lottery of “surplus” lands of the Kiowa-Comanche Reservation added still another chunk of Indian land to the Territory of Oklahoma. It also produced the seat of Comanche County, Lawton, only five miles from Fort Sill. The white people who for seven years had been kept distant from the Chiricahuas now surrounded them. The Apaches had flourished under the care of the army and the fruits of their own labor. Their children attended an Indian school at Anadarko, thirty miles distant. Their health had recovered from the torments of Alabama. Dutch Reformed missionaries ministered to the Chiricahuas and converted some. Except for an occasional soldier bootlegging whiskey, the Indians had been relatively free of the old scourge of drunkenness. Now they could easily obtain whiskey, and they did.10
The Dutch Reformed missionaries made a special effort to convert Geronimo. Late in 1902 two missionaries invited him to attend a service. Usen’s “religion” was good enough for him, but he went. After a sermon on the atonement, Geronimo declared, “The Jesus Road is best and I would like my people to travel it. Now we begin to think the Christian white people love us.” Throughout his life Geronimo had frequently been impulsive, and for such a sudden transformation of belief, impulse seems to have governed.
Impulse governed for a year as Geronimo tried to make up his mind: cling to the old beliefs or embrace Christianity. In 1903, limping from a fall from his horse, he made his way into the church to listen to a sermon on Jesus. Geronimo then begged the pastors to give him a new heart. They did; they baptized him into the Dutch Reformed Church.
Geronimo influenced many of his people to take the Jesus Road, including Naiche. After Geronimo’s baptism, he faithfully attended the weekly sermons. He asked the pastors to pray for him, and he told them, “You may hear of my doing wrong, but my heart is right.”
Knowledge of Geronimo’s drinking and gambling disturbed the church officials. He is said to have been “excommunicated” for his habits, but church records reveal nothing of the kind. He may have been censured or suspended for a time, and at least one missionary at Fort Sill declared it a mistake ever to have admitted him to membership.
The most plausible explanation of Geronimo’s spiritual beliefs in his last years is a conflict between Usen and Jesus. Jesus may not have lost entirely, but despite periodic apostasy throughout Geronimo’s life, Usen always prevailed.11
In the summer of 1904, Geronimo became acquainted with S. M. Barrett, the superintendent of schools in nearby Lawton. Geronimo needed an interpreter to help him sell a bonnet, Barrett translating between English and Spanish. When Barrett told Geronimo he had once been wounded by a Mexican, all the old hatred rose to the surface and cemented a friendship between the two. Each visited the other in their homes. Geronimo related to Barrett much of his life story as well as the history of the Chiricahuas. In the summer of 1905, shortly after Geronimo’s return from the inauguration ceremony in Washington, Barrett asked Geronimo’s permission to publish some of what the old man had told him. Geronimo at first refused, but ever on the alert for ways to make money, he said that if the army officer in charge consented he would tell the story of his life.
The officer was First Lieutenant George M. Purington, an enlisted man before the Spanish American War now commissioned in the Eighth Cavalry. He behaved in stark contrast to Captain Hugh Scott and all the previous officers who had charge of the Chiricahuas. He had no sympathy for them, and he promptly refused. The Apaches had been guilty of many depredations and cost many lives and much money to subdue. Geronimo deserved to be hanged rather than spoiled by all the attention he had been receiving. Undaunted, Barrett wrote directly to President Theodore Roosevelt, who had only a few months earlier met with Geronimo and other chiefs in the White House. Roosevelt quickly gave his consent, subject only to a final review by the War Department.12
In October 1905 Barrett secured an interpreter to translate what Geronimo said into English. He was Asa Daklugie, son of Chief Juh, second cousin to Geronimo, and Carlisle-educated. The first day Geronimo made clear that only he would talk. He would answer no questions. He had framed in his mind what he wanted to say at the session and would say no more nor answer any questions. When Barrett tried, Geronimo simply said, “Write what I have spoken.” Later, when Barrett had set to paper what Daklugie had related, Geronimo met with the two and answered questions. This became the routine each day of the interviews.
As Barrett described the process: “He might prefer to talk at his tepee, at Asa Daklugie’s house, in some mountain dell, or as he rode in a swinging gallop across the prairie, whenever his fancy led him, there he told whatever he wished to tell and no more.”
Barrett mailed the manuscript to President Roosevelt. He approved, subject only to footnotes that clarified that any criticisms of individuals were those of Geronimo, together with a final review by the War Department. On June 2, 1906, Barrett mailed the completed manuscript to the War Department. Six weeks later an assistant to the army chief of staff advised the secretary of war that the manuscript contained five passages offensive to the army and that, even if those were eliminated, it should not receive the approval of the War Department. Barrett struck out the offending passages, and the president let the text go to publication.
Barrett included in his introduction examples of the War Department objections—such trivia as criticisms of Generals Crook and Miles. The officers who now ran the army, many of them veterans of the Indian wars, put both Geronimo and Barrett through a shameful process. The old Apache should have been allowed to tell his story unfettered by official restrictions. But the officers could tolerate no criticism, possibly because in retrospect Geronimo had made so many look foolish.
For the historian, Geronimo’s autobiography, even without the excised passages, presents daunting problems. The most obvious are the perils of translation from one language to another. Daklugie’s command of English may have been flawed. Barrett may have softened some of the content to avoid offending the army. At eighty-three, Geronimo’s memory may have dimmed. Either because of memory loss or deliberate vagueness or exaggeration, much of his history is so confused that the historian is left to puzzle out what happened. Cultural differences, which were great, account for much confusion. Geronimo’s chronology, for example, is severely flawed, reflecting the Apache focus on events rather than the white man’s calendar. And what was important to Geronimo may not be of much interest to the historian. Even so, the autobiography is valuable for what it does contain and what the historian can infer from that.
Notably, the difficulties of making sense of parts of the book are largely in the period between the coming of the white people and the surrender at Skeleton Canyon. Geronimo’s accounts of his youth, his culture and traditions, the ceremonies and dances, family relations, tribal relations, and the spiritual beliefs of the people contain little confusion or obscurity.
Uppermost in his mind, from Skeleton Canyon to Fort Sill, was the injustice of two decades as a prisoner of war and the intense yearning to go back to the Arizona mountains. His passion for that land emerges plainly at the end of the book:
There is no climate or soil which, to my mind, is equal to that of Arizona. We could have plenty of good cultivating land, plenty of grass, plenty of timber and plenty of minerals in that land, my home, my fathers’ land, to which I now ask to be allowed to return. I want to spend my last days there, and be buried among those mountains. If this could be I might die in peace, feeling that my people, placed in their native homes, would increase in numbers, rather than diminish as at present, and that our name would not become extinct.
Jason Betzinez, the most authoritative voice of the Chiricahua past, wrote that “Apaches possessed many virtues such as honesty, endurance, loyalty, love of children, and sense of humor. They also had at least two serious faults. One of these was drunkenness and the other was a fondness for fighting among themselves, these often going hand in hand.”13
Drunkenness is a theme running throughout Apache history. No less than other Chiricahuas, Geronimo loved liquor, no matter what kind, and at Fort Sill he often got drunk. Betzinez, who had been with Geronimo since the warpath, wrote that his “greatest weakness was liquor.”14
On February 11, 1909, Geronimo rode into Lawton to sell some bows and arrows. With the proceeds, he asked Eugene Chihuahua to buy him whiskey. As was customary at a time when law barred Indians from purchasing liquor, Eugene asked a soldier to get it for him. He then turned it over to Geronimo. Late at night Geronimo mounted his horse and rode back to Fort Sill. When almost there, he fell off his horse and lay there in the freezing weather until discovered the next morning. For three days his family cared for him in his home before one of the scouts reported his worsening cold to the Fort Sill surgeon, who had him brought to the hospital. The cold had developed into pneumonia.
The surgeon expected death to come quickly. Geronimo, however, insisted that Eva and Robert, his daughter and son, be brought to his bedside from the Chilocco Indian School. Typically, Lieutenant Purington wrote a letter instead of sending a telegram. Eugene Chihuahua sat with Geronimo during the day, Asa Daklugie during the night. Geronimo died at 6:15 a.m. on February 17, 1909. The funeral the next day had to be delayed until Eva and Robert arrived from Chilocco.
A prisoner of war for twenty-three years, Geronimo was buried in the Apache graveyard on Cache Creek at Fort Sill.15