A QUART OF WHISKEY, a fall from his horse, and pneumonia killed only the mortal Geronimo. The immortal Geronimo lives on, one of the enduring icons of American and Native American history.
Neither Geronimo’s persona nor the legend explains why his name continues to resonate so vividly in the public mind. The reason is simple. The white citizens of Arizona and New Mexico endured a decade of Apache depredations, 1876–86. Hundreds died as Apache raiders swept down on farms, ranches, villages, mining claims, and travelers to exact an appalling toll of plunder, destruction, mutilation, and death. Their bursts of anguish and outrage, reported, embellished, and falsified by Southwestern newspapers and expressed in appeals to presidents, members of Congress, governors, and others of prominence, attracted the notice of all Americans. As the name Geronimo emerged from obscurity in the late 1870s, he came to personify all the Apache raiders, both in the minds of victims and in newspapers throughout the nation. Americans everywhere almost daily read of atrocities attributed to him. After his surrender in 1886, Geronimo became a prisoner of war for the rest of his life, but his name remained bright in the public memory. After 1898, he became a celebrity for other reasons, his name still in the forefront of Indian leaders.
So it remained until Geronimo’s death in 1909. Afterward, the name endured, his years as a celebrity forgotten, his years as a murderous butcher remembered. This incarnation buried Geronimo in legend. By the late twentieth century, however, with fresh public attitudes shaped by the “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” syndrome, the Geronimo legend began to morph into the more congenial image that encompassed all American Indians: the Apache daredevil fighting for his homeland. Such remains the legend of Geronimo, even though he spent his adult life raiding and plundering in Mexico and the American Southwest or on a reservation. He did not fight for his homeland. He did fight for his values and life-way, which perhaps contained an element of homeland.
If a “real” Geronimo has emerged from the preceding chapters, how should he be characterized? Only two words apply universally: complex and contradictory. Dozens of other words and phrases describe him at various times and in various episodes of his life, but only a few continuously trace a pattern. They can be reconciled only under two words of generalization—complex and contradictory.
Most prominently, Geronimo repeatedly demonstrated courage and bravery, especially in clashes with Mexican troops. Pozo Hediondo in 1851 revealed him at his best. Teamed with Mangas Coloradas and Cochise, he fought viciously and contributed significantly to the almost complete obliteration of the Mexican foe. Yet at Alisos Creek in 1882 many tribesmen accused him of cowardice—sneaking out of the deadly ravine to save himself while leaving others to their fate. Although the belief is almost certainly wrong, that it existed at all reveals a contradiction that planted itself in the opinion of many Chiricahuas.
In the rush to the Sierra Madres that preceded and followed Alisos Creek, Geronimo exhibited exceptional leadership, especially in the fight in Horseshoe Canyon and in bringing the survivors of Alisos Creek to safety in mountain refuges. Jason Betzinez testified to Geronimo’s critical leadership in eluding vigorous pursuit by US cavalry and Apache scouts. The flight involved women and children as well as the fighting men.
Even so, detracting from his superior leadership, he relaxed his vigilance after crossing the boundary and allowed his camp to be surprised and attacked by American cavalry and Indian scouts. Only the skillful flanking movement of some of his fighters opened the way to escape.
In both Mexico and the United States, he lived up to his reputation as a ruthless butcher. Especially in Mexico, he shot, slashed, tortured, and murdered almost anyone he came across. Yet, inexplicably, he occasionally spared the life of a victim or took him or her captive, sometimes under brutal circumstances. In 1886 he slaughtered the whole family of rancher Artisan Peck and then left Peck to look down on his dead and mutilated family. (Apaches neither raped nor scalped.)
A glaring contradiction is his skill at arranging ambushes of pursuers or travelers, taking full advantage of the terrain. He achieved this with the troops of Captains Lebo and Hatfield in 1886, in the final weeks of the military offensive. At the same time, Geronimo could grow lax in posting security and suddenly find soldiers and scouts charging into his ranchería. Like all Apaches, however, he knew how to escape such an attack with his life, if little or nothing else. Both Captains Crawford and Lawton surprised him in hideaways he thought beyond discovery. But as Surgeon Leonard Wood observed of one such incident, the attackers were left with the camp and all its contents but no Apaches.
That his camps were so expertly concealed that such attacks occurred infrequently testifies to Geronimo’s ability to secrete his people in rugged mountain hideouts thought impenetrable. Yet they were not, as both Mexican and American soldiers and Apache scouts occasionally found them.
For all his strategic or tactical lapses during the final two years of freedom, he merits admiration for outwitting five thousand American soldiers and keeping them on the run with few shots fired in anger. His skill at evading pursuit, at hiding in mountainous enclaves, at avoiding any semblance of battle, reveal his finest period of leadership.
These years also find him both defiant and submissive. Most dramatic was the day in August 1886 that Lieutenant Gatewood finally put Kayitah and Martine in touch with Geronimo. In only one day Geronimo’s defiant refusal even to talk about giving up turned to submissive agreement to parley.
In 1883 Geronimo defiantly roamed Sonora butchering and plundering, but when General Crook penetrated his mountain bases, he turned so submissive that he humiliated himself by groveling and begging Crook to talk to him. Such servile behavior seems uncharacteristic of any Chiricahua, much less the renowned Geronimo.
As a prisoner of war at Mount Vernon Barracks, Geronimo exhibited erratic behavior that defies explanation. He appeared to have adapted well to the new circumstances of his life. He caused little trouble and behaved as his military overseers wanted. His visits to white officers at the post earned him high praise. He claimed that he now considered himself a white man. He served credibly as justice of the peace and encouraged the Chiricahua youth to go to the white man’s school. He even reinforced his son Chappo’s commitment to education at the Carlisle Indian School and readily consented to Chappo’s request that his brother Fenton be sent to Carlisle.
Suddenly, however, he turned on George Wrattan, the one white man to whom he owed the largest debt in the transition from freedom to captivity, a betrayal as grievous as any that victimized him. He not only lied about a promise of General Miles to send Wrattan away any time Geronimo wanted. He also strung together the most unconscionable prevarications about other promises Miles had made him. A thorough investigation led the secretary of war to brand the accusations as frivolous.
Yet Geronimo told his son that he would do anything Captain Wother-spoon wanted because the captain had shown him the right way and treated him so well. He then turned on Wotherspoon and demanded to be paid to eliminate drunkenness. When refused, he got drunk himself.
Geronimo also professed undying devotion to the spiritual beliefs of his tribe. Usen, traditional ceremonies, and all Apache cosmology marked his path through life. The devotion, however, lapsed on occasion. If he followed the path during the years at Mount Vernon, he did it in secret. It may have been a matter of convenience. As a striking example, while at Fort Sill in the last years of his life, at the same time that the old ceremonies were being revived he allowed himself to be baptized in the Dutch Reformed Church. Perhaps this amounted to a pragmatic adaptation to the two sides of his life at Fort Sill.
Reverence for the old ways manifested itself in Geronimo’s stature as a medicine man. He dispensed herbal remedies, made generous use of sacred pollen, and performed healing rituals in full view of onlookers. Yet when stricken with a mild form of syphilis, he turned to an American army doctor for treatment. If he attempted his own cure, it failed. The white man’s medicine cured the great medicine man.
Like many other Chiricahuas, Geronimo liked strong drink. At times drunkenness affected his behavior, while well-documented incidents show him in control when drunk or hungover. His first breakout from the reservation, for instance, arose from a drunken tirade against a nephew that so shamed the young man that he killed himself. The addiction was so strong that Geronimo and his cohorts let the Mexicans lure them into situations where they drank to oblivion and opened themselves to massacre. They knew the stratagem, but they fell for it over and over. It was the stratagem that cost Geronimo his first family in 1851. In the end, in 1909, drunkenness cost him his life.
Certain traits of character, however, find little or no contradiction in the record.
One was deeply ingrained suspicion. He suspected all Americans and Mexicans of plotting treachery, as indeed they often were, and he suspected his own people of trying to get him into trouble. Suspicion led him to withhold trust from any official, or any other Apache, trying to accommodate him. Suspicion and distrust match his utter gullibility, his willingness to believe any “bad story” or any hint of “bad stories,” or any other rumor or gossip that might affect his life. He fully displayed these tendencies in the drama that led to the last breakout in 1885.
Another persistent trait was lying. He told one lie after another to General Crook at Canyon de los Embudos. Unforgivably, he blatantly lied to Naiche and Chihuahua to force them to flee with him and his few followers in the breakout of May 1885. He assured them that he had caused Lieutenant Davis and Sergeant Chatto to be assassinated, which meant that the government would pounce on all the Chiricahuas who did not go with Geronimo. They went. Far more untruthful were the lies Geronimo told about George Wrattan at Mount Vernon Barracks and the lies about what General Miles had promised him.
Another consistency: From his first marriage through his last, Geronimo proved a deeply committed family man. The massacre of his first family in 1851 shaped a lifetime of bitter loathing and revenge against Mexicans. He mourned the death of any family member, and he never gave up trying to recover wives who had been captured. Eight named wives can be accounted for, but the record reveals several more unnamed.
Another conspicuous characteristic of Geronimo’s was the mystical “Power.” Outside his personal following, he commanded respect or fear because of his Power. Although Jason Betzinez witnessed a display of Geronimo’s Power, no other credible event found its way into the record. The range and intensity of Geronimo’s Power depended less on what people observed than on what they thought they observed or had been told by others that they had observed. These widespread beliefs, however, created a substantial enough foundation for Geronimo’s Power to be taken seriously.
The contradictions in Geronimo’s character and behavior are conspicuous, accounting for a major segment of his persona. At the same time, a few lifelong beliefs and practices, unrelieved by any exceptions, contrast with his contradictions. Together, these themes, resonating through his long life, stamp him as a man of complexity.
Stripped of legend, Geronimo was a blend of contradiction and complexity. Legend buries the blend, and he has come down in recent history as the valiant Apache fighting for his homeland. Although plainly false, motion pictures, television, popular literature, current Apache beliefs, and even museum exhibits reinforce the legend. For a public entranced by American Indian history, the legend easily obscures contradiction and complexity and dominates the American memory.
How does Geronimo compare with the Indian chiefs whose names he has overshadowed? For non-Apaches, the answer lies largely in the vast difference in cultures. Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Nez Perce, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche, Ute, and other plains and mountain tribes that confronted the white westward movement embraced a culture that mandated fending off enemy encroachment or warring with enemy tribes. Chief Joseph, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Dull Knife, Quanah Parker, Satanta, and others who inscribed their names in the history of the American West contended with white people and their army until overwhelmed.
Apache culture emphasized war and raid—war for revenge and raid for subsistence and other supplies when the land’s natural bounty could not sustain the people. The mission of the US Army was not to make war on the Apaches but to protect the settlers in their lives and property from Apache raiders. When that policy repeatedly failed, the army’s mission broadened to attempting to destroy the Apaches or force them to surrender and settle on a reservation. Geronimo made his name as a raider and as a talented expert in eluding pursuing soldiers and Apache scouts.
Because of the cultural difference, therefore, Geronimo is hard to compare with other prominent chiefs. Two examples are notable.
Sitting Bull of the Lakota Sioux enjoys name recognition approaching Geronimo’s. Sitting Bull was not a man of complexity and contradiction. He was an undeviating product of his culture. He steered a narrow path within the boundaries of his culture and excelled in every aspect. He never wavered, even when overcome by the white man.
Geronimo’s culture gave him a wider margin within which to act. He deviated time and again. Unlike Sitting Bull, he often behaved selfishly, impulsively, deviously, mercilessly, egotistically, and at variance with the dictates of his culture. With Sitting Bull, his people came first. With Geronimo, he came first.
At Fort Sill, Geronimo’s neighbor was the Comanche chief Quanah Parker. They rode together in Theodore Roosevelt’s inaugural parade. Before his surrender at the end of the Red River War of 1874–75, Quanah Parker was a great warrior. Afterward, he accepted the reality and transformed himself into the image of the white man. In his last years, Geronimo cultivated the soil and proudly raised melons and other crops. Quanah Parker, however, acquired status as a successful and prosperous cattle rancher. Both Geronimo and Quanah adapted to the new reality, but Quanah exhibited an adaptability far beyond Geronimo’s.
Within the context of his own culture, Geronimo did not rise to levels of leadership of other Apaches whose names are not as well known. Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, Victorio, Nana, and Juh all led in war if not peace better than Geronimo. They also adhered more closely to their culture than Geronimo. Yet Geronimo’s name has overwhelmed them all.
This happened because of the white man’s newspapers. All the formidable leaders, both Apaches and all other tribes, had faded from the scene by the time Geronimo emerged as the great Apache holdout. With his name a household word and his deeds appalling newspaper readers, he overshadowed all the other great leaders. His long life after surrender kept his name before the public. In modern times, few of the public know the names of any but Geronimo.
Geronimo died a prisoner of war, leaving the other Chiricahuas as prisoners of war, although they lived much as other Indians interned on reservations. The opening of the Kiowa-Comanche Reservation to white settlement in 1900, however, clouded their future. The Fort Sill Military Reservation, owned by the Kiowas and Comanches and intended as the Chiricahua Reservation after the army abandoned the fort, became US property. Within two years, the army had second thoughts about abandoning the fort: better to retain the entire reservation for military purposes and let the Interior Department move the Chiricahuas to some other reservation. Interior did not want to be involved.
Even before Geronimo’s death, the Chiricahuas began to sense another betrayal in the making. The army continued to insist on establishing an artillery school on the reservation, and that left no space for Chiricahua villages. So long as Geronimo lived, however, any scheme that moved the Chiricahuas farther west would encounter opposition. Such was the power the old man’s name continued to evoke. His death in 1909 freed the policy-makers to work more seriously to break the impasse.
In 1911 an old friend showed up at Fort Sill with orders to resolve the dilemma: Colonel Hugh L. Scott, Third Cavalry. He investigated the Mescalero Apache Reservation of New Mexico and talked with the Mescaleros. They would readily welcome the Chiricahuas. Scott discovered, however, that not all the Chiricahuas wanted to move. Some would rather remain at or near Fort Sill, taking land allotments the same as the white settlers. After much bickering in Washington, those few who wanted allotments in Oklahoma were allowed to file for them. Most had become more acculturated or had married outside the tribe. They became the Fort Sill Apaches.1
Beginning in 1913, most of the Chiricahuas moved to Mescalero and shed the label “prisoner of war.” There most remain today, originally living separately from the Mescaleros but leading a decent life. The old separate Chiricahua settlement on the Mescalero Reservation, at Whitetail, is now largely abandoned. The Mescalero, Chiricahua, and Lipan Apache people are blended on the Mescalero reservation. The individuals all know their ancestors, but few if any are “pure” Chiricahua.
Two years after Geronimo’s surrender, General Miles’s pile of three stones finally took shape. The Chiricahuas remained as one people for sixteen years. Thanks to one government betrayal after another, the pile of stones had collapsed by 1914. But at long last, the Chiricahuas no longer bore the onus of being prisoners of war.
Of Geronimo’s comrades, Naiche ultimately gained equal importance. As the second son of Cochise, he inherited the chieftainship of the Chokonen Chiricahuas. As he aged, he grew in stature and paired with Geronimo. In captivity Naiche often commanded more influence and respect than Geronimo. With three wives, fourteen children, and a bevy of well-connected relatives, Naiche lived a more contented and even-tempered life during the years of captivity. He remained the most influential leader in the last years at Fort Sill and led the faction that wanted to move to the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico. In 1913, with his one surviving wife, his mother, and six children, he made his new home in New Mexico, living contentedly until his death in 1921 at the age of sixty-five.2
Chihuahua, independent and outspoken as ever, lived through all the years of captivity. At Mount Vernon, he lost two wives and two infant daughters to illness. At Fort Sill, he led one of the Chiricahua villages. Chihuahua died there in 1901 at the age of seventy-nine. His surviving wife, his son Eugene, and three grandchildren settled on the Mescalero reservation.
Of all the Chiricahuas, Chatto led the most checkered career. From superb raider and war leader to close ally of a government that unconscionably betrayed him, he lived through Fort Marion, Mount Vernon, and Fort Sill as a prisoner of war and somewhat of an outcast because of his service to the army. He married three wives, one of whom abandoned him to marry a son of Chief Loco. At Fort Sill he headed one of the twelve Chiricahua villages. One of his sons died at Carlisle, and three sons, one daughter, a sister, and a granddaughter at Fort Sill. With two wives, he joined the others at Mescalero and died there in an automobile crash in 1934, aged eighty.
Mangas, son of Mangas Coloradas and hereditary chief of the Warm Springs Chihennes, did not surrender with Geronimo but was caught and lodged with him at Fort Pickens. He, too, lived as a prisoner of war at Mount Vernon and Fort Sill, where he was leader of one of the Chiricahua villages. At Mount Vernon he married a daughter of Victorio, and together the two had six children. All had died before the end of the Fort Sill years, including Mangas. He died in 1901, fifty-five years old.
Nana appears throughout this narrative, aged, wise, and opposed to all things white. He also, even in his older years, was one of the greatest fighting men of the Chiricahuas. Neither a chief nor a subchief, Nana was born a Mimbres Chihenne and remained with Geronimo’s followers until his death. He probably had an unknown number of wives before he married Geronimo’s sister. He died at the age of ninety-six at Fort Sill in 1896.
Loco, peace chief of the Warm Springs Chihennes, and his people were forced by Geronimo’s raiders to leave San Carlos in 1882 and join the Chiricahuas in Mexico. He refused to flee to Mexico when Geronimo broke out the last time and instead joined with Chatto in the trip to Washington and ultimately, via Fort Leavenworth, to Florida as prisoners of war. He lived quietly at Mount Vernon and Fort Sill. Married three times, he had children by each wife. He died at Fort Sill in 1905, at the age of eighty-two.
The two scouts who went with Lieutenant Gatewood to talk Geronimo into surrender, Martine and Kayitah, were rewarded with the status of prisoner of war and thus lived at Fort Marion, Mount Vernon, and Fort Sill. The two cousins each married and had children. At Fort Sill Martine first headed a village, and in 1900 Kayitah took over. They were regarded as equals, however, and the village was known as that of Kayitah and Martine. Both went to Mescalero. Kayitah died in 1934 at the age of seventy-eight. Martine’s death is unrecorded, but he was interviewed by Morris Opler in the 1930s.
For all the trouble he caused on the reservation, Kayatena proved an important influence in persuading Geronimo to surrender to Crook in 1886. Peacefully living on the reservation, he and all the Chiricahuas were transported to Fort Marion in 1886. There he acquired the status of prisoner of war and lived through the years of Mount Vernon and Fort Sill. He married twice and in 1913 went with many other Chiricahuas to the Mescalero Reservation. He died of pneumonia in 1918 at the age of fifty-seven.
Jason Betzinez did indeed, as a youth of fifteen, “ride with Geronimo.” A Warm Springs/Bedonkohe, he was the great-grandson of the venerated chief Mahco. Although a prisoner of war, he was educated at Carlisle from 1887 to 1895 and acquired literacy that allowed him to write, in collaboration with Colonel W. S. Nye, his own book, an indispensable source for the early years. At Fort Sill, he was the last Apache scout mustered out before the move to Mescalero. In 1919 he married a missionary he had known at Fort Sill but fathered no children. Not until 1960, at the age of one hundred, did Betzinez die—in an auto accident. His book, I Fought with Geronimo, has been used frequently in this narrative.
Geronimo’s move to Mount Vernon Barracks in May 1888 marked his waning association with the military figures who had been part of his past. Within a short time they had dropped from the story of his life. Aside from General George Crook’s interview with Geronimo and others at Mount Vernon Barracks in January 1890, he never again saw or heard from most of the others; and Crook died only three months later, in March 1890.
General Nelson A. Miles periodically wrote more wordy dispatches when he objected to events at Mount Vernon Barracks, and several times he raised the Chiricahua issue. At the same time, he came under growing criticism for the way he continued to describe the last campaign. In particular, in report after report he exaggerated the roles of Lawton and Wood while hardly mentioning Lieutenant Gatewood and his Chiricahua scouts, Kayitah and Martine.
Captain Henry W. Lawton continued to enjoy Miles’s favor. In 1893, thanks to the general, Lawton received a Medal of Honor for heroism in the Civil War. In the Spanish American War, promoted to major general of Volunteers, he served creditably in Cuba before transferring to the Philippines. Although a general, he fought valorously in battles with Philippine insurgents. In one, on December 18, 1899, he caught a fatal bullet—the only US general killed in the Philippine Insurrection.
Assistant Surgeon Leonard Wood also benefitted from Miles’s patronage. Like Lawton, in 1898 he received the Medal of Honor for services in the Apache campaign. In 1898 also, he finally achieved his ambition of abandoning the medical service for the line. The Spanish American War afforded him his chance. Long a friend of Theodore Roosevelt, he gained the colonelcy of the First US Volunteer Cavalry, the “Rough Riders,” of which Roosevelt was lieutenant colonel. With service in Cuba and the Philippines, he emerged a major general of Volunteers and a brigadier general in the regular army. After the reorganization of the army, he served from 1910 to 1914 as army chief of staff. His military ambitions led to political ambitions, and he unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for president in 1920. He died in 1927.
Nelson A. Miles rose swiftly, promoted to major general in 1890, the same year in which his longtime nemesis George Crook died. The citizens of Tucson awarded him a ceremonial sword for ending the Apache Wars, and in 1892 he, too, received a Medal of Honor for Civil War gallantry. Named commanding general of the army in 1895, he held the position through the Spanish American War, in which he performed without much distinction. Awarded a third star by the Congress, he retired in 1903, the army’s last commanding general. President Roosevelt called him a “brave peacock” and refused to attend his retirement ceremony. A heart attack struck down Miles while attending a circus in 1925.
The true loser among all these distinguished officers was First Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood. While downplaying Gatewood’s contribution to the surrender of Geronimo, Miles honored his promise to appoint him a member of his staff. As he had alienated Crook, so Gatewood alienated Miles. Relegated to the margins of the staff, he suffered from long years of service and illness. Badly injured by a gunpowder explosion, in 1892 he sought the promotion to captain to which his seniority entitled him. The promotion board denied him on the grounds of bad health. On May 20, 1896, a malignant tumor on his liver killed him.
Such were some of the people who affected the life of Geronimo in one way or another. But Geronimo’s name drowned them all in the memory of the public.
On September 4, 1886, at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona Territory, four centuries of Indian warfare in North America drew to a close. The Ghost Dance troubles four years later were a religious movement, not a war. The character of the Apache conflict differed profoundly from all other Indian wars. Other tribes often engaged in combat, which was rare in Apache hostilities. Few Apache conflicts merit the term “battle” or even “skirmish.” In most encounters the Apaches fled without loss of life. Even so, Skeleton Canyon achieves significance as the end of four centuries of Indian hostilities in North America. As the last holdout, Geronimo acquired the most recent position in the American memory, one reason his legacy has so firmly endured.
Legend or reality, Geronimo remains the dominant Indian name in the American memory.