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| Geronimo a good natured, hard
working Indian chief was put through a lot in his time. His tribe turned him
down. He finally found a loving tribe to lead, another group of apaches. He
also had a lot of good times in his day. Geronimo and his followers were put
through a lot, he surrendered four times to the “whites”, they were put in
a lot of reservations for short periods of time and then let go. Geronimo’s
last fight was against General Miles and his soldiers. He returned to Fort
Sill in 1899 and died in 1909(nine years later). |
| In 1894 Geronimo and 341
other Apache prisoners of war were brought to Fort Sill where they lived in
villages on the range. With permission Geronimo traveled for a while with
Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Show. The Apaches were taught by Hugh L. Scott how
to build houses, raise crops, and herd cattle. |
Here’s a time line of some of Geronimo’s
life………
Summer 1850- Sonoran soldiers murdered
Geronimo’s family in bloody massacre.1876- Indian agent John Clum receives
orders from Washington to move the Chiricahuas from their homes to the San
Carlos Reservation in Arizona. Geronimo and 400 others flee, while 325 Chiricahuas
go with Clum. 4,000 Indians are forced together on land that was originally
home to 800 Apaches. April 1877- Clum captures Geronimo by trickery, at Warm
Springs. Geronimo and his followers were brought to San Carlos . 1894-Geronimo
and the surviving Chirichuas move to Fort Sill, Oklahoma Territory. Geronimo
tries farming. later he becomes a showman at exhibitons.1905- Geronimo rides
in President Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural parade. .1906-Geronimo tells his
life story. His cousin Asa Daklugie translates for Steven M. Barrett, who
writes down and edits the autobiography. 1909-Still a prisoner
at war, Geronimo dies at Fort Sill.
. “ It is my land, my home, my father’s land, to which I know 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.”- quotes Geronimo, from Geronimo’s
Story of his Life's a showman at exhibitions. |
“This is the fourth
time I have surrendered,” Geronimo told General Nelson Miles when he meet with
him in 1886.
Slowly, the public began to see Geronimo and the other prisoners as people
rather than as the violent and ruthless Indians they had been portrayed as
in stories. Many people remember Geronimo in the last two decades of his life
as “a kind old man.” Geronimo was also an living legend, people were eager
to get a glimpse of him. |
| "After we were safe on the land
I watched many of those little horses going up and down, but I cannot understand
how they travel.” – Geronimo recalled after riding a Ferris Wheel in an “Apache
Village” |
| One February night
in 1909, Geronimo, not feeling well, drank some whiskey hoped it would help
him feel better. It was illegal for Indians to have liquor). By mourning,
his illness was worse and Geronimo went to the hospital. He died a few days
later. |
| At Geronimo’s funeral, his
relatives tossed his riding whip and blanket into his grave.
“ Everyone hated you, white men hated you, Mexicans hated you, Apaches hated
you…. You [have] been good to us. We hate to see you go” –An old woman shouted
in Apache at his funeral. |
| Geronimo
was in fact something of an paradox; alternately tough-minded and indecisive;
a man who sometimes stayed and fought. |
| For
the main hunt of Geronimo, Miles mounted 5,000 troops and built 30 heliograph
stations to flash morse code messages from mountaintops to mountaintops across
Southeast Arizona and into Northern Sonora ( when Geronimo saw the mirror
flashes, he thought they were magic and began avoiding the mountain tops).
In April 1886 he (Geronimo) and his warriors crossed the border into Arizona.
They killed a cattleman’s wife, her 13-yesr-old child and a ranch hand a few
weeks later, the Apache killed two men outside the town Nolgles, Ar |
They were ambushed pursuing soldiers in a narrow canyon and took more lives-along
with horses and supplies- without suffering any casualties. Geronimo, offered
nothing beyond an assurance that the fugitives would return
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