THE SANTA FEAN MAGAZINE, January-F€bruary 1992, l5

GERONIMO Story, Charles Bennett

THE SANTA FEAN MAGAZINtr

vor 20 No. 1 JAN_FEB. 1992

Readers of the Santa Fe daily New Mexican

forgot the sultry days of early September when they ffi''.*'*
read the headline proclaiming the surrender of
Chiricahua Apache leader Geronimo. The surren-
der had taken place September 5, 1886, at Skeleton
W-l\ rffi'ff;
Canyon, a rugged, age-old Apache raiding route
between old Mexico and the Arizona mountains sev-
eral miles west of the New Mexico-Arizona bound- Geronimo, ca. 1885
s photo-C,S. Fly
ary. courtesy, Museum of
Rumors that Geronimo had surrendered had New Mexico. Neg. 14272

been circulating in Santa Fe during the previous

week. But a telegram to headquarters in Santa Fe
from General Bradley, commander of the Military
District of New Mexico, who at the time was direct-
ing troops in southwestern New Mexico against
Geronimo, confirmed the surrender. With Geroni-
mo when he surrendered were Chief Naiche, the
son of the famous chief Cochise; sixteen other war-
riors; fourteen women; and six children.
It had taken a force of 5000 U.S. troops and
4000 Mexican soldiers to force the surrender of
Geronimo and his small band, who were outnum-
bered more than 500 to 1 (ratio of fighting effec-
tives). It had also taken an international treaty
between the United Sates and Mexico and two of the
most prominent generals experienced in Indian
warfare. Other advantages utilized by the federal
government included the most modern military
equipment, steam, electricity, the telegraph, the
railroad, the heliograph (a device consisting of mir-
rors mounted on a tripod with which operators
could flash messages from mountaintops 25 to 30
miles away), and Apache Indian scouts and trackers.
Geronimo carried on his last campaign successfully
for five months against these odds. His final sur-
render involved negotiations more intricate and
time consuming that those following Burgoyne's
surrender of his entire army during the American .'t \;
Revolution, and after Lee's capitulation at Appo-
f'.,
mattox ending the U.S. Civil War. The terms of
peace reached with Geronimo specified that he and
his band surrendered "as prisoners of war to an
army in the field," effectively removing them from
the jurisdiction of civil authorities.
Following the surrender, Geronimo, his 37
1 HE SA.NTq FEA,\' ITIAGAZ
l\[, January-February | 992. | 6
followers, and 394 of his tribesmen were sent to
detention in Florida. Later, Geronimo's people,
except for those who had died of tuberculosis and
other diseases or the children who had been sent to
the Indian School at Carlisle, Pennsylvania were
kept in captivity for more than 20 years in Florida,
Alabarna, and finally Oklahoma. But the Chiric-
ahuas never gave up hope of returninS to their
southwestern mountains.
Geronimo was a remarkable individual whose
impact on history was significant. He is credited as
the last American Indian to surrender formally to
the United States Government. Geronimo gave his
own account of his life during his 23 years of cap-
tivity. Firsthand narratives of Apache warriors who
followecl him in battle also exist, as well as reminis-
cences of men and women who knew him personal-
ly. Thus, it is possible to separate the man from the
fictional paragon.
Geronimo was not considered a "chief"
among his people, but he was a medicine man and a
leader. His band was the southernmost of the Chir-
icahua Apaches. He was born in the late 1820s in
the area of the headwaters of the Gila River in what
is today the Gila Wilderness of the Gila National
Forest in southwestern New Mexico. His youth was
spent on both sides of the border during a time of
increasing conflict between his people and non-
Indians. both Americans and Mexicans. A turnin$
point in Geronimo's life occurred when Mexican
solcliers surprise attacked a group of Chiricahuas
who were trading at Janos, Chihuahua. Geronimo's
mother, wife, and his three small children were
killed. As a consequence of this experience he
received the gift of the "Power," which to the Chir-
icahuas was the life force of the universe, which dis-
tinguished him as a medicine man.
The western Apache tribes, includin$ the
Chiricahuas, ranged throughout southwestern New
Mexico, southeastern Arizona, and the northern
states of Mexico. They were superb warriors.
unusually adept at guerrilla lvarfare, perfectly
attuned to the arid environment of the Southwest,
anrl highly intelligent and resourceful people to
boot. In the perception of the federal $overnment,
the western Apache were an extremely difficult peo-
ple to bring under control.
FollolvinS the unsuccessful Confederate cam-
paign in New Mexico Territory in 1862, New Mexico
federal and territorial officials turned their atten-
tion to military action agiainst hostile Apache and
Navajo Indians. In Santa Fe, Governor Henrl Con-
nelly; Superintendent of New Mexico Indian Affairs
James Collins; and the commander of the Military
Department of New Mexico, General James Car-
leton, devised a strate$y to remove these semi-
nomadic Indians who, feeling increasin$ pressures
of continued intrusion into their land, had stepped
up their raids on livestock herds and aSainst set-
tlers and prospectors. One by one these Indian
groups were defeated and placed on reservattons.
Several forts were built or regarrisoned beginning
in 1862 in order that troops could be stationed in
southern New Mexico to provide protection from
hostile Indians.
From his headquarters in Santa Fe General
Carleton ordered militia colonel Christopher "Kit"
Carson to gather the Mescalero Apaches and Nava-
jos on a reser.,ration established on the Pecos River
in New Mexico at a place called Bosque Redondo.
By 1864 this task was accomplished' On his return
to Santa Fe, Carson received a hero's rvelcome. But
removing people from their native lands, convert-
ing them to Christianity, and turning them into
farmers proved disastrous. By the summer of 1868
the reseruation was dissolved, and the Navajos were
allorved to return to their homeland' The
Mescaleros had already fled Bosqud Redondo in
1865.
Meanwhile, the western Apache tribes t'vere
terrorizing southwestern New Mexico, Arizona, and
northern Mexico. Geronimo's name seems first to
have come to public notice in 1876, when the reser-
vation the government had established specifically
for the bands of the Chiricahuas- their traditional
homeland- was dissolved. The dissolution was
prompted by two incidents: several non-lndians had
been killed after they illegally sold whiskey to some
Chiricahuas; and a factional fight between disparate
elements within the Chiricahua tribe had resulted
in the deaths of seven warriors. As a consequences
of these incidents, and other alleged depredations
over the course of years, the giovernment decided to
move the entire Chiricahua Apache Tribe to the San
Carlos Apache Resen'ration in east central Artzona'
At the conference where the Chiricahua were told
they must leave their homeland Geronimo seemed
to be one of the principal leaders.
Although the majority of the Chiricahuas,
about 325 people, went to San Carlos, Geronimo's
and another band fled. He reappeared six weeks lat-
er at another reservation set aside for the Apaches
at Warm Springs, New Mexico about 40 miles
northwest of present Truth or Consequences. This
failure to heed the order to vacate his homeland for
the San Carlos reservation branded Gerontmo a
renegiade in the eyes of the federal government.
The next year the Commissioner of Indian
Affairs in Washington ordered Geronimo and other
renegades living on the Warm Springs Reservation
to be arrested, removed to San Carlos, and held in
confinement for murder and robbery. In all proba-
bility the Chiricahuas had continued their custom
of raiding in northern Mexico and returnin$ to the
Warm Springs Reservation with stolen horses'
Subsequently, on April 21, 7877, Geronimo was
lured to reservation headquarters for a council,
arrested, shackled, and with his band marched to
San Carlos, where preparations were made to hang
him and some others. But because of a government

snafu Geronimo was released.
Life at the San Carlos Reservation did not
agree with the Chiricahuas. Far from their home-
land, starving, poorly clothed, and dying from
smallpox and ill from malaria, the Chiricahuas
began saving their flour ration and other supplies,
and stockpiling guns and ammunition. Geronimo
and a group of Chiricahuas left the San Carlos
reservation in April 1878, and headed for Mexico.
After attacking a wagon train, killing the drivers
and seizing food and ammunition, and fighting off
an attack by U.S. troops, Geronimo and his band
reached the Sierra l4adre of Mexico, where they
joined another renegade band of Chiricahuas.
Geronimo and his band remained at large for
more than a year, when, possibly because he was
concerned that his band would be held accountable
for raiding by other Apache groups, he returned to
the San Carlos Reservation. He remained incon-
spicuous there until 1881, when his and other
Apache bands again broke out. In 1883 he was per-
suaded by General George Crook to surrender,
although he did not actually give himself up until
February 1884- and then under his own terms.
He again broke out from the reservation in May
1885; and in March 1886 General Crook again
effected a conditional surrender. En route to Fort
Bowie, Arizona, the agreed upon place of surrender,
THE S[''JTA FEAI{ MAGAZINE January-February 1992. 17
the band encountered an Anglo whiskey peddler,
giot drunk, and fled to the mountains once more.
At last, on September 3, 1886, General Nelson
Miles presided at the final and unconditional sur-
render of Geronimo, although the warrior had not
understood the "unconditional" part of the terms.
He and the other members of his band were sent to
exile and prison in Florida. There and at Fort Sill,
Oklahoma, five years later, Geronimo earned money
by selling pictures of himself and small bows and
arrows with his name on them. He came to be
regarded as a public attraction and was a popular
feature at the 1898 Trans-Mississippi International
Exposition in Omaha, the Pan-American Exposition
in Buffalo in 1901, and the St. Louis World's Fair in
1904. He died in 1909 at Fort Sill on the federal
payroll as an army scout.
The opening of the Trans-Mississippi West to
settlement occurred at the expense of the Amerrcan
Indians as the European-based cultures spread
across the West from the south and east. As a prod-
uct of his time, the Indian Wars period of U.S. his-
tory- the 25 years following the U.S. Civil War-
Geronimo emerges as perhaps the most defiant
Indian leader to refuse to relinquish his homeland
without a fight, or to submit to the federal govern-
ment's inconsistent policies and false treaties. He
was the proud victim of a changing time. 1