GERONIMO, THE ONE WHO YAWNS & THE APACHE TRIBE

Geronimo

Today, The Grandma is still at her home fighting against flu. She feels better and she has wanted to read about Geronimo, the prominent leader of the Apache tribe who died on a day like today in 1909.

The Grandma loves American Native History and she admires their resilience against colonizations and their way of understanding life and respecting nature.

Before reading about Geronimo, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Grammar 7).

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Geronimo (Mescalero-Chiricahua: Goyaałé the one who yawns; June 1829-February 17, 1909) was a prominent leader and medicine man from the Bedonkohe band of the Apache tribe. From 1850 to 1886 Geronimo joined with members of three other Chiricahua Apache bands, the Tchihende, the Tsokanende and the Nednhi, to carry out numerous raids as well as resistance to US and Mexican military campaigns in the northern Mexico states of Chihuahua and Sonora, and in the southwestern American territories of New Mexico and Arizona.

Geronimo's raids and related combat actions were a part of the prolonged period of the Apache–United States conflict, which started with American settlement in Apache lands following the end of the war with Mexico in 1848.

While well known, Geronimo was not a chief among the Chiricahua or the Bedonkohe band. However, since he was a superb leader in raiding and warfare he frequently led large numbers of men and women beyond his own following. At any one time, about 30 to 50 Apaches would be following him.

Goyaałé aka Geronimo

During Geronimo's final period of conflict from 1876 to 1886 he surrendered three times and accepted life on the Apache reservations in Arizona. Reservation life was confining to the free-moving Apache people, and they resented restrictions on their customary way of life. In 1886, after an intense pursuit in Northern Mexico by U.S. forces that followed Geronimo's third 1885 reservation breakout, Geronimo surrendered for the last time to Lt. Charles Bare Gatewood, an Apache-speaking West Point graduate who had earned Geronimo's respect a few years before.

Geronimo was later transferred to General Nelson Miles at Skeleton Canyon, just north of the Mexican/American boundary. Miles treated Geronimo as a prisoner of war and acted promptly to remove Geronimo first to Fort Bowie, then to the railroad at Bowie Station, Arizona where he and 27 other Apaches were sent off to join the rest of the Chiricahua tribe which had been previously exiled to Florida.

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In his old age, Geronimo became a celebrity. He appeared at fairs, including the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, where he reportedly rode a ferris wheel and sold souvenirs and photographs of himself. However, he was not allowed to return to the land of his birth. He died at the Fort Sill hospital in 1909, still as a prisoner of war. He is buried at the Fort Sill Indian Agency Cemetery surrounded by the graves of relatives and other Apache prisoners of war.

Apache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans originally from the Southwest United States. The current division of Apachean groups includes the Western Apache, Chiricahua, Mescalero, Jicarilla, Lipan and Plains Apache (formerly Kiowa-Apache).

During the centuries of Apache-Mexican and Apache-United States conflict, raiding had become embedded in the Apache way of life, used not only for strategic purposes but also as an economic enterprise, and often there was overlap between raids for economic need and warfare. Raids ranged from stealing livestock and other plunder, to the capture and/or killing of victims, sometimes by torture.

Geronimo

Mexicans and Americans responded with retaliatory attacks against the Apache which were no less violent and were very seldom limited to identified individual adult enemies. The raiding and retaliation fed the fires of a virulent revenge warfare that reverberated back and forth between Apaches and Mexicans and later, Apaches and Americans.

From 1850 to 1886 Geronimo, as well as other Apache leaders, conducted attacks, but Geronimo was driven by a desire to take revenge for the murder of his family and accumulated a record of brutality during this time that was unmatched by any of his contemporaries. His fighting ability extending over 30 years forms a major characteristic of his persona.

Among Geronimo's own Chiricahua tribe many had mixed feelings about him. While respected as a skilled and effective leader of raids or warfare, he emerges as not very likable, and he was not widely popular among the other Apache. This was primarily because he refused to give in to American government demands leading to some Apaches fearing the American responses to Geronimo's sense of Indian nationalism.

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Nevertheless, Apache people stood in awe of Geronimo's powers which he demonstrated to them on a series of occasions. These powers indicated to other Apaches that Geronimo had super-natural gifts that he could use for good or ill. In eye-witness accounts by other Apaches, Geronimo was able to become aware of distant events as they happened, and he was able to anticipate events that were in the future. He also demonstrated powers to heal other Apaches.

Geronimo was born to the Bedonkohe band of the Apache, in Arizpe, Sonora, near Turkey Creek, a tributary of the Gila River in the modern-day state of New Mexico, then part of Mexico, though the Apache disputed Mexico's claim. His grandfather, Mahko, had been chief of the Bedonkohe Apache. He had three brothers and four sisters.

Geronimo

Geronimo's chief, Mangas Coloradas (Spanish for "red sleeves"), sent him to Cochise's band for help in his revenge against the Mexicans. It was during this incident that the name Geronimo came about. This appellation stemmed from a battle in which, ignoring a deadly hail of bullets, he repeatedly attacked Mexican soldiers with a knife.

The origin of the name is a source of controversy with historians, some writing that it was appeals by the soldiers to Saint Jerome Jerónimo! for help. Others source it as the mispronunciation of his name by the Mexican soldiers.

The first Apache raids on Sonora and Chihuahua took place during the late 17th century. To counter the early Apache raids on Spanish settlements, presidios were established at Janos (1685) in Chihuahua and at Fronteras (1690) in northern eastern modern state of Chihuahua, then Opata country.

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In 1835, Mexico had placed a bounty on Apache scalps. Two years later, Mangas Coloradas became principal chief and war leader and began a series of retaliatory raids against the Mexicans. Apache raids on Mexican villages were so numerous and brutal that no area was safe. Between 1820 and 1835 alone, some 5000 Mexicans died in Apache raids, and 100 settlements were destroyed. Later, as a leader, Geronimo was notorious for urging raids and war on Mexican Provinces and American locations in the southwest.

Early in his life, Geronimo became invested in the continuing and relentless cycle of revenge warfare between the Apaches and Mexicans. On March 5, 1851, when Geronimo was in his 20s, a force of Mexican militia from Sonora under Colonel Jose Maria Carrasco attacked and surprised an Apache camp outside of Janos, Chihuahua, slaughtering the inhabitants, including Geronimo's family. Col. Carrasco claimed he had followed the Apaches to Janos, Chihuahua after they had conducted a raid in Sonora, taken livestock and other plunder and badly defeated Mexican militia.

Geronimo and some Apaches

Geronimo was absent at the time of the attack on the Apache camp, but when he returned he found that his mother, wife, and his three children were among the dead. In retaliation, Geronimo joined in an extended series of revenge attacks against the Mexicans.

This event left Geronimo with a bitter and very personal hatred for Mexicans, and he often killed them indiscriminately and with a special vehemence. Throughout Geronimo's adult life his antipathy, suspicion and dislike for Mexicans was demonstrably greater than for Americans.

In 1873 the Mexicans once again attacked the Apache. After months of fighting in the mountains, the Apaches and Mexicans decided on a peace treaty at Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico. After terms were agreed, the Mexican troops gave mescal to the Apaches and, while they were intoxicated, they attacked and killed 20 Apaches and captured some. The Apache were forced to retreat into the mountains once again.

The Apache–United States conflict was itself a direct outgrowth of the much older Apache–Mexican conflict which had been ongoing in the same general area since the beginning of Mexican/Spanish settlement in the 1600s.

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On May 17, 1885, a number of Apache including Nana, Mangus (son of Mangas Coloradas), Chihuahua, Naiche, Geronimo, and their followers fled the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona after a show of force against the reservation's commanding officer Britton Davis. The people, who had lived as semi-nomads for generations, disliked the restrictive reservation system.

Department of Arizona General George Crook dispatched two columns of troops into Mexico, the first commanded by Captain Emmet Crawford and the second by Captain Wirt Davis. Each was composed of a troop of cavalry, usually about forty men, and about 100 Apache scouts. They pursued the Apache through the summer and fall through Mexican Chihuahua and back across the border into the United States. The Apache continually raided settlements, killing other Native Americans and civilians and stealing horses.

In February 1909, Geronimo was thrown from his horse while riding home, and had to lie in the cold all night before a friend found him extremely ill. He died of pneumonia on February 17, 1909, as a prisoner of the United States at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. 

On his deathbed, he confessed to his nephew that he regretted his decision to surrender. His last words were reported to be said to his nephew, I should have never surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive. He was buried at Fort Sill, Oklahoma in the Apache Indian Prisoner of War Cemetery.

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I was warmed by the sun, rocked by the winds 

and sheltered by the trees as other Indian babes. 

I was living peaceably when people began to speak bad of me. 

Now I can eat well, sleep well and be glad. 

I can go everywhere with a good feeling.

Geronimo