Geronimo was an Apache warrior who was born in 1829 and became one of the most feared out of Indian leaders of the 19th century. He was born into the tribe Bedonkohe, which was the smallest band of the Chiricahua Apache tribes that inhabited what is now New Mexico and Arizona. Geronimo came of age during a period of conflict between the Chiricahua Apaches and the Mexicans. In response to the Apaches’ penchant for staging raids to gather horses and provisions, the Mexican government had begun ambushing Apache settlements and offering bounties for their scalps. In 1851, while Geronimo and several other warriors were in the town of Janos on a trading mission, Colonel Jose Maria Carrasco and around 400 Mexican soldiers ransacked his Bedonkohe encampment and slaughtered many of its inhabitants. When Geronimo returned that night, he found that his mother, his wife and his three young children had all been murdered. Following the massacre, Geronimo swore vengeance against Mexico and led a series of bloody raids on its soldiers and settlements.
In the 1840s and 1850s, the Mexican-American War and the Gadsden Purchase placed the Chiricahua Apaches’ domain within the boundaries of the expanding United States. Geronimo and the Apaches violently resisted the influx of white settlers, but following several years of war with the U.S. Army, they reluctantly negotiated a peace agreement. By 1876, most of the Chiricahuas had been shipped to San Carlos, an inhospitable reservation located in Arizona. Geronimo avoided the reservation until 1877, when he was captured by Indian agents and brought to San Carlos in chains. He tried his hand at farming, but like many of the Chiricahua, he longed for the freedom of the frontier. Geronimo and his allies eventually staged three escapes from the reservation between 1878 and 1885. Each time, the renegades fled south and disappeared into the mountains, only resurfacing to conduct marauding expeditions on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. By the time of his final breakout in 1884, Geronimo had earned an unparalleled reputation for cunning, and stories of his ruthlessness—both real and imagined—were front-page news across the United States.
On May 17, 1885, Geronimo and some 135 Apache men, women and children took flight from their reservation for the final time. The famed warrior was then in his 60s, but he remained as determined as ever, often pushing his group to cover as much as 70 miles per day to avoid the American cavalry and Apache scouts on their trail. Over the next several months, Geronimo’s fugitives raided countless Mexican and American and settlement, killing several civilians. They nearly surrendered in March 1886, but Geronimo and 40 followers backed out of the agreement at the last minute and escaped under the cover of darkness. Soon, the Indians were being pursued by 5,000 U.S. soldiers—nearly a quarter of the standing army—as well as some 3,000 Mexicans. Geronimo was able elude both forces for over five months, but by August, he and his followers had grown weary of life on the run. On September 4, 1886, he finally gave himself up to General Nelson Miles at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona. In laying down his arms, he became the last Indian leader to formally surrender to the United States military. He spent the last 23 years of his life as a prisoner of war.
Following their surrender, Geronimo and the Chiricahuas were condemned to manual labor at army camps in Florida. They were later moved to Mount Vernon Barracks, Alabama, and then Fort Sill, Oklahoma, but despite their repeated pleas for a reservation in the West, they remained prisoners of war for the rest of Geronimo’s life. As the years passed, Geronimo busied himself with farming and cashed in on his growing celebrity by selling autographs and peddling walking sticks, bows and other items to American tourists. His captors also granted him permission to appear in occasional World’s Fairs and Wild West Shows, where he was often billed as the “Apache Terror” and the “Tiger of the Human Race.” Geronimo’s most famous public appearance came on March 4, 1905, when he took part in President Theodore Roosevelt’s inaugural parade in Washington, D.C. Five days later, the Indians got a chance to speak to Roosevelt in person at the White House. Geronimo—still a prisoner of war—took the opportunity to plead with the President to send the Chiricahuas back to their native lands in the West. Roosevelt turned down the request out of fear that war would once again break out if the Apaches returned home. The federal government wouldn’t free the Chiricahuas until 1913—four years after Geronimo’s 1909 death from pneumonia.
Geronimo is important because he was a warrior; he fought for his land and then only surrendered because surrendering was less important than his followers’ lives. He showed greater leadership surrendering that day than he could’ve if he kept on fighting, knowing that his people would go down with him. His story is important to know because it is not only American history, it is part of the Atlantic world which pertains to Canada as well who also had and still has Indigenous people fighting for their land rights. This is another example of Indigenous people and culture being colonized and overthrown.
The sources I will be using will consist of one primary source as well as three secondary sources. The primary source that will be used will be Geronimo’s autobiography. This source is the best primary source because unlike a photograph it is Geronimo’s life in hos own words. I know that this will support my arguments well and allow the readers to have an in depth knowledge of the events that took place in Geronimo’s life. The first secondary source that I have chosen is the book called The Geronimo Campaign by Faulk. This book focuses on the events that take place after Geronimo surrenders and will be a key source in explaining those vents and correlating them to the primary argument. The next secondary source that will be used will be is the book called Geronimo: A Biography by Adams. This book will be necessary in comparing and contrasting its content with the content found in Geronimo’s autobiography. It will be used to fill in the blanks where Geronimo may have not have in his book.
Scholarship on Geronimo has shifted overtime because while he was still alive and shortly after his death, the media and historians portrayed him as a ruthless warrior from stories they had heard and when he was imprisoned he would go to state fairs and there he was viewed as this leader who was conquered and surrendered over to the US military. Now historians are focusing his actual time spent being imprisoned and what had actually happened and why it did. So in turn they now focus on the facts as someone who was wrongfully imprisoned for 23 years of their life not how the media had portrayed him in stories and tales. Other than that he has always been viewed as a killer and warrior. The only difference from then and now is that historian focus less on the violent aspects and more on the political side of things, such as his land being overthrown and taken and him trying to reclaim that land.