Once He Moved Like the Wind - International Regional Magazine

Once He Moved Like the Wind - International Regional Magazine

Once He Moved
Like the Wind
By Jim Logan
B
eneath a secluded
stand of ancient bur oaks
along Beef Creek lies the
main Apache prisoner of
war cemetery at Fort Sill near Lawton. From tree limbs near some of
the stone markers hang candy canes,
small dolls, ribbons, and bells left by
relatives and well-wishers. The site, in
the northeastern section of the fort,
marks the final resting place of more
than three hundred Chiricahua, Warm
Springs, and Nedni Apaches.
Their story is an epic one. Among
them were the last Native Americans
to surrender to the United States.
Some stones bear family names—
Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, and Victorio—immortalized by Hollywood
and history. It is a hallowed place.
Near two cedars stands a cairn of
native granite cobblestone, surmounted
by an eagle. At its base are gifts from admirers: a jar of honey, clothing, a bound
bunch of herbs, cigarettes, coins, and
a bottle of liquid, contents unknown.
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July/August 2014
Inscribed in cement in the center is a
name that soars above the landscape of
American history: Geronimo.
Sometime near the mid-1800s in a
battle in northern Mexico, a young
Apache warrior, with terrifying rage,
fought and killed the Mexican soldiers
who had murdered his family. Possibly
in mispronunciation of his Apache
name, Goyahkla, or in a desperate cry
to their Saint Jerome (“Geronimo” in
Spanish) for help, the soldiers began
screaming, “Cuidado! [or “be careful”]
Geronimo!” Admiring warriors took
up the battle cry.
The accuracy of the story, chronicled
by historian Angie Debo in her 1976
biography Geronimo: The Man, His
Time, His Place, still is debated. The
new name, however, stuck, and its
bearer entered the realm of legend—
the personification of an Apache menace that, over the next thirty-five years,
would strike terror into the inhabitants of northern Mexico and the New
Mexico and Arizona territories.
Contrary to popular belief, he never
was a chief. His band typically numbered only around thirty, swelling in
times of war to a few hundred. Yet
he confounded the Mexican military
and an American army of some five
thousand. A respected healer, his
greatest renown among his people
came from a mysterious “power”
by which he allegedly could sense
danger, describe distant happenings
as they occurred, foretell events, and
bend the laws of nature.
An Apache warrior, Perico, attested,
“He sang about water, and it rained in
an hour. . . . He wanted the morning
to break after they had climbed over a
mountain so that the enemy couldn’t
see them. So Geronimo sang, and the
night remained two or three hours
longer. I saw this personally.”
In life and in legend, the Apache warrior
Geronimo­—born Goyahkla (which
translates to “one who yawns”)—cast an
imposing shadow on the history of the
American West.
photo illustration, steven walker; photo, u.s. library of congress
In the late nineteenth century, Geronimo was an elusive enemy
of two armies and the most-feared Indian in the American
Southwest. After his tribe, the Apaches, surrendered to the
United States, this formidable warrior spent his last fourteen
years as a prisoner of war at Fort Sill.
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clockwise from top: national museum of the american indian; national anthropological archives, smithsonian institution; u.s. library of congress
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July/August 2014
His body carried scars from as many
as eight bullets, which he and others believed could not kill him. He was familiar
with the trails, signs, and secrets of an
Apache topography of roughly 60,000
square miles across the American Southwest and northern Mexico. On horseback
and afoot, with endurance and little food,
water, or trace, he moved swiftly over terrain army officers termed “indescribable.”
As a warrior, he was fearless, cunning,
and brutal. Creative in ambush and a
master of evasion, he was a purveyor of
cruel butchery and puzzling mercy.
The man General George Crook described as “a human tiger” was five feet
nine inches tall, thick, and muscular.
The earliest known photograph of him,
from Arizona’s San Carlos Reservation
in 1884, captures a grim countenance
and troubled eyes burning with discontent. As a man, he was flawed and
complex—a loving husband and father
prone to distrust, impulsive behavior,
untruths, and a weakness for alcohol.
A tribesman recalled, “Although he
was not the born chief of any band. . .
Geronimo seemed to be the most intelligent and resourceful. . . . In times of
danger, he was a man to be relied upon.”
Another, Chatto, viewed him differently: “I have known Geronimo all
my life up to his death and have never
known anything good about him.” One
army officer called him “vicious, intractable, and treacherous” while another
found him “friendly and good natured.”
One truth remains indisputable: Well
over a century after he haunted the
mountains and river valleys of the Southwest, his legend, like a ghost, lingers.
A
ccording to historian
Robert Utley, he was born
Goyahkla (“one who yawns”)
into the Bedonkohe band of Chirica-
hua Apaches around 1823, below the
Mogollon Mountains in the upper
Gila River Valley of present-day New
Mexico. He lost his father at a young
age, was mentored by the great Chiricahua chief Mangas Coloradas, and
upon achieving warrior status wed a
young woman, Alope, with whom he
had three children.
In 1851, in the Mexican state of
Chihuahua, Mexican soldiers attacked
Geronimo’s camp while he was away,
killing his mother, Alope, and their
children. The event, when he was approximately twenty-eight, forever shaped
the man and his path. From that day,
he recalled, “My heart would ache for
revenge against Mexico.”
When the main body of Chiricahua
Apaches was removed to Arizona’s San
Carlos Reservation in 1876, Geronimo
and his followers instead blazed a trail to
Mexico. From there, he raided surrounding Chihuahua, Sonora, Arizona, and
New Mexico. Lured to the latter the following year, he was tricked into capture
by Indian Agency officials and transported under armed guard to Arizona.
Within a few months, he was released
from the San Carlos jail to join his people
on the reservation.
With insufficient rations, bad water,
disease, poor farmland, and corrupt
agents, San Carlos bred unhappiness
among the Apaches. Government
intrusion into traditional Apache ways,
together with frequent alcohol-related
jailings, stirred resentment. Geronimo
broke out of San Carlos three times over
the next eight years, each time bolting
for Mexico with family and followers
over seemingly impassable terrain. When
pursued by soldiers, he commonly split
his group and reunited days later at a
predetermined location. His favored
hideaway, deep in Sonora’s Sierra
Madres, was a mountain fortification
called Bugatseka.
Utley, in his award-winning 2012
biography, Geronimo, wrote: “Raid
The earliest
known image
of Geronimo
captures a grim
countenance
troubled eyes
burning
with discontent.
Clockwise from top: Geronimo, with a
wife, Zi-yeh, and young relatives, stands
between a cornfield and a melon patch
at Fort Sill around 1895. E.A. Burbank
visited Geronimo at his home at Fort Sill
in the late 1890s to paint his portrait. In a
story Burbank wrote about the experience
for The Border magazine in 1908, he
reported that Geronimo was friendly, funny,
extraordinarily observant, and “inordinately
fond of pie.” Geronimo and two nieces
were photographed in the early 1900s in
Oklahoma City.
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As a warrior, Geronimo was
fearless, cunning, and brutal.
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July/August 2014
American border, he struck back across
in search of his family, leaving a trail of
murdered men.
Under cover of darkness, he reclaimed one wife and child near Fort
Apache in Arizona before returning
to Mexico. Newspapers and angry
citizens across New Mexico and Arizona screamed at the army, Congress,
and President Grover Cleveland for
the capture of the rogue Apaches.
A second meeting with Crook came
in 1886 at Mexico’s Canyon de los
Embudos. The general, through an interpreter, summarily dismissed his adversary’s excuses and accusations as lies
and informed him, “If you stay out,
I’ll stay after you and kill the last one,
if it takes fifty years.” After two days
and nights, Apache leaders agreed to
Crook’s terms of surrender. The last to
speak was Geronimo, who said, “Once
I moved like the wind. Now I surrender to you and that is all.”
Four days later, on the march to
Arizona, he changed his mind and,
with the Chiricahua chief Naiche and
a small band of followers, slipped back
into Mexico. The larger group of surrendering Apaches was boarded onto
trains and shipped east as prisoners of
war. Crook, exasperated with Geronimo and the army’s ever-changing
tribal policy and protocol, asked to be
relieved of command.
In 1886, Geronimo (bottom row, second
from right) and a band of Apaches that
included their chief, Naiche (next to
Geronimo in the center of the photo) were
photographed on a rail embankment en
route to San Antonio. In the weeks that
followed, the women and children were
separated from the group and sent to Fort
Marion in Florida, while the men went on
to Fort Pickens, also in Florida.
national anthropological archives, smithsonian institution
seems an inadequate word to describe
what happened when a town, ranch,
freight train, or traveler was victimized. Besides plunder, raiders butchered people, often in the most brutal
fashion. Thirty years of such barbaric
slaughter, often involving torture and
mutilation, form a major characteristic
of Geronimo’s persona.”
The task of finding him fell to General George Crook. Believing correctly
that only an Apache could find an
Apache, he enlisted reservation Apache
scouts familiar with the renegade’s
haunts and habits. The U.S. Army,
with Mexico’s permission, searched the
northern part of the country. In May
1883, Crook’s scouts found and attacked an Apache camp near Bugatseka
while most of its warriors were away.
The Chiricahua were stunned to
learn that their stronghold had been
found. Geronimo, at the time of the attack, was raiding 120 miles to the east.
Fifteen-year-old Betzinez, who rode
with Geronimo, recalled the leader’s
mysterious power: “Geronimo was
sitting next to me with a knife in one
hand and a chunk of beef which I had
cooked for him in the other. All at once
he dropped the knife, saying, ‘Men, our
people who we left at our base camp are
now in the hands of U.S. troops! What
shall we do?’. . . I cannot explain it to
this day, but I was there and I saw it.”
Geronimo met with Crook in the
mountains of Mexico soon after and
agreed to return to San Carlos. However,
his return came after eight more months
of raids in Mexico, was accompanied by
233 stolen horses and cattle, and lasted
barely a year before another breakout.
In August 1885, Geronimo’s
mountain camp again was attacked by
Apache scouts hired by the army. Three
wives and five of his children were
captured and two daughters wounded.
Breaching elaborate lines of defense
designed to keep him south of the
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fort sill national historic landmark & museum
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July/August 2014
national anthropological archives, smithsonian institution
T
he maze of American
governmental procedure would
forever mystify the Apaches,
as would the distinction between
oral and written agreements, white
values and their own. Juggled jurisdictions and corrupt reservation officials
undermined tribal trust, and the U.S.
military chain of command was a
parade of personalities and egos.
The following months brought
continued Apache plundering on both
sides of the border. In a noted southern
Arizona incident, Geronimo’s band
murdered the wife and baby of an absent
rancher who, hearing shots, came to his
family’s aid. He was beaten by warriors. Then, in a rare act of forbearance,
Geronimo told him he was free to go.
By late summer 1886, tired and
gaunt, with a wounded arm in a sling,
the Apache warlord was the object of
relentless pursuit by both the United
States and Mexican armies. At least
two of his wives and three children had
been killed in the course of war with
two countries; at least five wives and six
children had been taken prisoner.
In the heat of August, from a
secluded mountain ridge in Mexico,
Geronimo’s lookout spied two Apache
scouts approaching slowly on horseback
and carrying a white flag. Geronimo
told the sentinel to shoot them when
they came within range. But when a
warrior recognized one of the scouts as
his cousin, he asked, from atop a high
rock, what they wanted and was told
they had been sent to talk peace. The
scouts were allowed to climb to the top,
and at a parley the following morning
with Lieutenant Charles Gatewood, a
formal meeting was set with Crook’s
replacement, General Nelson Miles.
On September 4, in Skeleton Canyon along the Arizona-New Mexico
border, Geronimo and Naiche—longing to see their imprisoned families and
resigned to the futility of hiding from
Apache scouts—formally surrendered
the remaining Chiricahua Apaches to
General Miles and agreed to join their
people in the East. Most Americans,
including President Cleveland, wanted
Geronimo dead. Gatewood thwarted
a planned assassination of the Apache
warlord by officers en route to the surrender site. A few days later, Geronimo
and the last of his twenty-six followers
boarded a train for Florida.
Left: Geronimo wore this Apache war
cap, on display at the Fort Sill National
Historic Landmark & Museum, during
tribal ceremonies and other special
occasions. Above: Charles H. Carpenter
photographed Geronimo at the 1904
Louisiana Purchase Exposition.
T
hough told by Miles that
the families would be reunited
in the East, Geronimo and his
fourteen warriors were taken to Fort
Pickens off Florida’s western shore.
Their wives, female relatives, and
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geronimo
encouraged
tribal youths to
attend school
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July/August 2014
children were sent to Fort Marion
on its east coast and bunched with
the main body of Chiricahuas who
had surrendered earlier. Joining them
there, and bringing the total to nearly
five hundred, were the San Carlos
Reservation Chiricahuas—who had
done nothing to warrant incarceration—and the Apache scouts who
had served the United States. All were
held as prisoners of war.
The following year, 1887, amid
public criticism by the Indian Rights
Association on deplorable conditions
at Fort Marion, the prisoners were
moved to Mount Vernon, Alabama.
They were joined a year later by
Geronimo’s Fort Pickens group.
Normally a cause for celebration,
Geronimo’s arrival at the Alabama barracks—perhaps in part because some
may have attributed their confinement
to him—was a quiet one. An eyewitness, post surgeon Walter Reed, wrote
that the old leader: “advanced some
paces, paused. . . no sound broke the
stillness. . . . While he gazed intently,
a woman emerged from a distant tent
to advance slowly and with bowed
head. . . then. . . threw her arms
around his neck, and wept.”
Throngs of visitors came to see the
famed prisoner at the Alabama site.
With him there were his two remaining wives and three children. His oldest
son, Chappo, attended Carlisle Indian
School in Pennsylvania.
The Alabama facility, on pine barrens and swampland, was ill-suited for
farming. Accustomed to the dry air of
the Southwest, the Apaches found the
humidity east of the Mississippi River
to be a curse and were susceptible to
tuberculosis and malaria. Roofs leaked
under frequent rains. Of more than one
hundred children sent to the Carlisle
school from Alabama, nearly a third
died of tuberculosis. Reed issued a scathing report on the high Apache mortality
rate in Alabama, citing adverse climate,
unhappiness with their surroundings,
and a crippling absence of hope.
After seven years, upon recommendation by the Army Surgeon General—
u.s. library of congress
Clockwise from left: Geronimo was one of
the most frequently photographed Native
Americans of his time. An entrepreneur
in his later years, he often sold prints
of these portraits to the public. General
George Crook and U.S. troops met with
Geronimo at his camp in Mexico on
March 25, 1886, to discuss the terms
of what would be his first surrender.
Not long after, Geronimo posed for a
photo with Naiche (also on horseback),
his cousin Perico (holding a baby), and
Geronimo’s son Tisnah.
oklahoma historical society
proudly donned his
army scout uniform
at inspections.
ers’ 101 Ranch near present-day Ponca
City in 1905.
At President Theodore Roosevelt’s
1905 inaugural parade, astride a black
horse and flanked by Quanah Parker
and four other Native American leaders,
he created a sensation. A member of the
inaugural committee asked, “Why did
you select Geronimo to march in your
parade, Mr. President? He is the greatest single-handed murderer in American
history.” Roosevelt replied, “I wanted to
give the people a good show.”
Days later, at the White House,
a tearful Geronimo beseeched the
president to “take the ropes from the
hands” of his people and allow them
to return to their home in Arizona.
Roosevelt told him he was unable at
that time to grant the request.
and over objections by Oklahoma and
Arizona delegates, fearful of another
uprising—President Cleveland signed
legislation for removal of the Chiricahua Apaches, and soon they arrived
at Fort Sill, Oklahoma Territory, on
land combining mountains, arable soil,
good water, and drier climate. Shortly
before boarding the train for Oklahoma,
Geronimo lost Chappo to tuberculosis.
In October 1894, Geronimo and the
remaining Chiricahua Apaches arrived
at Fort Sill, where they were generally
relieved by their new surroundings.
Each family was given ten acres on
which to build a wooden house. The
tribe grew melons, corn, sweet potatoes,
and other crops, fenced part of the reservation, and built a large cattle herd.
Appointed one of twelve Apache
village heads, Geronimo, now seventyone, encouraged tribal youths to attend
school, was paid as an army scout,
and proudly donned his uniform
at inspections. He delighted in his
garden, inviting neighbor boys to eat
melon with him under his arbor while
he shared tribal wisdom. Artist E.A.
Burbank, who painted the legendary
warrior’s portrait at Fort Sill, said, “I
was dumbfounded to see the number
of bullet holes in his body.”
In 1898, Geronimo was part of a
Fort Sill delegation sent to the TransMississippi International Exposition
in Omaha, Nebraska. Still a prisoner
of war, he was a star attraction. Appearances at the New York and St.
Louis expositions in 1901 and 1904
brought added fame.
His autographs, photos, handmade
bows, arrows, and walking sticks—
even his clothes buttons—sold briskly,
prompting one official to comment, “The old gentleman is pretty
high priced, but then he is the only
Geronimo.” By the end of his life,
he reportedly amassed more than ten
thousand dollars in savings. He made
notable appearances at Lawton’s 1902
Fourth of July parade, the Oklahoma
City Fair in 1903, and an event called
Oklahoma’s Gala Day that drew
65,000 spectators to the Miller Broth-
L
awton-area missionaries made a strong effort
to convert Geronimo, and in
1903, he was baptized into the Dutch
Reformed Church. His continued
drinking and gambling, however, led
to church reprimand. In what Angie
Debo described as a “spiritual cleavage,” he declared their rules “too strict”
and returned to Usen, the Apache
deity of his fathers.
He watched two of his eight documented wives die in captivity, along
with three children and at least one
grandchild. A devoted family man, in
later years he washed dishes and swept
the floor of his invalid wife, Zi-yeh. Of
his adoration for his young daughter,
Eva, a friend noted, “Nobody could be
kinder to a child than he was to her.”
In correspondence with friends, he
often closed with the words, “If you
are in need, let me know and I will
send you money.” He never abandoned a passionate yearning to return
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to the mountains of Arizona, which
he called “my home, my father’s land. I
want to spend my last days there and be
buried among those mountains.” It was
a longing unfulfilled.
His last years brought periods of
gentleness and humility along with
erratic behavior and drinking sprees. A
relative wrote that his “greatest weakness was liquor.”
Returning from Lawton to Fort
Sill late on a February night in 1909
after having too much to drink, he fell
from his horse at a creek crossing and
lay in freezing weather until a family friend and others discovered him
the next morning. After three days
of care at home, he was taken to the
post Apache hospital with pneumonia.
He asked that his son and daughter
be summoned from Chilocco Indian
School in northern Oklahoma.
Two days later, before they could arrive, he died on the morning of February
17 at the approximate age of eighty-six.
He was buried in the Apache graveyard
near Cache Creek at Fort Sill. Four
years later, by act of Congress and following twenty-seven years as prisoners
of war, his people were granted freedom.
u.s. library of congress
M
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July/August 2014
uch of Geronimo’s
fame was a result of misinformation. In his surrender,
he was falsely reported to be wearing
a blanket adorned with a hundred
white scalps. In fact, Apaches rarely
scalped people.
Another much later incident attracted
no small amount of attention. With
the outbreak of the Spanish-American
War in 1898, all but a few members of
The first photo taken of Geronimo is
probably also the most famous. In 1884,
A. Frank Randall took this picture at the
San Carlos Reservation in Arizona.
Fort Sill’s garrison had marched away
to Rush Springs to board a train east.
Geronimo and a few Apaches were
among those who remained. Around a
campfire, they laughed about how easy it
would be to slip away to Arizona.
A young Native American woman
who worked in a fort officer’s home
overheard a portion of the conversation. Alarmed, she spread word of a war
dance. When a telegram and courier
reached Rush Springs with news of the
impending breakout, a group of First
Cavalrymen galloped back to Fort Sill to
quell the “uprising,” and a Seventh Cavalry unit from Fort Grant, Arizona, was
ordered to begin a march to Fort Sill.
Quanah Parker volunteered his
reservation Comanches to fort officials
as protection from the Apaches. The
week-long debacle proved an embarrassment that embroiled the army chain
of command all the way to the Secretary of War. When summoned by the
cavalry captain, the seventy-five-year-old
Apache vigorously voiced his innocence,
dismay, and disappointment in the
government’s distrust.
While Geronimo’s bravery and war
skills were unquestioned, in other traits
commonly linked to greatness—integrity, inspiration, example, vision—he
never attained the exalted status of
leaders such as Comanche Quanah
Parker, Sitting Bull of the Sioux,
Joseph of the Nez Perce, and others.
As one who spent most of his warrior
prime raiding in two countries and in
reservation breakouts, he cannot be
viewed as a hero who fought only to
protect his homeland.
He broke his word to the U.S. military—and they to him—on more than
one occasion, made false accusations,
and was prone to excuses. He sometimes
bent the truth, even among his people,
to serve his purposes. Among Apaches,
the leadership and character of the two
great chiefs, Mangas Coloradas and
Cochise, were held in higher esteem.
Yet Geronimo remains the most
famous Native American in history.
Why? The answer is twofold: the press
and timing. From his last reservation breakout in 1885 until his final
surrender the following year, newspapers across the country documented
Apache atrocities in Arizona and
New Mexico to hungry readers. All
other great tribal war leaders had
faded from the scene by the time he
emerged as the last holdout. His long
life after surrender, coupled with
renewed exposure at shows, kept his
name before the public for another
twenty-three years.
Some three decades after his passing, that name became the battle cry
of World War II paratroopers and,
more recently—sparking protest
among Native American leaders—a
code name in the mission that eliminated Osama bin Laden.
Geronimo’s surrender at Skeleton
Canyon in September 1886 marked
the end of four centuries of Indian
warfare in North America. While
his life, stripped of myth and legend,
was largely a wilderness of complexity
and contradiction, his name remains
more deeply embedded in the national
consciousness than that of any Native
American in history.
Fort Sill is north of Lawton on Interstate 44, and the main Apache prisoner
of war cemetery, where Geronimo is
buried, is located in the northeast area of
the post. After entering through Key Gate
West, visitors should follow the signs for
Geronimo’s grave. A collection of Geronimo’s artifacts are inside the Fort Sill
Warrior’s Journey Gallery at the Fort Sill
National Historic Landmark & Museum; call to arrange a tour. The museum
is open Tuesday through Saturday from
9 a.m. to 5 p.m., the cemetery from dawn
to dusk seven days a week. Museum, 435
Quanah Road, (580) 442-5123 or sillwww.army.mil/museum.
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