Geronimo (Mescalero-Chiricahua: Goyaałé [kòjàːɬɛ́] "the one who yawns"; June 16, 1829 – February 17, 1909) was a prominent leader from the Bedonkohe band of the Chiricahua Apache tribe. From 1850 to 1886 Geronimo joined with members of three other Chiricahua Apache bands—the Chihenne, the Chokonen 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-American conflict, that started with American settlement in Apache lands following the end of the war with Mexico in 1848. The Apache-American 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.

Geronimo was not counted a chief among the Apache.[2][3] At any one time, only about 30 to 50 Apaches would be numbered among his personal following.[3] However, since he was a superb leader in raiding and revenge warfare he frequently led numbers larger than his own following.[3] 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.[3] 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,[4] and he was able to anticipate events that were in the future.[5] He also demonstrated powers to heal other Apaches.[6]

During Geronimo's final period of conflict from 1876 to 1886 he "surrendered" three times and accepted life on the Apache reservations in Arizona.[7] Reservation life was confining to the free-moving Apache people, and they resented restrictions on their customary way of life.[8]

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 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 has been previously exiled to Florida.[9] This prompt action prevented the Arizona civil authorities from intervening to arrest and try Geronimo for the death of the many Americans who had been killed during the previous decades of raiding.[10][11] The Chiricahuas remained at Fort Pickens in Florida until 1888 when they were relocated to Mt. Vernon Barracks in Alabama.[12] In 1894 the Chiricahuas, including Geronimo were relocated at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where they built villages scattered around the post based on kindred groups.[13] Geronimo, like other Apaches, was given a plot of land on which he took up farming activities.[14]

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 rode in President Theodore Roosevelt's 1905 inaugural parade.[15]

Geronimo died at the Fort Sill hospital in 1909.[16] He was still 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.

Scat Catz