Geronimo

by Robert M. Utley

  The officer was First Lieutenant George M. Purington, an enlisted man before the Spanish American War now commissioned in the Eighth Cavalry. He behaved in stark contrast to Captain Hugh Scott and all the previous officers who had charge of the Chiricahuas. He had no sympathy for them, and he promptly refused. The Apaches had been guilty of many depredations and cost many lives and much money to subdue. Geronimo deserved to be hanged rather than spoiled by all the attention he had been receiving. Undaunted, Barrett wrote directly to President Theodore Roosevelt, who had only a few months earlier met with Geronimo and other chiefs in the White House. Roosevelt quickly gave his consent, subject only to a final review by the War Department.12

  In October 1905 Barrett secured an interpreter to translate what Geronimo said into English. He was Asa Daklugie, son of Chief Juh, second cousin to Geronimo, and Carlisle-educated. The first day Geronimo made clear that only he would talk. He would answer no questions. He had framed in his mind what he wanted to say at the session and would say no more nor answer any questions. When Barrett tried, Geronimo simply said, “Write what I have spoken.” Later, when Barrett had set to paper what Daklugie had related, Geronimo met with the two and answered questions. This became the routine each day of the interviews.

  As Barrett described the process: “He might prefer to talk at his tepee, at Asa Daklugie’s house, in some mountain dell, or as he rode in a swinging gallop across the prairie, whenever his fancy led him, there he told whatever he wished to tell and no more.”

  Barrett mailed the manuscript to President Roosevelt. He approved, subject only to footnotes that clarified that any criticisms of individuals were those of Geronimo, together with a final review by the War Department. On June 2, 1906, Barrett mailed the completed manuscript to the War Department. Six weeks later an assistant to the army chief of staff advised the secretary of war that the manuscript contained five passages offensive to the army and that, even if those were eliminated, it should not receive the approval of the War Department. Barrett struck out the offending passages, and the president let the text go to publication.

  Barrett included in his introduction examples of the War Department objections—such trivia as criticisms of Generals Crook and Miles. The officers who now ran the army, many of them veterans of the Indian wars, put both Geronimo and Barrett through a shameful process. The old Apache should have been allowed to tell his story unfettered by official restrictions. But the officers could tolerate no criticism, possibly because in retrospect Geronimo had made so many look foolish.

  For the historian, Geronimo’s autobiography, even without the excised passages, presents daunting problems. The most obvious are the perils of translation from one language to another. Daklugie’s command of English may have been flawed. Barrett may have softened some of the content to avoid offending the army. At eighty-three, Geronimo’s memory may have dimmed. Either because of memory loss or deliberate vagueness or exaggeration, much of his history is so confused that the historian is left to puzzle out what happened. Cultural differences, which were great, account for much confusion. Geronimo’s chronology, for example, is severely flawed, reflecting the Apache focus on events rather than the white man’s calendar. And what was important to Geronimo may not be of much interest to the historian. Even so, the autobiography is valuable for what it does contain and what the historian can infer from that.

  Notably, the difficulties of making sense of parts of the book are largely in the period between the coming of the white people and the surrender at Skeleton Canyon. Geronimo’s accounts of his youth, his culture and traditions, the ceremonies and dances, family relations, tribal relations, and the spiritual beliefs of the people contain little confusion or obscurity.

  Uppermost in his mind, from Skeleton Canyon to Fort Sill, was the injustice of two decades as a prisoner of war and the intense yearning to go back to the Arizona mountains. His passion for that land emerges plainly at the end of the book:

  There is no climate or soil which, to my mind, is equal to that of Arizona. We could have plenty of good cultivating land, plenty of grass, plenty of timber and plenty of minerals in that land, my home, my fathers’ land, to which I now ask to be allowed to return. I want to spend my last days there, and be buried among those mountains. If this could be I might die in peace, feeling that my people, placed in their native homes, would increase in numbers, rather than diminish as at present, and that our name would not become extinct.

  Jason Betzinez, the most authoritative voice of the Chiricahua past, wrote that “Apaches possessed many virtues such as honesty, endurance, loyalty, love of children, and sense of humor. They also had at least two serious faults. One of these was drunkenness and the other was a fondness for fighting among themselves, these often going hand in hand.”13

  Drunkenness is a theme running throughout Apache history. No less than other Chiricahuas, Geronimo loved liquor, no matter what kind, and at Fort Sill he often got drunk. Betzinez, who had been with Geronimo since the warpath, wrote that his “greatest weakness was liquor.”14

  On February 11, 1909, Geronimo rode into Lawton to sell some bows and arrows. With the proceeds, he asked Eugene Chihuahua to buy him whiskey. As was customary at a time when law barred Indians from purchasing liquor, Eugene asked a soldier to get it for him. He then turned it over to Geronimo. Late at night Geronimo mounted his horse and rode back to Fort Sill. When almost there, he fell off his horse and lay there in the freezing weather until discovered the next morning. For three days his family cared for him in his home before one of the scouts reported his worsening cold to the Fort Sill surgeon, who had him brought to the hospital. The cold had developed into pneumonia.

  The surgeon expected death to come quickly. Geronimo, however, insisted that Eva and Robert, his daughter and son, be brought to his bedside from the Chilocco Indian School. Typically, Lieutenant Purington wrote a letter instead of sending a telegram. Eugene Chihuahua sat with Geronimo during the day, Asa Daklugie during the night. Geronimo died at 6:15 a.m. on February 17, 1909. The funeral the next day had to be delayed until Eva and Robert arrived from Chilocco.

  A prisoner of war for twenty-three years, Geronimo was buried in the Apache graveyard on Cache Creek at Fort Sill.15

  EPILOGUE

  A QUART OF WHISKEY, a fall from his horse, and pneumonia killed only the mortal Geronimo. The immortal Geronimo lives on, one of the enduring icons of American and Native American history.

  Neither Geronimo’s persona nor the legend explains why his name continues to resonate so vividly in the public mind. The reason is simple. The white citizens of Arizona and New Mexico endured a decade of Apache depredations, 1876–86. Hundreds died as Apache raiders swept down on farms, ranches, villages, mining claims, and travelers to exact an appalling toll of plunder, destruction, mutilation, and death. Their bursts of anguish and outrage, reported, embellished, and falsified by Southwestern newspapers and expressed in appeals to presidents, members of Congress, governors, and others of prominence, attracted the notice of all Americans. As the name Geronimo emerged from obscurity in the late 1870s, he came to personify all the Apache raiders, both in the minds of victims and in newspapers throughout the nation. Americans everywhere almost daily read of atrocities attributed to him. After his surrender in 1886, Geronimo became a prisoner of war for the rest of his life, but his name remained bright in the public memory. After 1898, he became a celebrity for other reasons, his name still in the forefront of Indian leaders.

  So it remained until Geronimo’s death in 1909. Afterward, the name endured, his years as a celebrity forgotten, his years as a murderous butcher remembered. This incarnation buried Geronimo in legend. By the late twentieth century, however, with fresh public attitudes shaped by the “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” syndrome, the Geronimo legend began to morph into the more congenial image that encompassed all American Indians: the Apache daredevil fighting for his homeland. Such remains the legend of Geronimo, even though he spent his adult life raiding
and plundering in Mexico and the American Southwest or on a reservation. He did not fight for his homeland. He did fight for his values and life-way, which perhaps contained an element of homeland.

  If a “real” Geronimo has emerged from the preceding chapters, how should he be characterized? Only two words apply universally: complex and contradictory. Dozens of other words and phrases describe him at various times and in various episodes of his life, but only a few continuously trace a pattern. They can be reconciled only under two words of generalization—complex and contradictory.

  Most prominently, Geronimo repeatedly demonstrated courage and bravery, especially in clashes with Mexican troops. Pozo Hediondo in 1851 revealed him at his best. Teamed with Mangas Coloradas and Cochise, he fought viciously and contributed significantly to the almost complete obliteration of the Mexican foe. Yet at Alisos Creek in 1882 many tribesmen accused him of cowardice—sneaking out of the deadly ravine to save himself while leaving others to their fate. Although the belief is almost certainly wrong, that it existed at all reveals a contradiction that planted itself in the opinion of many Chiricahuas.

  In the rush to the Sierra Madres that preceded and followed Alisos Creek, Geronimo exhibited exceptional leadership, especially in the fight in Horseshoe Canyon and in bringing the survivors of Alisos Creek to safety in mountain refuges. Jason Betzinez testified to Geronimo’s critical leadership in eluding vigorous pursuit by US cavalry and Apache scouts. The flight involved women and children as well as the fighting men.

  Even so, detracting from his superior leadership, he relaxed his vigilance after crossing the boundary and allowed his camp to be surprised and attacked by American cavalry and Indian scouts. Only the skillful flanking movement of some of his fighters opened the way to escape.

  In both Mexico and the United States, he lived up to his reputation as a ruthless butcher. Especially in Mexico, he shot, slashed, tortured, and murdered almost anyone he came across. Yet, inexplicably, he occasionally spared the life of a victim or took him or her captive, sometimes under brutal circumstances. In 1886 he slaughtered the whole family of rancher Artisan Peck and then left Peck to look down on his dead and mutilated family. (Apaches neither raped nor scalped.)

  A glaring contradiction is his skill at arranging ambushes of pursuers or travelers, taking full advantage of the terrain. He achieved this with the troops of Captains Lebo and Hatfield in 1886, in the final weeks of the military offensive. At the same time, Geronimo could grow lax in posting security and suddenly find soldiers and scouts charging into his ranchería. Like all Apaches, however, he knew how to escape such an attack with his life, if little or nothing else. Both Captains Crawford and Lawton surprised him in hideaways he thought beyond discovery. But as Surgeon Leonard Wood observed of one such incident, the attackers were left with the camp and all its contents but no Apaches.

  That his camps were so expertly concealed that such attacks occurred infrequently testifies to Geronimo’s ability to secrete his people in rugged mountain hideouts thought impenetrable. Yet they were not, as both Mexican and American soldiers and Apache scouts occasionally found them.

  For all his strategic or tactical lapses during the final two years of freedom, he merits admiration for outwitting five thousand American soldiers and keeping them on the run with few shots fired in anger. His skill at evading pursuit, at hiding in mountainous enclaves, at avoiding any semblance of battle, reveal his finest period of leadership.

  These years also find him both defiant and submissive. Most dramatic was the day in August 1886 that Lieutenant Gatewood finally put Kayitah and Martine in touch with Geronimo. In only one day Geronimo’s defiant refusal even to talk about giving up turned to submissive agreement to parley.

  In 1883 Geronimo defiantly roamed Sonora butchering and plundering, but when General Crook penetrated his mountain bases, he turned so submissive that he humiliated himself by groveling and begging Crook to talk to him. Such servile behavior seems uncharacteristic of any Chiricahua, much less the renowned Geronimo.

  As a prisoner of war at Mount Vernon Barracks, Geronimo exhibited erratic behavior that defies explanation. He appeared to have adapted well to the new circumstances of his life. He caused little trouble and behaved as his military overseers wanted. His visits to white officers at the post earned him high praise. He claimed that he now considered himself a white man. He served credibly as justice of the peace and encouraged the Chiricahua youth to go to the white man’s school. He even reinforced his son Chappo’s commitment to education at the Carlisle Indian School and readily consented to Chappo’s request that his brother Fenton be sent to Carlisle.

  Suddenly, however, he turned on George Wrattan, the one white man to whom he owed the largest debt in the transition from freedom to captivity, a betrayal as grievous as any that victimized him. He not only lied about a promise of General Miles to send Wrattan away any time Geronimo wanted. He also strung together the most unconscionable prevarications about other promises Miles had made him. A thorough investigation led the secretary of war to brand the accusations as frivolous.

  Yet Geronimo told his son that he would do anything Captain Wother-spoon wanted because the captain had shown him the right way and treated him so well. He then turned on Wotherspoon and demanded to be paid to eliminate drunkenness. When refused, he got drunk himself.

  Geronimo also professed undying devotion to the spiritual beliefs of his tribe. Usen, traditional ceremonies, and all Apache cosmology marked his path through life. The devotion, however, lapsed on occasion. If he followed the path during the years at Mount Vernon, he did it in secret. It may have been a matter of convenience. As a striking example, while at Fort Sill in the last years of his life, at the same time that the old ceremonies were being revived he allowed himself to be baptized in the Dutch Reformed Church. Perhaps this amounted to a pragmatic adaptation to the two sides of his life at Fort Sill.

  Reverence for the old ways manifested itself in Geronimo’s stature as a medicine man. He dispensed herbal remedies, made generous use of sacred pollen, and performed healing rituals in full view of onlookers. Yet when stricken with a mild form of syphilis, he turned to an American army doctor for treatment. If he attempted his own cure, it failed. The white man’s medicine cured the great medicine man.

  Like many other Chiricahuas, Geronimo liked strong drink. At times drunkenness affected his behavior, while well-documented incidents show him in control when drunk or hungover. His first breakout from the reservation, for instance, arose from a drunken tirade against a nephew that so shamed the young man that he killed himself. The addiction was so strong that Geronimo and his cohorts let the Mexicans lure them into situations where they drank to oblivion and opened themselves to massacre. They knew the stratagem, but they fell for it over and over. It was the stratagem that cost Geronimo his first family in 1851. In the end, in 1909, drunkenness cost him his life.

  Certain traits of character, however, find little or no contradiction in the record.

  One was deeply ingrained suspicion. He suspected all Americans and Mexicans of plotting treachery, as indeed they often were, and he suspected his own people of trying to get him into trouble. Suspicion led him to withhold trust from any official, or any other Apache, trying to accommodate him. Suspicion and distrust match his utter gullibility, his willingness to believe any “bad story” or any hint of “bad stories,” or any other rumor or gossip that might affect his life. He fully displayed these tendencies in the drama that led to the last breakout in 1885.

  Another persistent trait was lying. He told one lie after another to General Crook at Canyon de los Embudos. Unforgivably, he blatantly lied to Naiche and Chihuahua to force them to flee with him and his few followers in the breakout of May 1885. He assured them that he had caused Lieutenant Davis and Sergeant Chatto to be assassinated, which meant that the government would pounce on all the Chiricahuas who did not go with Geronimo. They went. Far more untruthful were the lies Geronimo told about George Wratt
an at Mount Vernon Barracks and the lies about what General Miles had promised him.

  Another consistency: From his first marriage through his last, Geronimo proved a deeply committed family man. The massacre of his first family in 1851 shaped a lifetime of bitter loathing and revenge against Mexicans. He mourned the death of any family member, and he never gave up trying to recover wives who had been captured. Eight named wives can be accounted for, but the record reveals several more unnamed.

  Another conspicuous characteristic of Geronimo’s was the mystical “Power.” Outside his personal following, he commanded respect or fear because of his Power. Although Jason Betzinez witnessed a display of Geronimo’s Power, no other credible event found its way into the record. The range and intensity of Geronimo’s Power depended less on what people observed than on what they thought they observed or had been told by others that they had observed. These widespread beliefs, however, created a substantial enough foundation for Geronimo’s Power to be taken seriously.

  The contradictions in Geronimo’s character and behavior are conspicuous, accounting for a major segment of his persona. At the same time, a few lifelong beliefs and practices, unrelieved by any exceptions, contrast with his contradictions. Together, these themes, resonating through his long life, stamp him as a man of complexity.

  Stripped of legend, Geronimo was a blend of contradiction and complexity. Legend buries the blend, and he has come down in recent history as the valiant Apache fighting for his homeland. Although plainly false, motion pictures, television, popular literature, current Apache beliefs, and even museum exhibits reinforce the legend. For a public entranced by American Indian history, the legend easily obscures contradiction and complexity and dominates the American memory.