Geronimo

by Robert M. Utley

  At the time of Geronimo’s birth, New Mexico was part of the Mexican state of Chihuahua (Chee-wah-wah). Arizona was also part of Chihuahua and the bordering Mexican state of Sonora to the west. The Mexican War of 1846–48 gained the United States the present states of New Mexico and Arizona, and in 1850 they were organized as the Territory of New Mexico. The Gadsden Purchase of 1853 added the country south of the Gila River as far as the present international boundary. Following the collapse of the Confederate Territory of Arizona in 1863, Arizona was detached from the Territory of New Mexico and established as the US Territory of Arizona. Both territories became states in 1912. To avoid confusion, locations are identified as in Arizona or New Mexico regardless of jurisdiction at the time.

  2. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 69. Asa Daklugie (Geronimo’s interpreter for Barrett) had also heard stories of Mahco even though living with his family in Mexico. Eve Ball, with Nora Henn and Lynda Sánchez, Indeh: An Apache Odyssey (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1980), 14. Eve Ball, a retired school teacher in Rudiso, New Mexico, was the only white person ever to get close enough to the Chiricahuas who lived at the nearby Mescalero Reservation in the twentieth century to get them to talk of the early years.

  3. Morris E. Opler is the preeminent authority on Apache culture. For his discussion of sibling-cousin relations, see An Apache Life-Way: The Economic, Social, and Religious Institutions of the Chiricahua Indians (New York: Cooper Square, 1965), 58–62. The genealogy of Mahco and his offspring is so tangled in the sparse sources as to rest on much speculation. The most recent standard biography of Geronimo is Angie Debo, Geronimo: The Man, His Time, His Place (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976). She devotes much of her first chapter to this speculation and reaches no firm conclusion. I have turned to other sources as well and stated my conclusions more firmly than she. They seem to be the most that will ever be known about the family origins of Geronimo. Each of those named in my narrative is the subject of a biographical sketch in a large document assembled by Gillett Griswold, longtime director of the Fort Sill Museum. The manuscript is entitled “The Fort Sill Apaches: Their Vital Statistics, Tribal Origins, Antecedents,” and was compiled in 1958–61.

  4. To avoid confusion, Mangas Coloradas’s lasting name will be used throughout, even when he was known as Fuerte (Spanish for strong); for the same reason Geronimo will replace Goyahkla even during his youth.

  5. Most of my treatment of Chiricahua tribal organization and culture is taken from Opler, Apache Life-Way. Opler divided the Chiricahua tribe into only three bands, ignoring the Bedonkohe altogether. I believe it probable that the Chihenne local group Opler called Mogollon is what is now recognized as Bedonkohe, a full if small band.

  6. Mangas Coloradas commands an exceptional biography in Edwin R. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas: Chief of the Chiricahua Apaches (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998). I have relied heavily on him, for he has scoured every possible archive in the United States and Mexico and presented details never before set forth. The physical description of Mangas Coloradas, of which there are many, is drawn largely from the army surgeon who examined his corpse a few hours after his death, xxi.

  7. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 59.

  8. All these beings, ceremonies, and rituals are treated, with not always consistent testimony of interviewees, throughout Opler, Apache Life-Way, 205–16.

  9. Ibid., 436–38, describes preparation of tiswin and its role in social occasions. He does not, however, go beyond its benign part in such affairs. Nor do other ethnologists or historians. That they were common emerges from documentary records of particular events. Some old Apaches denied the reality of tiswin drunks, claiming that they were powered more by the white man’s whiskey than tiswin. For an example, see Sherry Robinson, Apache Voices: Their Stories of Survival as Told to Eve Ball (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000), 168.

  10. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 60–61. Ethnologists generally deny that Chiricahuas practiced agriculture, citing the prevalence of nomadic mobility and the pattern of plundering raids on Mexicans and other Indians. Some, however, concede that some Chihennes and Bedonkohes may have resorted to agriculture on a limited scale. This would have been during the longer intervals of peace such as prevailed during Geronimo’s youth. His memory of youthful farming is too explicit to ignore. As warfare grew more intense and mobility increased, opportunities for agriculture shrank. For most of his adult life, Mangas Coloradas farmed at Santa Lucía Springs.

  11. Opler, Apache Life-Way, describes the novitiate, 134–39. Geronimo and all other sources state simply that Taslishim died during the boy’s youth. However, he told one interviewer that he was ten at the time, which fits the probable sequence of his early life. MS, Interview by Capt. W. H. C. Bowen with Geronimo at Mount Vernon Barracks AL, in 1893, Col. W. H. C. Bowen Papers, box 3, US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA. This document was called to my attention by Senior Historian Richard Sommers.

  12. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 66–68.

  13. Ibid., 70. Geronimo gave the year as 1846, but his true birth year was 1823, so the accurate year would be 1840. My description of the novitiate is drawn from Opler, Apache Life-Way, 134–39.

  14. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 70–71.

  CHAPTER 2. APACHE MANHOOD

  1. S. M. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 70. “Alope” does not sound like an Apache name, but Geronimo was so specific in recounting his marriage that his statement is accepted.

  2. Griswold, “Fort Sill Apaches.” A good character sketch is in Charles Collins, The Great Escape: The Apache Outbreak of 1881 (Tucson: Westernlore, 1994).

  3. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 42–44.

  4. Ibid., 71–72. See also Sweeney, Cochise: Chiricahua Apache Chief (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 32–35.

  5. Ralph A. Smith, Borderlander: The Life of James Kirker, 1793–1852 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), chaps. 7–8. See also Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 83–84.

  6. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 102–5, chap. 5.

  7. E-mail, Edwin Sweeney to Utley, February 5, 2007, discloses the 1843 date. Sweeney examined Mexican records in preparing his biography of Mangas Coloradas. As for his name, Debo, Geronimo, 13, recounts a tale told by the son of a bombastic future Apache agent of a battle with Mexicans in which they uttered some words of alarm that sounded like Geronimo. This seems implausible to me.

  8. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 110. Raids and war are recounted in chaps. 7–11.

  9. Sweeney, Cochise, xii–xix.

  10. Ibid., 120–24.

  11. Smith, Borderlander, 162–68. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 135–36.

  12. Jason Betzinez, with Wilbur Sturtevant Nye, I Fought with Geronimo (New York: Bonanza Books, 1969), 4–9, is the principal source for the revenge expedition. Betzinez was born about 1860 and did indeed ride in the final campaigns of Geronimo. He collaborated with W. S. Nye in this book and is regarded as an unusually reliable Apache source. He died at the age of one hundred in 1960. See also Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 146–48.

  13. In an interview with Eve Ball, August 10, 1954. Robinson, Apache Voices, 57. Eve Ball sometimes took liberties with her sources. Sherry Robinson examined the Ball papers at Brigham Young University and here set the record straight.

  14. Leon Perico interview, box 37, folder 28, no. 14/25/3238, Morris Edward Opler Papers, Division of Rare Manuscript Collections, Cornell University, obtained by Opler from Sol Tax. Copy provided by Edwin Sweeney. See also partial quotation in Opler, Apache Life-Way, 216. A biographical sketch of Perico is in Griswold, “Fort Sill Apaches.”

  15. Morris E. Opler, “Some Implications of Culture Theory for Anthropology and Psychology,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 18 (October 1948): 617.

  16. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, xviii.

  CHAPTER 3. BATTLE AND MASSACRE

  1. The most detailed and authoritative account of what followed is i
n Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 209–12. His Cochise, 83–87, is less detailed. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 78–83, contains Geronimo’s own detailed account. His chronology is flawed, and he depicts the offensive as a revenge expedition he himself organized in retaliation for a disaster that was yet to befall him, to be treated later in this chapter. He both supports and strays from Sweeney’s narrative. Some of the episodes he recounts probably occurred, and he undoubtedly took part, but he should be read only within the context of the Sweeney accounts.

  2. These quotations are selected from Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 82, 83. Geronimo’s account can only refer to Pozo Hediondo, but it is flawed by his assumption that this was a revenge fight for the disaster soon to befall him. He portrays himself as more a tactical leader than he probably was, but he assuredly fought ferociously and in hand-to-hand combat, and his stature rose accordingly.

  3. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 212.

  4. Scarce and often contradictory sources abound in this episode. Sweeney deals authoritatively with it in Mangas Coloradas, 218–19; and in “‘I Had Lost All’: Geronimo and the Carrasco Massacre of 1851,” Journal of Arizona History 27 (Spring 1986): 35–52. Geronimo tells his story at length in Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 75–78. Although his account is full of untruths, I accept some of his most important statements, as does Sweeney. The most notable untruths are that the Apaches had been and were at peace and his chronology that places this event before Pozo Hediondo and the latter as the revenge expedition. Betzinez, I Fought with Geronimo, 16–17, is the authority for Apaches drinking in town and also recounts the story of the massacre.

  5. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 77.

  6. E. A. Burbank, as told by Ernest Royce, Burbank among the Indians, ed. Frank J. Taylor (Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1946), 33.

  CHAPTER 4. “AMERICANS”

  1. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, chap. 3, deals with the early relations around the copper mines. I have examined and cited most of the original sources in my A Life Wild and Perilous: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific (New York: Henry Holt, 1997).

  2. Lt. Delos B. Sackett to AAAG Santa Fe, Doña Ana, December 14, 1848, encl. to Washington to Jones, February 3, 1849, LR, Hq. of the Army, W-21, NARA.

  3. Capt. Enoch Steen to AAAG Santa Fe, Doña Ana, September 1, 1849, RG 77, LR, Topographical Engineers, S478/1850, NARA. Steen to AAAG Santa Fe, Doña Ana, October 20, 1849, RG 98, LR, Dept. NM, S-12, NARA. I deduce that these were Bedonkohes from their retreat to the copper mines, Bedonkohe country. Also, a raiding party of one hundred was unusually large and may well have been led by Mangas himself.

  4. Steen to AAAG Santa Fe, Doña Ana, March 24, 1850, encl. to Munroe to Jones, April 15, 1850, RG 94, AGO Doc. Files, box 464, doc. 269-M-1850, NARA. Steen to AAG Santa Fe, Doña Ana, September 3, 1850, RG 98, LR, Dept. NM, S23/1850, NARA.

  5. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 244. Sumner to AGUSA, Hq. 9th Military Dept., Fort Union, January 1, February 3, 1852, RG 98, LS, Fort Union, NARA. Sumner to Lt. Col. D. S. Miles at Fort Conrad, Hq. 9th Military Dept., Albuquerque, April 5, 1852, RG 98, LS, Dept. NM, NARA.

  6. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 258–62. Griener to Lea, July 31, 1852, RG 75, LR, OIA NM, G41/1852, NARA. Sumner to Secretary of the Interior, July 21, 1852, RG 75, OIA Treaty File, NARA. (Saint Louis) Daily Missouri Republican, August 28, 1852. For a copy of the treaty and associated documents, see Michael Steck Papers, University of New Mexico.

  7. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 263–80. Griener to Lea, Santa Fe, August 30, 1852, RG 75, LR, OIA NM, G50/1852, NARA. Wingfield to Lane, Fort Webster, December 20, 1852, encl. to Wingfield to CIA, January 29, 1853, RG 75, LR, OIA NM, W307/1854, NARA. Wingfield to Lane, Fort Webster, May 4, 1853, encl. to Lane, “Report,” May 21, 1853, RG 75, LR, OIA NM, N128/1853, NARA. “Articles of a Provisional Compact …,” April 7, 1853, encl. to Meriwether (Lane’s replacement as governor) to Manypenny, August 31, 1853, RG 75, LR, OIA NM, N-153, NARA. Steen to Lane, Fort Webster, May 16, 28, 1853, encl. to Lane to Manypenny, May 28, 1853, RG 75, LR, OIA NM, N131/1853, NARA. Wingfield to Lane, Copper Mines, c. May 20, 1853, ibid. Steen to AGUSA, Fort Webster, June 17, 1853, RG 94, LR, AGO, S438/1853, NARA.

  8. Lane to Wingfield, Fort Webster, May 28, 1853, Steck Papers.

  9. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 296–304. George Ruhlen, “Fort Thorn—An Historical Vignette,” Password (El Paso Historical Society) 4 (October 1960): 127–37.

  10. The Michael Steck Papers at the University of New Mexico Library are rich in his history as agent and later as superintendent of Indian affairs. The collection includes Steck’s appointment papers of May 9 and July 24, 1854. Steck’s activities in examining the Chiricahua lands and meeting with the chiefs are addressed to Governor Meriwether from Fort Thorn, August 31 and October (n.d.), 1854. That Steck’s issues were substantial is recorded in a certificate of contractor Estevan Ochoa listing the items issued on September 10, Steck Papers.

  11. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 306–7.

  12. Steck to CIA, Santa Fe, August 7, 1857, CIA, Annual Report (1857), 579.

  13. I narrate and document the Bonneville campaign of 1857 in Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army and the Indian, 1848–1865 (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 155–57.

  14. For Mangas’s turn to Cochise and factionalizing of his following, see Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 343–62.

  15. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 373ff. Collins to CIA C. E. Mix, Santa Fe, December 5, 1858, RG 75, LR, OIA NM, C1903/1859, NARA. Draft, Steck to Collins, Apache Agency, February 1, 1859, Steck Papers. CIA, Annual Report (1858), 184–99; (1859), 334–47.

  16. Griswold, “Fort Sill Apaches,” under these names, including Geronimo.

  CHAPTER 5. WAR WITH THE AMERICANS

  1. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 384. R. S. Allen, “Pinos Altos, New Mexico,” New Mexico Historical Review 23 (1948): 302–32.

  2. Steck to CIA A. B. Greenwood, Washington, May 11, 1860, RG 75, LR, OIA NM FP, NARA. Greenwood to Steck, May 16, 1860, Steck Papers.

  3. Collins to Greenwood, RG 75, LR, OIA NM, 0620/1860, NARA. Steck to Greenwood, Apache Agency, October 17, 1860, RG 75, LR, OIA NM, C795/1860, NARA. Greenwood to Collins, January 5, 1861, RG 75, LR, OIA NM FP, NARA.

  4. Unless otherwise cited, my account is based largely on Sweeney, Cochise, chap. 8. Like his biography of Mangas Coloradas, Sweeney’s biography of Cochise is the ultimate authority. Sweeney had consulted every source and assembled a day-by-day narrative of this episode from the viewpoint of both sides.

  5. Geronimo’s account is in Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 114–16. Geronimo mixed up the chronology and got some facts wrong, but he recalled enough detail to establish that he was there and participated in some of what followed. The scene was witnessed from behind the line of tents by Sergeant Daniel Robinson, leading a train of supply wagons west to Fort Buchanan. His eyewitness account is critical to understanding the sequence of events. Douglas C. McChristian and Larry L. Ludwig, “Eyewitness to the Bascom Affair: An Account by Sergeant Daniel Robinson, Seventh Infantry,” Journal of Arizona History 42 (Autumn 2001): 277–300. See also McChristian, Fort Bowie, Arizona: Combat Post of the Southwest, 1858–1894 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005), 21–35.

  6. I recount this in greater detail in Frontiersmen in Blue, 157–61. For more, see Benjamin Sacks, “The Origins of Fort Buchanan, Myth and Fact,” Arizona and the West 7 (1965): 207–26.

  7. Sweeney, Cochise, chap. 8. Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, 161–63.

  8. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 117.

  9. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, covers these events, chap. 16.

  CHAPTER 6. RETURN OF THE BLUECOATS

  1. Robinson, Apache Voices, 27–29. Griswold, “Fort Sill Apaches,” under Nana-tha-thtithl. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 86–89. Geronimo does not mention the loss of his third wife and their child, although his account closely follows the other two citations.

  2. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 423–25. R. S. Allen, “Pinos Altos, New Mex
ico,” New Mexico Historical Review 23 (October 1948): 303–4.

  3. For Victorio, see Eve Ball, In the Days of Victorio: Recollections of a Warm Springs Apache (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1972); and Dan L. Thrapp, Victorio and the Mimbres Apaches (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974). For Loco, see Bud Shapard, Chief Loco: Apache Peacemaker (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010).

  4. Griswold, “Fort Sill Apaches,” under Nana. Multiple sources chronicle Nana’s career in later years, when he continued as a respected war leader into old age.

  5. Aside from a few brief comments of Asa Daklugie in Ball, Indeh: An Apache Odyssey, 19–20, no sources record the Apache perspective. The sequence is thoroughly detailed in military records, from which Sweeney reconstructed it in Mangas Coloradas, 429–40, and Cochise, 198–202. I have recounted the Apache viewpoint in what may be plausibly inferred from the military accounts, which I have examined numerous times in the past. Debo, Geronimo, 68, shares my assumption that Geronimo participated, alluding to Chiricahua tribal tradition. Geronimo’s failure to leave any hint of his presence is consistent with his lifelong practice. Even his account of the Bascom affair focuses on the ambush of the freight train in Apache Pass, not the soldiers.