Geronimo

by Robert M. Utley

  9. Crook to AG MDP Presidio, Fort Bowie, September 17, 1885, with endorsements by Gens. Pope and Sheridan and SW Endicott, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 179, NARA.

  10. Crook to AG MDP Presidio, Fort Bowie, October 11, 1885. Crook diary, November 7, 11, 13, 14, 1885. Capt. Wirt Davis to Capt. Cyrus Roberts, AADC, at Fort Bowie, Fort Lowell, March 20, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 183, NARA.

  11. Telegram, Sheridan to Crook at Fort Bowie, November 19, 1885; Crook to Sheridan, November 19, 1885; Endicott to Sheridan, November 20, 1885; all in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 180, NARA. Annual reports of the Lieutenant General and the Secretary of War: Sheridan to SW, October 10, 1886; Endicott’s annual report, November 30, 1886, SW, Annual Report (1886), 7, 71.

  12. Sheridan to Endicott, Albuquerque, December 3, 1885; telegram, Sheridan to SW, Fort Bowie, November 30, 1885 (2); telegram, Sheridan to SW, Deming, NM, December 1, 1885; GO 121, AGO, November 30, 1885 (transferring NM to AZ); GFO 1, Fort Bowie, December 1, 1885 (implementing transfer); all in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 180, NARA. Annual reports of Sheridan and Endicott, SW, Annual Report (1886), 7, 71.

  13. Telegram, Sheridan to Crook, December 23, 1885; telegrams, Crook to Sheridan, Fort Bowie, December 26, 30, 1885; all in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 180, NARA.

  14. Tombstone Epitaph, February 4, 1886.

  15. Ibid., January 13, 1886.

  16. Davis to Roberts, AADC, at Fort Bowie, Fort Lowell, March 20, 1886, chronicles in almost daily detail the fruitless movements of Davis’s command. Crawford to Crook, Huasaras, Sonora, December 24, 1885, and from Camp near Nácori, Sonora, December 28, 1885, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, rolls 183 (Davis) and 181 (Crawford), NARA. An accurate and much more descriptive narrative than the official reports is Lt. W. E. Shipp, “Captain Crawford’s Last Expedition,” Journal of the U.S. Cavalry Association 5 (December 1892): 343–61, in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 516.

  17. Chiricahua movements are inferred from a detailed report of 1st Lt. Marion P. Maus to Crook, February 23, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 181, NARA. This and other military reports are cited in more detail in a subsequent section dealing with these operations from the military viewpoint. The events are detailed in Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 494–507. See also Shipp, “Captain Crawford’s Last Expedition,” 9.

  18. Maus dispatch of January 21, 1886, repeated in telegram, Crook to Sheridan, Fort Bowie, January 27, 1886, details the negotiations between Maus and the Chiricahua chiefs, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 181, NARA. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 516–19, details the raids in Sonora, based on Mexican sources.

  CHAPTER 21. CANYON DE LOS EMBUDOS, 1886

  1. Maus to Capt. C. S. Roberts, aide to Crook at Fort Bowie, Camp 18 miles south of camp near San Bernardino, March 14, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 182, NARA.

  2. Maus to Roberts, Fort Bowie, April 8, 1886; Maus to Roberts, March 14, 1886; ibid., rolls 183, 182. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 473–74. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 516–20.

  3. Daly, “Geronimo Campaign,” 94.

  4. Crook’s aide, Capt. John G. Bourke, kept a verbatim record of the council: RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 182, NARA. Daly, “Geronimo Campaign,” 94–95. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 474–76. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 521–23.

  5. Daly, “Geronimo Campaign,” 100–101, is the authority for the role of Chihuahua, Alchise, and Kayatena. Long interview with Crook in Tucson Daily Citizen, April 2, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 182, NARA.

  6. The two-year exile is hard to piece together from several documents. Crook’s diary for March 26, 1886, concedes the terms, as does his report of the conference to Gen. Sheridan in telegram (confidential), Crook to Sheridan, Canyon de los Embudos (through Fort Bowie), March 27, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 182, NARA. He briefly acknowledges the terms in the interview in the Tucson Daily Citizen, April 12, 1886, ibid. Capt. Bourke kept the transcript of the March 27 formal council, which includes nothing about terms, only “surrender.” Ibid. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 479. All these sources deal with the work of Alchise and Kayatena in the Chiricahua camp in the night of March 25.

  7. Crook diary, March 28, 1886. Maus to Roberts, Fort Bowie, April 8, 1886.

  8. Maus to Roberts, Fort Bowie, April 8, 1886. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 481. Daly, “Geronimo Campaign,” 100–103, 249–53. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 525–27.

  9. Notes of an interview between Crook and Chatto, Kayatena, Naiche, and other Chiricahua Apaches, Mount Vernon Barracks, AL, January 20, 1890, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 191, NARA.

  10. Crook to AAG MDP Presidio, Fort Bowie, January 11, 1886, ibid., roll 181, is the long report on Apache warfare. For the Maus transmittals, see telegram, Crook to Sheridan, Fort Bowie, January 17, 1886 (Maus’s dispatch of January 21); telegram, Crook to Pope, Fort Bowie, February 10, 1886 (paraphrasing Maus’s dispatch without giving date); Crook to AGUSA, Fort Bowie, February 28, 1886 (transmitting full Maus report of January 21); telegram, Crook to Sheridan, March 16, 1886 (reporting highly condensed version of Maus’s dispatch of January 14). All in ibid. For the diplomatic protest to Mexico: Acting SS to US Minister Mexico City, February 2, 1886, ibid.

  11. Telegram, Crook to Sheridan, March 16, 1886; telegram, AAG DA to AG MDP Presidio, March 22, 1886; both in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 181, NARA. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 519–21.

  12. Telegrams, Crook to Sheridan, Canyon de los Embudos, via Fort Bowie, March 28, 29, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 179, NARA.

  13. Telegram, Sheridan to Crook at Fort Bowie, March 30, 1886; telegram, Crook to Sheridan, March 30, 1886, ibid.

  14. Telegram, Sheridan to Crook, April 1, 1886; telegram, Crook to Sheridan, April 1, 1886, ibid., roll 182.

  15. Telegrams, Crook to Sheridan, Fort Bowie, April 2, 4, 7, 1886, ibid.

  CHAPTER 22. MILES IN COMMAND, 1886

  1. Personal Recollections and Observations of General Nelson A. Miles (Chicago: Werner, 1896), 476. Miles, Serving the Republic: Memoirs of the Civil and Military Life of Nelson A. Miles (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1911), 221. I have written the introduction to a reprint edition of the first autobiography (New York: Da Capo Press, 1969). Of several biographies, consult Robert Wooster, Nelson A. Miles and the Twilight of the Frontier Army (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995).

  2. Telegram, Sheridan to Miles, April 3, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 182, NARA. SW, Annual Report (1886), 11, 72.

  3. GO 7, DA, Fort Bowie, April 20–21, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 186.

  4. The Chiricahua movements and raids in Mexico are detailed in Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 535–37. Miles alluded to these raids and reported the intrusion into Arizona in dispatches forwarded by Howard to AGUSA, MDP Presidio, April 28, 30, May 1, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 182, NARA. A thorough account of this last raid by Geronimo and Naiche north of the border is Allan Radbourne, “Geronimo’s Last Raid into Arizona,” True West 41 (March 1994): 22–29.

  5. Jack C. Gale, “Lebo in Pursuit,” Journal of Arizona History 21 (Spring 1980): 13–24. Telegram, Howard to AGUSA, MDP Presidio, May 4, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 182, NARA.

  6. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 134.

  7. The events narrated above are badly scrambled in military records, testimony to the agility and leadership of Naiche. For the story, consult Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 531–51; Radbourne, “Geronimo’s Last Raid into Arizona,” 22–29; and Jack C. Gale, “An Ambush for Natchez,” True West 27 (July–August 1980): 32–37.

  8. The Peck affair is described
in detail in Radbourne, “Geronimo’s Last Raid into Arizona,” 23.

  9. Gale, “Lebo in Pursuit,” 13–24.

  10. Telegram, Howard to AGUSA, MDP Presidio (repeating telegram from Miles from Nogales, May 16, 17, and ibid., May 18, 1886, repeating telegram from Miles from Fort Huachuca, May 17); all in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 183, NARA. Annual report of Miles, September 18, 1886, in SW, Annual Report (1886), 167–68. Officers of 4th Cavalry, Fort Huachuca, to editor, June 14, 1886, Army and Navy Journal 23 (June 26, 1887): 989 (defending Hatfield). Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 541.

  11. The order, GO 58, by order of Col. W. B. Royall, Fort Huachuca, May 4, 1886, is in SW, Annual Report (1886), 176–77.

  12. Miles’s annual report, September 18, 1886, 169. Telegram, AAG MDP Presidio to AGUSA, June 8, 1886, repeating telegram of June 7 from Miles at Calabasas, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 OAG 1883, roll 184, NARA. Lawton to Mame (his wife), June 22, 1886, Lawton Papers, Indian Wars, Misc. Corres., box 1, folder Personal Letters, US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA. Lawton’s daily movements may be followed in the diary of Leonard Wood: Jack C. Lane, ed., Chasing Geronimo: The Journal of Leonard Wood, May–September 1886 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1970).

  13. Lawton to Mame, Camp at Cumpas, June 30, 1886, Lawton Papers. Telegram, Miles to AAG MDP Presidio, Deming, NM, June 23, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 OAG 1883, roll 184, NARA. A detailed account of the confrontation with the Mexican troops and the recovery of Trinidad Verdin is in Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entry of June 18, 1886, 55–56.

  14. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 549–53, assembles this account in detail from Mexican accounts and the story told by Trinidad Verdin.

  15. Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entry of July 13, 1886, 69–72. Lawton to Mame, Camp south of Aros River, July 16, 1886, Lawton Papers. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 554–55. Miles’s annual report in SW, Annual Report (1886), 170. Lawton’s official report of September 9, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGP 1883, roll 186, NARA.

  16. Telegrams, Miles to AAG MDP Presidio, Fort Apache, July 3, 7, 1886; Lamar to Endicott, July 10, 1886; both in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 184, NARA.

  17. Endorsement of July 7 on telegram of July 3, ibid.

  18. Morris E. Opler, “A Chiricahua Apache’s Account of the Geronimo Campaign of 1886,” New Mexico Historical Review 13 (October 1938): 371–73. The narrator is Sam Kenoi, a youth of eleven among the reservation Chiricahuas; his father was close to Noche, Kayitah, and Martine. Kraft, Gatewood and Geronimo, 133.

  19. Kraft, Gatewood and Geronimo, 114–15. Lt. Charles Gatewood and His Apache Wars Memoir, ed. Louis Kraft (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 122–24. Parker, Old Army Memories, 174.

  20. Parker, Old Army Memories, 174–76. Kraft, Gatewood and Geronimo, 138–39.

  CHAPTER 23. GERONIMO MEETS GATEWOOD, 1886

  1. This whole story, involving dozens of telegrams, is told in condensed form by both SW Endicott and Gen. Sheridan in their annual reports, November 30, October 10, SW, Annual Report (1886), 36–48, 69–78.

  2. A transcript of a July 26 meeting between Chatto and Secretary Endicott, kept by Capt. John G. Bourke, mostly concerns Chatto’s continuing preoccupation with the fate of his family in Mexico and efforts of the government to get them back: RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 187, NARA. Transcripts have not been found of the substantive exchanges. Telegram, AGUSA to CG MDM, Chicago, August 11, 1886; telegram, Dorst to AGUSA, Fort Leavenworth, August 14, 1886; telegram, Miles to AGUSA, Albuquerque, August 20, 1886; all in ibid., roll 184.

  3. Telegram, Cleveland to Acting SW R. C. Drum, Prospect House, NY, August 23, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 186, NARA. Like most top officials, the president escaped Washington’s summer heat by vacationing in more comfortable climes.

  4. Miles to Sheridan, Willcox, August 2, 1886; telegram, Miles to AGUSA, Willcox, August 6, 1886; telegram, Acting SW R. C. Drum to CG MDA, September 12, 1886; all in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 186, NARA. This telegram informs the commanding general, Division of the Atlantic, that General Terry in Chicago has been ordered to have Capt. Dorst escort the Chatto delegation directly to Florida. Fort Marion lay within the Atlantic Division.

  5. Notes of interview between Gen. George Crook and Chatto, Kayatena, Naiche, and other Chiricahua Apaches, George Wrattan interpreting, Mount Vernon Barracks, Alabama, January 20, 1890, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 191, NARA.

  6. Lawton to Mame, July 7, 1886, Lawton Papers. He continued this letter through July 14. Lawton’s official report to AG DA, September 9, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 186, NARA. Lane, Chasing Geronimo, entry of July 13, 1886, 69–72. In several ways, Lawton and Wood describe this event differently. I have chosen the Wood version, a journal, as the more reliable.

  7. Lawton to Mame, July 22, 1886, continued through July 25, 26, 27, 29, Lawton Papers.

  8. James Parker, Old Army Memories, 177. Lawton to Mame, August 1, 1886, continued through August 3, 4, 5, Lawton Papers.

  9. Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entries of August 3, 7, 88, 92. Kraft, Gatewood and Geronimo, 144–47. In his memoir, Gatewood does not mention the disagreement with Lawton; Gatewood Memoir, 127–28.

  10. Telegram, Howard to AGUSA, MDP Presidio, August 19, 1886, repeating telegram from Miles, August 18, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 184, NARA.

  11. Lawton to Mame, August 19, 1886, Lawton Papers. Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entry of August 19, 1886, 98.

  12. Lawton to Mame, San Bernardino River, August 2, 1886, Lawton Papers. Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entry of August 22, 1886, 99–100. Editor Jack Lane explains in a footnote (p. 136) that Wood failed in his journal to mention Lawton’s condition. Lane later reconstructed the story of that night from the papers of officers who were there.

  13. This paragraph has been assembled from bits of information included in the sources cited in note 12. See also telegram, Howard to AGUSA, MDP Presidio, August 24, 1886, repeating Miles telegram from Fort Huachuca, August 23; Miles to Lawton, n.p., August 25, 1886, Nelson A. Miles Papers, box 3, folder 6, US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA; New York Times, August 25, 1886, carrying Tombstone dispatch of August 24. Kraft, Gatewood and Geronimo, 149, 151–53. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 559–64, drawing on Mexican sources, traces Geronimo’s movements and raids leading to the Fronteras exchange.

  14. Kraft, Gatewood and Geronimo, 158–59. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 562. Robinson, Apache Voices, 51–52, quoting interview with Martine’s son George by Eve Ball. This includes testimony by Kanseah, who was there. Opler, “Chiricahua Apache’s Account,” 337–86. This is Sam Kenoi, who was never off the reservation but who grew up learning the details. He portrays Martine as a coward, lagging behind Kayitah and never reaching the top; Kanseah does not confirm this. This reflects an ongoing feud on the reservation between Martine and Kayitah factions. Kanseah related that Geronimo wanted to kill the two before they reached the top but was restrained by Yahnosha.

  15. I have relied on Kanseah for this dialogue, which may not be accurate but represents the essence of the exchange. Kanseah was there. See Robinson, Apache Voices, 51–52. Eve Ball, In the Days of Victorio, 185–87, gives a longer version and different dialogue but substantially the same as Kanseah.

  16. For the talks in the canebrake, I follow principally Kraft, Gatewood and Geronimo, chap. 12; and Gatewood Memoir, 134–35. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 563–65, details the meeting.

  CHAPTER 24. GERONIMO SURRENDERS, 1886

  1. Lawton to Mame, San Bernardino River, August 26 (continued into August 27), 1886, Lawton Papers. Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entry of August 26, 1886, 103.

  2. Thompson to Lawton, Fort Bowie, April 29, 1886; Lawton to Miles, San Bernardino, August 30, 1886; Miles to Lawton, Fort Bowie, August 31, 1886, M
iles Papers, box 3, folder A.

  3. Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entry of August 28, 1886, 104–6.

  4. Gatewood Memoir, 145–47. Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entry of August 28, 1886, 106–7.

  5. This entire sequence is documented by Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entries of August 29, 30, 31, 107–8; and Gatewood Memoir, 148–52.

  6. The ranch belonged to Texas cowman John Slaughter, whose ranch headquarters lay west of the San Bernardino River, at San Bernardino Springs, on the Mexican border. By 1886, with the Tombstone violence in the past, Slaughter was elected sheriff of Cochise County. San Bernardino is still a working ranch, open to the public as a historic site. It lies at the end of the “Geronimo Trail,” twenty-five miles east of Douglas, Arizona.

  7. Gatewood Memoir, 151. In his memoir, Gatewood slides over this incident, writing only that some of the officers talked of killing Geronimo. Editor Kraft, however, researched the matter in the Gatewood and other collections and found the testimony of other officers who were present. Wood, Chasing Geronimo, provides a daily chronicle of happenings, entries of August 30, 31, 1886, 107–8.

  8. Gatewood Memoir, 151–52.

  9. Who said what to whom and when differs from one participant and witness to another. In a sequence of lengthy reports, and in his autobiography, Miles describes long conversations. He had an interest, official and personal, in misrepresenting the exchange. Even Geronimo, in his autobiography, cannot be relied on. Other sources are vague. Secondary works draw on these sources and portray the surrender differently. I rely on Gatewood Memoir, 152–53; and Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entries of September 1–5, 1886, 109–10. My main reliance in the paragraphs that follow, however, is based on Geronimo’s more contemporary version in two documents: one is Geronimo, Naiche, and Mangas to Miles (written by George Wrattan), Fort Pickens, FL, April 17, 1887, Miles Papers, box 3, folder 4. The second is Brig. Gen. David S. Stanley to AGUSA, San Antonio, TX, October 27, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 186, NARA. Stanley commanded the Department of Texas. Because Naiche was present and had not surrendered, I infer that this explanation took place on September 4, a day after Geronimo gave in. As narrated later, Geronimo and his people were held in San Antonio while Miles argued with the president. When the decision had been made to send them on to Florida, Geronimo requested an interview with General Stanley. It is detailed, witnessed by two other officers, and interpreted by George Wrattan. Stanley stated that he believed the interview credible. I accept these documents as authoritative.