Title: Wild justice : the people of Geronimo vs. the United States /
Authors: Lieder, Michael.; Page, Jake.
Publisher: Random House,
Year: 1997
Subjects: United States. History.; Indians of North America Claims History.; Chiricahua Indians Legal status, laws, etc. History.
Abstract: In the long, anguished history of the American Indian, the events comprising the resistance of the Chiricahua Apaches against European encroachment and their subsequent punishment at the hands of the United States were the most heroic, violent, expensive ... and tragic. As settlers swarmed into the Southwest, the Apaches were forced off their ancestral lands. Led by the infamous warrior Geronimo and outnumbered by five hundred to one, a small group of renegade Apaches waged a fierce rebellion against the U.S. Army for more than a year. Finally surrendering in 1886, Geronimo and the rest of the Chiricahuas - including those who didn't participate in the insurrection and even those who actively assisted the Army - were held as prisoners of war for twenty-three years in far-off Florida, Alabama, and, later, Oklahoma.
Contents: Introduction -- Wild justice -- Imprisonment -- A tribunal for Indian claims -- Promised lands -- The Commission becomes a court -- The fall and rise of the imprisonment claim -- Land claims: fiction with a purpose -- An eleven-million-dollar mistake -- The return of the natives -- The death of fairness and honor -- Accounting for reservation management -- Distribution of the awards -- An end to wild justice -- Locations of unpublished materials