Geronimo - The Last Apache Holdout Geronimo - The Last Apache Holdout Geronimo was born of the Bedonkohe Apache tribe in No-doyohn Canon, Arizona , June, 1829, near present day Clifton , Arizona. The fourth in a family of four boys and four girls, he was called Goyathlay (One Who Yawns.) In 1846, when he was seventeen, he was admitted to the Council of the Warriors, which allowed him to marry. Soon, he received permission; married a woman named Alope, and the couple had three children. In the mid 1850s, the tribe, who was at peace with the Mexican towns and neighboring Indian tribes, traveled into Old Mexico where they could trade. Camping outside a Mexican town they called Kas-ki-yeh, they stayed for several days. Leaving a few warriors to guard the camp, the rest of the men went into town to trade. When they were returning from town, they were met by several women and children who told them that Mexican troops had attacked their camp. They returned to camp to find their guard warriors killed, and their horses, supplies and arms, gone.

Even worse, many of the women and children had been killed as well. Of those that lay dead were Goyathlayï¿½s wife, mother, and three children and as a result, he hated all Mexicans for the rest of his life. It was the slaughter of his family that turned him from a peaceful Indian into a bold warrior. Soon, he joined a fierce band of Apache known as Chiricahua and with them, took part in numerous raids in northern Mexico and across the border into U.S. territory which are now known as the states of New Mexico and Arizona. Geronimo in 1887, photo by Ben Wittick. This image available for photographic prints & downloads HERE! It was those Mexican adversaries that gave him the nickname of "Geronimo", the Spanish version of the name "Jerome". In ever increasing numbers, Geronimo fought against both Mexicans and white settlers as they began to colonize much of the Apache homelands. However, by the early 1870s, Lieutenant Colonel George F. Crook , commander of the Department of Arizona, had succeeded in establishing relative peace in the territory. The management of his successors, however, was disastrous.

In 1876 the U.S. government attempted to move the Chiricahua from their traditional home to the San Carlos Reservation, a barren wasteland in east-central Arizona, described as "Hell's Forty Acres." Deprived of traditional tribal rights, short on rations and homesick, they revolted. Spurred by Geronimo, hundreds of Apache left the reservation and fled to Mexico, soon resuming their war against the whites. Geronimo and his followers began ten years of intermittent raids against white settlements, alternating with periods of peaceful farming on the San Carlos reservation. In 1882, General George Crook was recalled to Arizona to conduct a campaign against the Apache. Geronimo surrendered in January 1884, but, spurred by rumors of impending trials and hangings, took flight from the San Carlos Reservation on May 17, 1885, accompanied by 35 warriors, and 109 other men, women and children. During this final campaign, at least 5,000 white soldiers and 500 Indian auxiliaries were employed at various times in the capture of Geronimo's small band.

Five months and 1,645 miles later, Geronimo was tracked to his camp in Mexico's Sonora Mountains. Jimmy "Santiago" McKinn in Geronimo's Camp, with group of Chiricahua Apache boys, 1886, photo by C.S. Fly This image available for photographic prints and downloads HERE! Exhausted, and hopelessly out numbered, Geronimo surrendered on March 27, 1886 at Caï¿½on de Los Embudos in Sonora, Mexico. His band consisted of a handful of warriors, women, and children. Also found was a young white boy named Jimmy "Santiago" McKinn , that the Indians had kidnapped some six months earlier in September. The "rescued" boy had become so assimilated to the Apache lifestyle, he cried when he was forced to return to his parents. Also traveling with General Crook was the photographer, C.S. Fly of Tombstone fame. After the bands capture, he was able to take some of the most famous photographs in U.S. history . The soldiers gathered the group and began the trek to Fort Bowie , Arizona .

However, near the border, Geronimo, fearing that they would be murdered once they crossed into U.S. territory, bolted with Chief Naiche , 11 warriors, and a few women and boys, who were able to escape back into the Sierra Madra. As a result, Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles replaced Crook as commander on April 2, 1886. At a conference on September 3, 1886, at Skeleton Canyon in Arizona, General Miles induced Geronimo to surrender once again, promising him that, after an indefinite exile in Florida, he and his followers would be permitted to return to Arizona. The promise was never kept. Geronimo and his fellow prisoners were shipped by box-car to Florida for imprisonment and put to hard labor. It was May 1887 before he saw his family. Several years later, in 1894, he was moved to Fort Sill in Oklahoma Territory where he attempted to "fit in.ï¿½ He farmed and joined the Dutch Reformed Church, which expelled him because of his inability to resist gambling.

As years passed, stories of Geronimo's warrior ferocity made him into a legend that fascinated non-Indians and Indians alike. As a result, he appeared at numerous fairs, selling souvenirs and photographs of himself. In 1905 he was quite the sensation when he appeared in President Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural parade. Geronimo dictated his memoirs, published in 1906 as Geronimo's Story of His Life. Never having seen his homeland of Arizona again, Geronimo died of pneumonia on February 17, 1909 and was buried in the Apache cemetery at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Geronimo and the end of the Indian wars Issue 63 of INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM JOURNAL Published Summer 1994 Copyright © International Socialism Geronimo and the end of the Indian wars A review of A Debo, Geronimo: the man, his time, his place (Pimlico 1993) �10 PETER MORGAN For three centuries the Apaches had dominated the south west of America striking fear into surrounding Indian tribes, the Spanish colonialists in Mexico and, in the late 19th century, the American ruling class.

The news that the Apache wars had ended following the surrender of the Apache chief Geronimo on 5 September 1886 was celebrated throughout America. It brought to an end an era of violence, greed and exploitation by the American ruling class as they fought to deal with the 'problem' of the American Indians. Then came the myth of the American West--the stories of mountain men and fur traders, the pioneers and cowboys who fought against the odds, the harsh climate, the rough terrain and the murderous Indians. Geronimo supposedly symbolised the dark, violent nature of an uncivilised creature. To secure the final surrender of Geronimo and his band of 16 warriors, 14 women and six children, the American army was forced to use 5,000 troops--a fifth of its entire regular army--a network of heliograph stations flashing messages from mountain to mountain, and over 100 renegade Apache scouts to chase and hound Geronimo and his followers into submission. It brought to an end the Apache wars which had cost the American government over $1 million per annum.

This book by Angie Debo, first published in the US in 1976 and now updated and reprinted in Britain, is a detailed and sympathetic account of the life of one of America's great fighters, his relationship to other members of the Apache tribes and his fight against a ruling class that was prepared to spare no expense to conquer the American West and finally put an end to the resistance of the American Indians. 1 American policy towards the Indians during the 19th century was violent and unyielding. In 1829 Andrew Jackson took office as President of the United States. Known as 'Sharp Knife' by the Indians, he had a frontier career and was involved in the deaths of thousands of Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks and Seminole Indians. The Cherokees were one of the most advanced of the Indian tribes. They owned fertile land, ran 22,000 cattle and 7,200 horses. They had an alphabet, read books and published a newspaper, The Phoenix, until it was suppressed by whites. They also had a constitution--the only one possessed by an Indian nation. And they lived in log cabins and frame houses, not tents.

'Sharp Knife' faced the problem that the Southern tribes were too numerous and clung stubbornly to their tribal lands. He was convinced that the white man and the Indians could not live side by side, and so he proposed that all Indians be moved westwards beyond the Mississippi. In 1830 the Indian Removal Act was passed, followed in 1834 with an Act to Regulate Trade and Intercourse with the Indian Tribes and to Preserve Peace on the Frontiers which declared that everywhere west of the Mississippi 'and not within the states of Missouri and Louisiana' would be Indian country. But before the new laws could be put into effect a new wave of white settlers swept westwards and the 'permanent frontier' was moved from the Mississippi to the 95th meridian. To maintain this policy and keep the Indians beyond the 95th meridian a series of military posts were established. The 'permanent frontier' proved to be a myth--the Americans fought a bloody war with Mexico that ended in 1847 with soldiers marching westward and resulted in the capture of vast areas of land reaching from Texas to California.

The discovery of gold in California in 1848 led to an eruption of the American-Indian wars, even though most of the Indians were at the time fairly peaceful. Thousands of white Americans were looking for a quick fortune and ignoring boundaries that were meant to keep them and the Indians apart. Prospectors looking for copper mines were often violent and lawless with no respect for the Indian lands they were invading: 'The number of Indians dropped from 100,000 in 1846 to barely 30,000 in 1851 when the Governor of California predicted--practically preached--a war of extermination against them.' 2 Although shooting of the Indians on sight was common, the majority were killed by disease, especially malaria, cholera and smallpox. Debo goes into some detail about the early Apache-American relations which were dominated by the emerging American capitalist class ripping treaties apart, reneging on promises and often brutally murdering those who stood in their way. By 1870 the American government's solution to the Indian 'problem' was to establish reservations for those remaining--even if that meant they were forcibly removed from areas they had occupied for hundreds of years.

The Cherokee nation was destroyed in this way. Rounded up and held in camps, they were forced to march westward hundreds of miles--called the 'Trek of Tears'. One in four died of hunger, cold and starvation. By 1871 Congress believed the way to 'promote peace and civilisation' with the Apaches was to remove them to various designated reservations. It was a policy that a number of the Apache leaders--Mangas Colorado, Cochise, Victorio, Nana and Geronimo--opposed with such determination. Debo concludes that it was government policy to prolong the Apache-American wars: The US Indian office began to carry out a concentration policy so recommended by planners and theorists. This cruel and stupid uprooting of barely tamed hostiles, so recently guaranteed a settled homeland 'forever', was to bring about 11 more years of Apache wars with the most arduous military campaign in American history, the death of hundreds of civilians in the United States and Mexico, and damage and suffering without reckoning to the Apaches. As a direct result, Geronimo became a 'renegade' and his career from this time on becomes an epic of the Southwest.

3 The Apaches were forced into the overcrowded and archaic conditions at the San Carlos reservation. Debo shows how the army used a combination of threats and bribes to ensure that all the Indians moved to the reservation. Geronimo had fled the round-up of Apaches and was raiding Mexicans, stealing horses, mules and cattle in Sonora and driving them to New Mexico to sell them. The US and Mexican government signed an agreement permitting soldiers of each country to cross the border in pursuit of hostile Apaches and by 1877 Geronimo was caught and forced onto the San Carlos reservation. Conditions on the reservations were chaotic. One army officer describes it as: A most undesirable hardship post... rain was so infrequent that it took on a semblance of a phenomenon when it came at all. Almost continuously dry, hot dust-and-gravel-laden-winds swept the plain, denuding it of all vestige of vegetation. In summer a temperature of 110 in the shade was cool weather. At all other times of the year flies, gnats, unnameable bugs... swarmed in their millions.

4 The Apaches were starving, poorly clothed, suffering from smallpox and malaria, longing for their mountain homeland. Some 4,000 were crowded onto land that originally had been the home for only 800 Apaches. Forced to farm, they were angry and resentful. Some had to walk 20 miles to get supplies. If old people or children were unable to come they would get no rations. The local Arizonans saw the reservations as nothing other than feeding stations for the Indians who would then go out and raid again. The attitude of the local Arizonan paper to the Chiricahua Indians--the tribe to which Geronimo belonged--was expressed vividly in April 1876: '...the kind of war needed for the Chiricahua Apaches is steady, unrelenting, hopeless, and undiscriminating war, slaying men, women and children...

until every valley, crest, crag and fastness shall send to high heaven the grateful incense of festering and rotting Chiricahuas.' 5 Under such conditions and hostility, with the Apaches fearing the very existence of their tribe, it was no surprise that there were frequent break-outs from the San Carlos reservation. In 1877 the chief of the Warm Springs Apaches, Victorio, forced a break-out of the reservation and led his band to establish a stronghold in Mexico. He, like many of the Apache warriors, was convinced that the US government wanted to wipe out the Apache tribe. Before the end of 1879 he had a warrior band of 200 Mescaleros and Chiricahua Indians. The US government placed a reward of $3,000 on his head, and in October 1880 Victorio and 78 other Apaches were slaughtered by the US army. Geronimo was greatly influenced by Victorio and was convinced that the only salvation for his people lay in breaking from the harsh life on the reservations.

Although Debo's book covers the whole of Geronimo's life it is his last stand against the US army that is by far the most absorbing part. The Apaches had developed a sophisticated method of warfare and Geronimo was their best fighter. In May 1885 Geronimo led an escape from San Carlos that was to lead to the final showdown with the US army. His reasons for fleeing, beside the appalling conditions the Apaches had to suffer, were given later by Geronimo on his final arrest: I want to talk of the causes which led me to leave the reservation. I was living quietly doing and thinking of no harm while at the White Mountains... I hadn't killed a horse or man, American or Indian. I don't know what was the matter with the people in charge of us... I learned from the American and Apache soldiers [scouts] that the Americans were going to arrest me and hang me, so I left... I have asked several times for peace but trouble has come... Whenever I have broken out, it has always been on account of bad talk.

6 The Apache warriors, Geronimo, Mangas, Chircahua and Nana, fled San Carlos with 92 women and children and 34 other warriors. The local newspapers had an interest in playing up the threat of the Apaches. The local group of Arizonan merchants--known as the 'Tucson Ring'--had much to gain from the Apache fear. The influx of troops into the area brought money and profits to the local merchants, and the name of Geronimo became the cry for blood. The orders from Washington however were explicit: kill the fugitives or take their unconditional surrender. The US army had recently undergone drastic changes. In 1866 Congress ordered the reduction of the regular army, and by the mid-1870s it had only 24,000 enlisted men and officers. The average age of the army volunteer was 23--many were recent immigrants escaping unemployment and financial hardship. Their equipment was old and obsolete as Congress had ordered that the army exhaust civil war surpluses before ordering new material. The army was under strength to fight the Indian wars. 7 They faced a group of warriors who had developed a more sophisticated attitude to warfare.

Geronimo understood the telegraph wire system and how to disrupt it (by cutting a small section of wire and replacing it with twine which would take days to detect). They had field glasses and revolvers that were better than those supplied to the American soldiers: With his modern arms and newly acquired knowledge, he [Geronimo] had become a near-even match for the troops. In ambushes he no longer fled so swiftly after the first blow to escape superior fire-power; now he would stand his ground and make the soldiers retreat. 8 The army campaign was headed by General George Crook. In Arizona in pursuit of Geronimo's band Crook understood that only an army capable of rapid pursuit could cope. Thus he forced his troops to operate in small mobile units, using Apache trackers. At this stage, in the early part of the campaign to secure the capture of Geronimo, the army had 2,000 troops involved in the hunt. Geronimo was aware of the determination of the army and decided to meet Crook to discuss terms of surrender on 25 March 1886, a few miles south of the Mexican border at Canon de los Embudos.

Following two days of speech making Crook accepted the surrender of Geronimo on the basis that his band would face two years imprisonment in the East (at Florida) before they could return to their Arizona homeland. It appeared as though the Apache wars were to end with the final capture of the most hostile Apache chief. But at the last minute the American government changed the terms of surrender. They ordered Crook: 'We cannot assent to the surrender of the hostiles on the terms of their imprisonment East for two years on the understanding of their return to the reservation'. The government was determined to end the war with the Apaches by removing them from Arizona for good, effectively liquidating them. Upon hearing this news--and with the Tucson Ring promoting the belief that he would be hung by the American government--Geronimo took flight for the final time. He was accompanied by Nachez, 19 other warriors, 13 squaws and six children. This proved to be the last stand Geronimo made against the US army. Crook resigned and was replaced by General Miles for the final assault against the Apaches. Miles was a military man through and through.

At the age of 17 he had studied the military tactics of Napoleon in his spare time whilst working as a clerk. He had been involved in Plains Indian fighting during 1874-75, faced the Kiowas, Comanches and Cheyenne Indians and fought in the Sioux wars. In 1886 he came to Arizona determined to gain glory and seek promotion. At his disposal he now had 5,000 men, a fifth of the US army, to fight 38 Apaches. They, with Geronimo as their leader, went to the hills of the American-Mexican border at Sonora and disappeared. Whilst in hiding Geronimo struck at points around Sonora and raided at will, even around Fort Apaches and San Carlos. His account of this final violent flight is recorded by Debo: ... we finally decided to break into small bands. With six men and four women I made for the range mountains near Hot Springs [Warm Springs], New Mexico... We ranged in the mountains of New Mexico for some time, then thinking perhaps the troops had left Mexico, we returned. On our return through Old Mexico we attacked every Mexican found, even if for no reason than to kill.

We believed they had asked the United States troops to come down to Mexico to fight us... We were reckless with our lives, because we felt that every man's hands was against us. If we returned to the reservation we would be put in prison and killed; if we stayed in Mexico they would continue to send soldiers to fight us; so we gave no quarter to anyone and asked no favours. 9 The Indians had been forced into these desperate measures, as Debo makes clear: The killings on the American side of the border were a necessary part of the raiding. The raiders killed to obtain supplies, and killed every person they met to prevent his reporting their presence. 10 In July 1886 Miles heard that Geronimo was negotiating with the Mexican government with a view to surrender. The army's campaign was beginning to wear down the resilience of the Indians. Miles, determined to gain glory from the campaign, ordered his lieutenant in the field, Gatewood, to track Geronimo down, force his unconditional surrender, or kill him. There still remained the 'problem' of the remaining 434 Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apaches who were technically prisoners of war on the San Carlos reservation.

Fearing a breakout to join Geronimo's band, Miles wanted them removed at least 1,000 miles away from the mountains of Arizona. Ironically, the Tucson Ring--who had screamed at every Apache outbreak and Indian attack--opposed the removal of the Indians. They were worried that thousands of soldiers (and therefore their money) would leave the area. In 1886, however, the remaining 434 Indians were forced aboard cattle trains. The windows were barred up and, suffering in the intense September heat, they were forcibly removed to Florida. It was a journey, Debo argues, that caused further suffering to the Apache Indians: The Apaches were a clean living people, accustomed to breathe pure mountain air, bathing in clear streams, and frequently changing their campsites. It is possible that the tubercular infection that was to decimate them during their captivity began on this journey. If there was any source of contamination on the train, all were exposed. 11 By the end of 1886 Gatewood and his troops eventually cornered Geronimo and his 24 warriors.

With nowhere else to hide, with other sections of the army moving in and with supplies depleted they were forced into a final surrender. Geronimo was distraught to hear the news that the rest of his people had been forcibly removed from Arizona and sent to Florida. Respect for leading warriors such as Geronimo was apparent but no decisions were taken about the final surrender without also consulting others in the group. Debo recounts how the final surrender gave some idea of Apache decision making: The deadly seriousness of the band was apparent throughout their conferences with Gatewood; they well knew that everything in their lives hung on the issue. And the deliberations of these 24 wild warriors in a mountain hideout indicate the strength and stability of the Apache institutions. There was a democratic manner of reaching decisions, and the influence, but never the despotic power of their leaders. Everytime Geronimo spoke to Gatewood, he expressed a conclusion that had been reached in Council. 12 The final surrender of Geronimo was completed on 4 September 1886. As America celebrated at the end of the Apache wars, Geronimo and the Apache Indians were on their way to 27 years of captivity.

No sooner had Geronimo departed Arizona than the fight began to secure whatever glory and promotion might be had. General Miles sought recognition and advancement and took personal credit for persuading Geronimo to surrender, claiming that his strategy of hot pursuit had tired the Apache chief into eventual submission. In recognition of his services in the Indian campaigns, Miles was appointed commanding general of the US army in 1895. Lieutenant Gatewood, who eventually forced the surrender of Geronimo, was virtually ignored. There was no glory for Geronimo. He became a prisoner of war in Fort Pickens, Florida, where the conditions were poor and the Apaches suffered from an unfamiliar climate. Many of them died from diseases such as turberculosis and meningitis. Debo shows how Geronimo frequently suffered as a result of the deaths of those close to him: Geronimo's travels were marked by the graves, or in some cases by the mutilated corpses of members of his family.

First, he buried his father in peace near the quiet headwaters of the Gila; next, through the violent years, the bodies of his mother, wives and children were strewn along his bloody trails through Old Mexico and Arizona; then there were the graves of his little girl at Saint Augistine and his wife at Pensacula; and the son upon whom he had set his hopes lay buried in the cemetery at Mobile. And he himself was bound for a last resting place where other graves would surround his own in the prisoners' cemetery at Fort Sill. 13 Although Debo's account of Geronimo's life is one of the best you will find on one of the greatest Indian chiefs, the narrative sometimes get lost in the wealth of detail she provides, and she does concentrate specifically on the Apache Indians. A more general account, and by far the best book on the history of the American Indians and their fight for survival, is Dee Brown's Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee which exposes the brutality of the American ruling class towards the American Indians during the second half of the 19th century. But Debo doesn't glorify traditional Apache life. Their lives were insecure and they were frequently forced to move to seek food.

It was a precarious life often filled with much suffering. They were constantly at war with other Indians and the Mexicans. The expansion of the American frontier proved to be an enemy they could not defeat. Geronimo's final years were far removed from his earlier life. He became a showman and an exhibit--attending the Omaha and Buffalo expositions and the St Louis World Fair as an attraction. He rode in President Roosevelt's inaugural parade in 1905 and in Pawnee Bill's Wild West show in 1908. Geronimo gloried in his reputation, but he never missed an opportunity to plead to return with his people to Arizona. After riding in Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural parade, Geronimo met the president to appeal for the remaining Apaches to return to their land in Arizona: I ask you to think of me as I was then... when the soldiers of the great White Chief drove me and my people from our home we went to the mountains. When they followed we slew all that we could. We said we would never be captured. No. We starved but we killed. I said that we would never yield, for I was a fool. So I was punished, and all my people were punished with me.

The white soldiers took me and made me a prisoner far from my own country... Great Father, other Indians have homes where they can live and be happy. I and my people have no homes. The place where we are kept is bad for us... We are sick there and die... Great Father, my hands are tied as with a rope. My heart is no longer bad. I will tell my people to obey no chief but the Great White Chief. I pray you to cut the ropes and make me free. Let me die in my own country, as an old man who has been punished enough and is free. 14 Roosevelt refused his request to return home and Geronimo died of pneumonia, a prisoner of war, on 17 February 1909. The legacy of the Geronimo campaign worried the American government despite the fact that the resistance of the Apaches had been broken. The army refused permission for Geronimo to tell his own story in his old age. It was only after prolonged appeals directly to the president that permission was eventually granted. But Geronimo should be remembered as a fighter--the last of the Apache chiefs who forced the American army to fight its most intense mililtary campaign of the Indian wars.

Notes A Debo, Geronimo: the man, his time, his place (London, 1993). R Dillon, North American Indian Wars (Magna Books, 1983), p105. A Debo, op cit, p94. Quoted in D Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (Vintage, 1991). A Debo, op cit, p97. Ibid, p257. O Faulk, The Geronimo Campaign (Oxford University Press, 1969). Ibid, p24. A Debo, op cit, p270. Ibid. Apache Apache ▼ Primary Sources ▼ Apache Apaches were nomadic tribes living in Arizona and New Mexico. The name comes from the Zuni word apachu (enemy). They travelled in small raiding bands or clans and lived in brush shelters called wickyups. There were six main tribal divisions: Jicarilla, Mescalero, Chircahua, Mimbrenos, San Carlos and Coyotero. There was little tribal solidarity and they did most of their fighting in small groups.

On 27th January, 1861, a group of Apaches led by Chatto stole cattle and kidnapped a boy from a Sonoita Valley ranch. Second Lieutenant George Bascom was sent out with 54 soldiers to recover the boy. Cochise met Bascom and told him that he would try to recover the boy. Bascom rejected the offer and instead tried to take Cochise hostage. When he tried to flee he was shot at by the soldiers. The wounded Cochise now gave orders for the execution of four white men being held in captivity. In retaliation six Apaches were hanged. Open warfare now broke out and during the next 60 days 150 white people were killed and five stage stations destroyed. Mangas Coloradas and Cochise killed five people during an attack on a stage at Stein's Peak, New Mexico. In July, 1861 a war party murdered six white people travelling on a stage coach at Cooke's Canyon. On 14th July, 1862 Mangas Coloradas , Juh , Victorio , Geronimo and Cochise took part in the attack at Apache Pass.

The Apaches also attacked stage coaches and in 1869 killed a Texas cowboy and stole 250 cattle. Cochise and his men were pursued but after a fight near Fort Bowie the soldiers were forced to retreat. Geronimo , the leader of the Chiricahua in Arizona, went on the warpath when in 1876 the American government ordered them from their mountain homeland to the San Carlos Reservation . Geronimo refused to go and over the next few years he led a small band of warriors that raided settlements in Arizona. Geronimo also attacked American troops in the Whetstone Mountains, Arizona, on 9th January, 1877. This was followed by a rare defeat in the Leitendorf Mountains. Mattie Tom Geronimo was captured when entering the Ojo Caliente Reservation in New Mexico. Geronimo was eventually released and by April 1878 he was leading war parties in Mexico. The following year Geronimo surrendered and settled on the San Carlos Reservation. On 21st August, 1879, Victorio took his people to the Black Range mountains. He fought off an attempt to arrest him by Major Albert Morrow.

He then moved east and ambushed Mexican militia killing around 30 men. With the help of Apache scouts the army traced him in the Black Mountains. However, he once again escaped and by August 1880 was launching further attacks in West Texas. On 15th October, 1880, Lieutenant Colonel Joaquin Terrazas finally ambushed Victorio and his men in the Tres Castillos Mountains in Chihuahua. Victorio and 77 other Apaches were killed in the fighting. In 1881 Juh and Geronimo and their people left the reservation and headed for the Sierra Madre. In 1882 they carried out their most ambitious raid of all when they attacked San Carlos. After the death of Juh, Geronimo became the leader of the Apache warriors still resisting white settlement. He continued to carry out raids until he took part in peace talks with General George Crook . Crook was criticized for the way he was dealing with the situation and as a result he asked to be relieved of his command. General Nelson Miles replaced Crook and attempted to defeat Geronimo by military means.

This strategy was also unsuccessful and eventually he resorting to Crook's strategy of offering a negotiated deal. In September 1886 Geronimo signed a peace treaty with Miles and the last of the Indian Wars was over. Geronimo and Apaches in 1886 Primary Sources (1) Nelson Miles , Personal Recollections and Observations (1896) The Apaches believed themselves to be the first and superior race. In some respects they were superior. They excelled in activity, cunning, endurance, and cruelty. The stories of the feats of men running a hundred miles in a day come down to us from the days of Coronado and from the old officers of the army who were formerly stationed in that country. Their lung power enabled them to start at the base of a mountain and run to the summit without stopping. An account of their atrocities and raids would fill a volume. Once numerous and powerful, by almost constant warfare they have become greatly reduced in numbers.

They had an abundance of arms and ammunition, for they not only raided and plundered stores, ranches, and freight trains, but they could completely conceal themselves with grass, brush, and feathers, and lie in ambush in ravines near the trail, so that the prospector, miner, ranchman, or traveler would never observe them until he felt the deadly bullet from their rifles. In this way they kept themselves well supplied with whatever they required. Their endurance was most extraordinary. When hard pushed and driven to the higher peaks of the mountains they could subsist on field-mice and the juice of the giant cactus. They would go to their reservations and agencies for a time to replenish their wants and recruit their members; then return to the warpath. Their docility and meekness while peaceable was only excelled by their ferocity and cruelty when at war. For a few weeks or months they would be "horny-handed sons of toil," and then for an equal time they would be red-handed assassins and marauders. They were at times composed of the Yumas, Mojaves, White Mountains, and Chiricahuas, the last named being the dominant and most warlike tribe.

Theyinhabited the most rugged and inaccessible regions of the Rocky and Sierra Madre mountains. When pursued they would steal horses in one valley, ride until they exhausted them, and then destroy or abandon them, travel on foot over the mountains, descend and raid another valley, and continue this course until they felt themselves free from their pursuers. They recognized no authority or force superior to their own will. Led by Mangus-Colorado, Cochise, Victorio, and later by Geronimo, Natchez, Chatto, and Mangus, they kept the whole country in a state of terror. (2) Pat Garrett , The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid (1882) The Mescalero Apache Indians, from the Fort Stanton, New Mexico, Reservation, used to make frequent raids into Old Mexico, and often attacked emigrants along the Rio Grande. On one occasion, a party from Texas, consisting of three men and their families, on their way to Arizona, came across Billy and Jess. in the vicinity of the Rio Miembres.

They took dinner together and the Texans volunteered much advice to the two unsophisticated boys, representing the danger they braved by travelling unprotected through an Indian country, and proposing that they should pursue their journey in company. They represented themselves as old and experienced Indian fighters, who had, in Texas, scored their hundreds of dead Comanches, Kickapoos, and Lipans. The boys declined awaiting the slow motion of ox wagons, and after dinner, rode on. (3) Captain John G. Bourke served under General George Crook . In 1891 he wrote about an event that took place on 28th December, 1872. We moved onward again for three or four hours until we reached a small grassy glade, where we discovered fifteen Pima ponies, which must have been driven up the mountain by Apache raiders that very night; the sweat was hardly crusted on their flanks, their hoofs were banged against the rocks, and their knees were full of the thorns of the cholla cactus, against which they had been driven in the dark.

There was no moon, but the glint of stars gave enough light to show that we were in a country filled with huge rocks and adapted most admirably for defense. There in front, almost within touch of the hand, that line of blackness blacker than all the other blackness about us was the canyon of the Salt River. We looked at it well, since it might be our grave in an hour, for we were now within rifle shot of our quarry. Nantaje (an Apache scout) now asked that a dozen picked men be sent forward with him, to climb down the face of the precipice and get into place in front of the cave in order to open the attack; immediately behind them should come fifty more, who should make no delay in their advance; a strong detachment should hold the edge of the precipice to prevent any of the hostiles from getting above them and killing our people with their rifles. The rest of our force could come down more at leisure, if the movement of the first two detachments secured the key of the field; if not, they could cover the retreat of the survivors up the face of the escarpment. Lieutenant William J.

Ross, of the 2Ist Infantry, was assigned to lead the first detachment, which contained the best shots from among the soldiers, packers, and scouts. The second detachment came under my own orders. Our pioneer party slipped down the face of the precipice without accident, following a trail from which an incautious step would have caused them to be dashed to pieces; after a couple of hundred yards this brought them face to face with the cave, and not two hundred feet from it. In front of the cave was the party of raiders, just returned from their successful trip of killing and robbing in the settlements near Florence, on the Gila River. They were dancing to keep themselves warm and to express their joy over their safe return. Half a dozen or more of the squaws had arisen from their slumbers and were bending over a fire and hurriedly preparing refreshments for their valorous kinsmen. The fitful gleam of the glowing flame gave a Macbethian tinge to the weird scene and brought into bold relief the grim outlines of the cliffs between whose steep walls, hundreds of feet below, growled the rushing current of the swift Salado.

The Indians, men and women, were in high good humor, and why should they not be? Sheltered in the bosom of these grim precipices only the eagle, the hawk, the turkey buzzard, or the mountain sheep could venture to intrude upon them. But hark! What is that noise? Can it be the breeze of morning which sounds 'Click, click'? You will know in one second more, poor, deluded, red-skinned wretches, when the 'Bang! Boom!' of rifles and carbines, reverberating like the roar of cannon from peak to peak, shall lay six of your number dead in the dust. The cold, gray dawn of that chill December morning was sending its first rays above the horizon and looking down upon one of the worst bands of Apaches in Arizona, caught like wolves in a trap. They rejected with scorn our summons to surrender, and defiantly shrieked that not one of our party should escape from that canyon. We heard their death song chanted, and then out of the cave and over the great pile of rock which protected the entrance like a parapet swarmed the warriors. But we outnumbered them three to one, and poured in lead by the bucketful.

The bullets, striking the roof and mouth of the cave, glanced among the savages in the rear of the parapet and wounded some of the women and children, whose wails filled the air. During the heaviest part of the firing a little boy, not more than four years old, absolutely naked, ran out at the side of the parapet and stood dumfounded between the two fires. Nantaje, without a moment's pause, rushed forward, grasped the trembling infant by the arm, and escaped unhurt with him inside our lines. A bullet, probably deflected from the rocks, had struck the boy on the top of the head and plowed round to the back of the neck, leaving a welt an eighth of an inch thick, but not injuring him seriously. Our men suspended their firing to cheer Nantaje and welcome the new arrival: such is the inconsistency of human nature. Again the Apaches were summoned to surrender, or, if they would not do that, to let such of their women and children as so desired pass out between the lines; and again they yelled their defiant refusal. Their end had come.

The detachment left by Major Brown at the top of the precipice, to protect our retreat in case of necessity, had worked its way over to a high shelf of rock overlooking the enemy beneath, and began to tumble down great boulders which speedily crushed the greater number of the Apaches. The Indians on the San Carlos reservation still mourn periodically for the seventy-six of their relatives who yielded up the ghost that morning. Every warrior died at his post. The women and children had hidden themselves in the inner recesses of the cave, which was of no great depth, and were captured and taken to Camp McDowell. A number of them had been struck by glancing bullets or fragments of failing rock. As soon as our pack-trains could be brought up we mounted the captives on our horses and mules and started for the nearest military station, the one just named, over fifty miles away." (4) Nelson Lee , Three Years Among the Comanches (1859) From the position I occupied I had a fair, unobstructed view of the battle. It was fierce and terrible.

The horses reared, and plunged, and fell upon each other, their riders dealing blow for blow, and thrust for thrust, some falling from their saddles to the ground, and others trampling madly over them. The Comanches outnumbered the enemy; nevertheless, they were forced to retreat, falling back down the hill almost to my position; but still they were not pursued, the Apaches appearing to be content to hold possession of the ground. Soon, the tribe of the Spotted Leopard again rallied and dashed once more to the attack. If possible, this contest was severer, as it was longer than the first. Again the fierce blow was given and returned; again horses and men intermingled in the melee - stumbled, fell, and rolled upon the ground, while the wide heavens resounded with their hideous shrieks and cries. My blood thrilled through my veins as I looked upon the scene. I had mingled in encounters fierce even as that, but never before in the midst of the hottest fight was I overcome with such a sense of terror. To be an inactive spectator of a battle is far more painful than to be a participator in it.

I hoped devoutly during the engagement that the Comanches would be beaten, being impressed with the belief that if I should fall into the enemies' hands, my chances of escape would be increased, for I had often heard that the Apaches, though a most warlike nation, were more merciful to prisoners than others of their race. But in this I was disappointed. The Apaches at length gave way, disappearing beyond the ridge. Instead of pursuing their advantage, however, the Comanches hastily gathered up their dead and retreated towards the mountains we had crossed. (5) Lieutenant Kennon recorded in his diary a meeting between General George Crook and Chatto (2nd January, 1890) We reached the little station of Mount Vernon just before 8 a.m. Country poor, sandy and a growth of small pine. A road took us up to the barracks. An ambulance happened to be at the station, and a sergeant, who resented our getting in until he found out that the 'old gentleman' was General Crook. The approach to the Barracks, with great green trees on either side was very pretty. The post is walled in by a wall from 12 to 16 feet high, without flanking arrangements.

It is situated on a knoll, and above the 'backwater' of the Tombigbee. We drove direct to the CO's house, rang, and were admitted. No one but the servant was up. Soon Mrs. Kellogg came down, and later the Colonel. There was also a daughter or niece. They were not expecting us. Did not know we were coming, apologized, etc., which was not necessary. A young Indian with long, black hair saw the General, and before we had finished breakfast. Chihuahua was outside, waiting. He seemed overjoyed to see the General. Kaetena joined him, and we walked over to the Indian village, which was just outside the gate of the fort. They live in little log cabins which had been built for them. At the gate was a considerable number of Indians waiting for us. Chatto came out, and went up to the General, and gave him a greeting that was really tender. He took him by the hand, and with his other made a motion as if to clasp him about the neck. It was as if he would express his joy, but feared to take such a liberty. It was a touching sight.

The Apaches crowded about the General, shaking hands, and laughing in their delight. The news spread that he was there, and those about us shouted to those in the distance, and from all points they came running in until we had a train of them moving with us. American-Indian Wars - Native American History - HISTORY.com Google American-Indian Wars Warfare between Europeans and Indians was common in the seventeenth century. In 1622, the Powhatan Confederacy nearly wiped out the struggling Jamestown colony. Frustrated at the continuing conflicts, Nathaniel Bacon and a group of vigilantes destroyed the Pamunkey Indians before leading an unsuccessful revolt against colonial authorities in 1676. Intermittent warfare also plagued early Dutch colonies in New York . In New England, Puritan forces annihilated the Pequots in 1636-1637, a campaign whose intensity seemed to foreshadow the future. Subsequent attacks inspired by Metacom (King Philip) against English settlements sparked a concerted response from the New England Confederation.

Employing Indian auxiliaries and a scorched-earth policy, the colonists nearly exterminated the Narragansetts, Wampanoags, and Nipmucks in 1675-1676. A major Pueblo revolt also threatened Spanish-held New Mexico in 1680. Did You Know? On November 29, 1864, one of the most infamous events of the American-Indian wars occured when 650 Colorado volunteer forces attacked a Cheyenne and Arapho encampent along Sand Creek. Although they had already begun topeace negotiationswith the U.S. government, more than 150 Native Americans were killed and mutilated, more than 2/3 of which were women and children. Indians were also a key factor in the imperial rivalries among France, Spain, and England. In King William’s (1689-1697), Queen Anne’s (1702-1713), and King George’s (1744-1748) wars, the French sponsored Abnaki and Mohawk raids against the more numerous English.

Meanwhile, the English and their trading partners, the Chickasaws and often the Cherokees, battled the French and associated tribes for control of the lower Mississippi River valley and the Spanish in western Florida . More decisive was the French and Indian War (1754-1763). The French and their Indian allies dominated the conflict’s early stages, turning back several English columns in the north. Particularly serious was the near-annihilation of Gen. Edward Braddock’s force of thirteen hundred men outside of Fort Duquesne in 1755. But with English minister William Pitt infusing new life into the war effort, British regulars and provincial militias overwhelmed the French and absorbed all of Canada. But eighteenth-century conflicts were not limited to the European wars for empire. In Virginia and the Carolinas, English-speaking colonists pushed aside the Tuscaroras, the Yamasees, and the Cherokees. The Natchez, Chick asaw, and Fox Indians resisted French domination, and the Apaches and Comanches fought against Spanish expansion into Texas . In 1763, an Ottawa chief, Pontiac, forged a powerful confederation against British expansion into the Old Northwest.

Although his raids wreaked havoc upon the surrounding white settlements, the British victory in the French and Indian War combined with the Proclamation of 1763 , which forbade settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, soon eroded Pontiac’s support. Most of the Indians east of the Mississippi River now perceived the colonial pioneers as a greater threat than the British government. Thus northern tribes, especially those influenced by Mohawk chief Thayendanegea (Joseph Brant), generally sided with the Crown during the American War for Independence. In 1777, they joined the Tories and the British in the unsuccessful offensives of John Burgoyne and Barry St. Leger in upstate New York. Western Pennsylvania and New York became savage battlegrounds as the conflict spread to the Wyoming and Cherry valleys. Strong American forces finally penetrated the heart of Iroquois territory, leaving a wide swath of destruction in their wake. In the Midwest, George Rogers Clark captured strategic Vincennes for the Americans, but British agents based at Detroit continued to sponsor Tory and Indian forays as far south as Kentucky .

The Americans resumed the initiative in 1782, when Clark marched northwest into Shawnee and Delaware country, ransacking villages and inflicting several stinging defeats upon the Indians. To the south, the British backed resistance among the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Choctaws but quickly forgot their former allies following the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1783). By setting the boundaries of the newly recognized United States at the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes, that treaty virtually ensured future conflicts between whites and resident tribes. In 1790, Miami chief Little Turtle routed several hundred men led by Josiah Harmar along the Maumee River. Arthur St. Clair’s column suffered an even more ignominious defeat on the Wabash River the following year; only in 1794 did Anthony Wayne gain revenge at the Battle of Fallen Timbers . Yet resistance to white expansion in the Old Northwest continued as a Shawnee chief, Tecumseh , molded a large Indian confederation based at Prophetstown. While Tecumseh was away seeking additional support, William Henry Harrison burned the village after a stalemate at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811.

Indian raids, often encouraged by the British, were influential in causing the United States to declare war on Great Britain in 1812. The British made Tecumseh a brigadier general and used Indian allies to help recapture Detroit and Fort Dearborn ( Chicago ). Several hundred American prisoners were killed following a skirmish at the River Raisin in early 1813. But Harrison pushed into Canada and won the Battle of the Thames, which saw the death of Tecumseh and the collapse of his confederation. In the Southeast, the Creeks gained a major triumph against American forces at Fort Sims, killing many of their prisoners in the process. Andrew Jackson led the counterthrust, winning victories at Tallasahatchee and Talladega before crushing the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend in 1814. Alaska and Florida were also the scenes of bitter conflicts. Native peoples strongly contested the Russian occupation of Alaska. The Aleuts were defeated during the eighteenth century, but the Russians found it impossible to prevent Tlingit harassment of their hunting parties and trading posts. Upon the Spanish cession of Florida, Washington began removing the territory’s tribes to lands west of the Mississippi River.

But the Seminole Indians and runaway slaves refused to relocate, and the Second Seminole War saw fierce guerrilla-style actions from 1835 to 1842. Osceola, perhaps the greatest Seminole leader, was captured during peace talks in 1837, and nearly three thousand Seminoles were eventually removed. The Third Seminole War (1855-1858) stamped out all but a handful of the remaining members of the tribe. In the United States, the removal policy met only sporadic armed resistance as whites pushed into the Mississippi River valley during the 1830s and 1840s. The Sac and Fox Indians were crushed in Black Hawk’s War (1831-1832), and tribes throughout the region seemed powerless in the face of the growing numbers of forts and military roads the whites were constructing. The acquisition of Texas and the Southwest during the 1840s, however, sparked a new series of Indian-white conflicts. In Texas, where such warfare had marred the independent republic’s brief history, the situation was especially volatile.

On the Pacific Coast, attacks against the native peoples accompanied the flood of immigrants to gold-laden California . Disease, malnutrition, and warfare combined with the poor lands set aside as reservations to reduce the Indian population of that state from 150,000 in 1845 to 35,000 in 1860. The army took the lead role in Oregon and Washington, using the Rogue River (1855-1856), Yakima (1855-1856), and Spokane (1858) wars to force several tribes onto reservations. Sporadic conflicts also plagued Arizona and New Mexico throughout the 1850s as the army struggled to establish its presence. On the southern plains, mounted warriors posed an even more formidable challenge to white expansion. Strikes against the Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahos, Comanches, and Kiowas during the decade only hinted at the deadlier conflicts of years to come. The Civil War saw the removal of the Regulars and an accompanying increase in the number and intensity of white-Indian conflicts.

The influence of the Five Southern, or “Civilized” Tribes of the Indian Territory was sharply reduced. Seven Indian regiments served with Confederate troops at the Battle of Pea Ridge (1862). Defeat there and at Honey Springs (1863) dampened enthusiasm for the South, although tribal leaders like Stand Waite continued to support the confederacy until the war’s end. James H. Carleton and Christopher (“Kit”) Carson conducted a ruthlessly effective campaign against the Navahos in New Mexico and Arizona. Disputes on the southern plains culminated in the Sand Creek massacre (1864), during which John M. Chivington’s Colorado volunteers slaughtered over two hundred of Black Kettle’s Cheyennes and Arapahos, many of whom had already attempted to come to terms with the government. In Minnesota , attacks by the Eastern Sioux prompted counterattacks by the volunteer forces of Henry H. Sibley, after which the tribes were removed to the Dakotas. The conflict became general when John Pope mounted a series of unsuccessful expeditions onto the plains in 1865. Regular units, including four regiments of black troops, returned west following the Confederate collapse.

Railroad expansion, new mining ventures, the destruction of the buffalo, and ever-increasing white demand for land exacerbated the centuries-old tensions. The mounted warriors of the Great Plains posed an especially thorny problem for an army plagued by a chronic shortage of cavalry and a government policy that demanded Indian removal on the cheap. Winfield S. Hancock’s ineffectual campaign in 1867 merely highlighted the bitterness between whites and Indians on the southern plains. Using a series of converging columns, Philip Sheridan achieved more success in his winter campaigns of 1868-1869, but only with the Red River War of 1874-1875 were the tribes broken. Major battlefield encounters like George Armstrong Custer’s triumph at the Battle of the Washita (1868) had been rare; more telling was the army’s destruction of Indian lodges, horses, and food supplies, exemplified by Ranald Mackenzie’s slaughter of over a thousand Indian ponies following a skirmish at Palo Duro Canyon, Texas, in 1874.

To the north, the Sioux, Northern Cheyennes, and Arapahos had forced the army to abandon its Bozeman Trail forts in Red Cloud’s War (1867). But arable lands and rumors of gold in the Dakotas continued to attract white migration; the government opened a major new war in 1876. Initial failures against a loose Indian coalition, forged by leaders including Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull , culminated in the annihilation of five troops of Custer’s cavalry at the Little Bighorn. A series of army columns took the field that fall and again the following spring. By campaigning through much of the winter, harassing Indian villages, and winning battles like that at Wolf Mountain (1877), Nelson A. Miles proved particularly effective. The tribes had to sue for peace, and even Sitting Bull’s band returned from Canada to accept reservation life in 1881. Another outbreak among the Sioux and Northern Cheyennes, precipitated by government corruption, shrinking reservations, and the spread of the Ghost Dance, culminated in a grisly encounter at Wounded Knee (1890), in which casualties totaled over two hundred Indians and sixty-four soldiers.

Less spectacular but equally deadly were conflicts in the Pacific Northwest. In 1867-1868, George Crook defeated the Paiutes of northern California and southern Oregon. In a desperate effort to secure a new reservation on the tribal homelands, a Modoc chief assassinated Edward R. S. Canby during an abortive peace conference in 1873. Canby’s death (he was the only general ever killed by Indians) helped shatter President Ulysses S. Grant’s peace policy and resulted in the tribe’s defeat and removal. Refusing life on a government-selected reservation, Chief Joseph’s Nez Percés led the army on an epic seventeen-hundred-mile chase through Idaho , Wyoming, and Montana until checked by Miles just short of the Canadian border at Bear Paw Mountain (1877). Also unsuccessful was armed resistance among the Bannocks, Paiutes, Sheepeaters, and Utes in 1878-1879. To the far southwest, Cochise , Victorio, and Geronimo led various Apache bands in resisting white and Hispanic encroachments, crossing and recrossing the border into Mexico with seeming impunity.

Many an officer’s record was scarred as repeated treaties proved abortive. Only after lengthy campaigning, during which army columns frequently entered Mexico, were the Apaches forced to surrender in the mid-1880s. The army remained wary of potential trouble as incidental violence continued. Yet, with the exception of another clash in 1973 during which protesters temporarily seized control of Wounded Knee, the major Indian-white conflicts in the United States had ended. Militarily, several trends had become apparent. New technology often gave the whites a temporary advantage. But this edge was not universal; Indian warriors carrying repeating weapons during the latter nineteenth century sometimes outgunned their army opponents, who were equipped with cheaper (but often more reliable) single-shot rifles and carbines. As the scene shifted from the eastern woodlands to the western plains, white armies found it increasingly difficult to initiate fights with their Indian rivals. To force action, army columns converged upon Indian villages from several directions. This dangerous tactic had worked well at the Battle of the Washita but could produce disastrous results when large numbers of tribesmen chose to stand and fight, as at the Little Bighorn.

Throughout the centuries of conflict, both sides had taken the wars to the enemy populace, and the conflicts had exacted a heavy toll among noncombatants. Whites had been particularly effective in exploiting tribal rivalries; indeed, Indian scouts and auxiliaries were often essential in defeating tribes deemed hostile by white governments. In the end, however, military force alone had not destroyed Indian resistance. Only in conjunction with railroad expansion, the destruction of the buffalo, increased numbers of non-Indian settlers, and the determination of successive governments to crush any challenge to their sovereignty had white armies overwhelmed the tribes. The Reader’s Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors. Copyright © 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Tags

Question: In which American state did Geronimo carry out most of his raiding and killing
Answer: Arizona