The reputation of the Apache warrior Geronimo has undergone a striking cultural transformation from a man frequently reviled with threats of hanging, execution, or lynching during his life, to a cultural icon in the later twentieth century and beyond.
During the height of the late nineteenth-century wars between Native American nations and the U.S. Army, the name “Geronimo” came to be hated and feared within Anglo-American communities. A survey of the New York Times articles reveals a startling array of angry denunciations of Apaches in general, but Geronimo specifically. For example, in an article entitled “The Inhuman Apaches” (May 30, 1885), the Times fanned the flames of anti-Indian hatred with the following language: “Kindness and good treatment are thrown away upon such inhuman and bloodthirsty wretches. The blood of the murdered settler will cry from the ground, and the cry will be heard.” While they were still at large, the Times referred to “Geronimo’s Band of Thugs” as a subhuman species:
The troops may not be able to catch these wretches, who are worse than wild beasts. If they do overtake them, and if any of the Indians shall escape the soldier’s rifles, we do not see why those who may survive should not be hanged. They should be punished for their horrible crimes, and their punishment should be either execution or imprisonment for life. Not one of them should ever be allowed to go again upon a reservation. (June 2, 1885)
The anti-Indian attitudes reached a fever pitch in the year that Geronimo famously surrendered for the last time. In “Geronimo’s Death Demanded” (February 5, 1886), sourced from El Paso, Texas, the Times reported on the hostility of white settlers in the Southwest: “The feeling in Arizona and New-Mexico [sic] in favor of the summary execution of Geronimo, the Apache chief, and the surviving members of his bloodthirsty band, is rapidly growing into a demand.” When news of his surrender was verified, an article in the September 10, 1886, issue editorialized bluntly, “Geronimo Must Die.” It added, “There is no doubt that the public sentiment of the country demands the death of Geronimo.”
Photograph shows Geronimo (1829–1909), the iconic Apache warrior, in a full-length portrait, holding rifle, circa 1886. During the height of the conflict between the United States and the Apaches, the name “Geronimo” was synonymous with barbarity and cruelty. In subsequent decades, however, his popular image was transformed, and by the decade or so before his death he had become something of a carnival sideshow attraction. (Library of Congress)
Reports of Geronimo’s capture and imprisonment in Florida were soon followed by surprising news of his conversion to Christianity. This was, in fact, the subject of further brief notices in the Times. In an article from January 28, 1890, entitled “Geronimo Heap Good Injun,” the writer describes Geronimo leading a Sunday School class and becoming a man who has “lost all hatred of the white people.” Still, it had not been long since his surrender, and hatreds ran deep. In an angry obituary of February 18, 1909, the Times judged him harshly. “The career of Geronimo, Chief of the Apaches,” it read, “gave point to the proverb that a good Indian is a dead Indian.” In a remarkably frank assessment, the obituary levied a devastating judgment: “Crafty, bloodthirsty, incredibly cruel and ferocious, he was all his life the worst type of aboriginal American savage.” In the light of these condemnations, the transformation of Geronimo’s reputation is nothing less than striking in American history.
In Apache, Geronimo’s name was Goyahkla, or Gokliya (Clements 2013, 6). In his own famous narrative of his life dictated to an Oklahoma educator by the name of S. M. Barrett in 1905–1906, Geronimo guessed that his birth was in 1829, though some historians suggest it could likely have been some years earlier. Geronimo was never a chief, but was considered an important “war leader” who was recognized for his success in strategies of raiding. Furthermore, the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 required the U.S. government to assist Mexico in reducing Apache invasions into Mexican territories. These militant activities of the Apache appear to have had their origins in Mexico, where otherwise peaceful relations were shattered in 1858 when a Mexican village launched an attack on Geronimo’s camp and killed all of his family, among others in his band. Geronimo famously never abandoned his hatred for Mexicans nor his desire for revenge.
On the northern side of the border, initial contact between European American surveyors and Apaches in the Southwest was peaceful, but subsequent aggressive mining and land speculation in Apache territory led to inevitable troubles, especially after gold was discovered in Apache territories after 1860. Land speculation and business interests among settlers also stoked the flames of war. Historian Odie Faulk emphasized the destructive effects of the “Tucson Ring,” a group of wealthy and influential Euro-American business and media leaders who profited considerably from the presence of American troops in the Southwest (Faulk 1969). They stirred up animosities between Apaches and white settlers, and spread harrowing stories about Apache atrocities, typically finding reasons to insist on the presence of U.S. troops.
After the U.S. Civil War, the federal government gave more attention to the Southwest, which involved attempts to pacify the Apaches and move them onto reservations so their lands could become open for white settlement and ranching. As part of these campaigns, Geronimo came into U.S. custody on four separate occasions. The first episode came in 1877, a few years after President Ulysses S. Grant sent philanthropist Vincent Colyer on a peace mission to persuade native peoples of the region to move onto reservation land. Along with Colyer, Grant sent General George Crook to take command of military activities in the Southwest. Colyer’s efforts, predictably, were savagely mocked by the “Tucson Ring” (Faulk 1969, 13–14). Soon, the ring’s efforts to sabotage the peace mission worked together with Apache resistance, and Geronimo found himself taken by force to the San Carlos Reservation.
On the reservation, a Spiritualism movement in 1881 led by a prophet named Nakaidoklini offered a large enough distraction for the authorities to enable Geronimo and a band of Apaches to escape into Mexico (Faulk 1969, 24). In 1884, Geronimo surrendered and was again taken to San Carlos. Trouble broke out again in 1885, and Geronimo fled once again into Mexico. His third surrender to General Crook in 1886 broke off when Geronimo turned back from the northern march when he sensed that the terms of the surrender were not to be honored. Geronimo later recounted his memories of General Crook with disdain, and suggested that the general’s death was because “the Almighty” punished him (Geronimo 1906, 132). General Crook was replaced by General Nelson Miles, who launched an intensive manhunt to find Geronimo in Mexico. Geronimo finally surrendered to Lieutenant Charles Gatewood, a Crook appointee who had left the Southwest, but was an officer whom Geronimo trusted. Miles called Gatewood back into duty, and in August–September 1886, Gatewood finally convinced Geronimo and his small band to surrender for the last time.
Geronimo was never allowed to return to the Southwest, as he believed he was promised, but did enjoy some notoriety as a prisoner of war living in Florida and Oklahoma. He attended World Fairs in Omaha (1898), Buffalo (1901), and St. Louis (1904), where he was an attraction. He was invited to attend Teddy Roosevelt’s inauguration in 1905, and was courted by Gordon Lillie (Pawnee Bill) for his Wild West outdoor show, much as Sitting Bull had worked with “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West show. Geronimo sold autographed photos of himself, buttons from his coats (which he would routinely sew on for each public appearance), and bows and arrows that he made. There is continued controversy about his alleged conversion to Christianity, but sources are sparse on this subject. Geronimo died of pneumonia in 1909 and was buried near Fort Sill, Oklahoma. His life had come to an end, but the meandering career of his legend had just begun.
Historian William Clements, in his important 2013 study of how Geronimo has become a “subtext in the mainstream American imagination” in the United States, cites a number of important ways that the name and image of Geronimo has become ubiquitous in modern American culture. Clements notes that this famous Native American warrior’s image graced the king of spades in a deck of Native American playing cards, and that a liquor store in Pensacola, Florida, took the name “Geronimo’s Spirits.” The list goes on: a steel cable in an oil rig that allows for quick escape is known as a “Geronimo line”; companies market a range of products including Geronimo jerky, a Geronimo Heritage Basket, and a board game titled “Geronimo” (Clements 2013, 1).
Indeed, a customer can purchase an image of Geronimo on a T-shirt in virtually any major city in the American West. Popular attitudes, therefore, have dramatically changed from the New York Times articles in the early twentieth century that regularly demonized him. As Clements observes, “Geronimo’s canonization became official on 23 February 2009” (Clements 2013, 50–52). On that date, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution on the 100th anniversary of Geronimo’s death that included striking wording about his “extraordinary bravery, and his commitment to the defense of his homeland, his people, and Apache ways of life” and spoke of Geronimo as “a spiritual and intellectual leader, [who] became recognized as a great military leader by his people because of his courage, determination, and skill” as he directed his people in “a war of self-defense” (Clements 2013, 52).
Outside of popular opinion, however, scholarly debates among historians with regard to Geronimo, his exploits, and his character, continue to rage. Some scholars have tended to excuse, even valorize him as a Native American whose violence was only directed at those who would threaten his homeland and his people (Debo 1976). Other historians, however, publish exhaustive recitations of his violent, often murderous raids on both sides of the Mexican-American border around Arizona and New Mexico. To these historians Geronimo was “a thoroughly vicious, intractable, and treacherous man,” and they insist that both negative and positive aspects of his life and career must be taken into account (Clements 2013, 20). Robert Utley, for example, states that many of the atrocities attributed to Geronimo were “mere rumors or fabrications, but the stories were bad enough to brand this man a bloody butcher who shot, lanced, or knifed dozens of victims throughout his adult life” (Utley 2012, 5). These rumors had some basis in fact, since he “induced fear and horror in settlers in Arizona and New Mexico as well as the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora.” There was little to no separation between Geronimo the historical person and the terrible atrocities to which his name had been affixed (Utley 2012, 5). It is likely that the historical debates will continue, but Geronimo’s place as a warrior hero in American folklore is secure.
Ghost Dance
Developed as an outgrowth of revelations by Paiute prophets beginning in 1869, the Ghost Dance cults promised a return of stolen lands to the wronged tribes, the stemming of the tide of white settlers and culture, and a revitalization of traditional Native American modes of life. Highly influenced by various Christian beliefs including Shakerism, some Ghost Dancers entered into ecstatic trances in which they communed with the souls of the dead, which they sought to bring back to the mortal world through ritual dances. Ghost Dancing spread widely throughout the West and reached the Sioux around 1890, unfortunately coinciding with an uprising by that tribe. Ghost Dancing was wrongly associated with the Sioux rebellion, tragically resulting in the infamous slaughter at Wounded Knee, where the Ghost Shirts of the dancers, thought to have protective powers, did not shield them from soldiers’ bullets.
C. Fee
Daniel Lawrence Smith-Christopher
See also Chief Joseph; Crazy Horse
Further Reading
Clements, William M. 2013. Imagining Geronimo: An Apache Icon in Popular Culture. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Debo, Angie. 1976. Geronimo. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Faulk, Odie B. 1969. The Geronimo Campaigns. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Geronimo, 1906. Geronimo’s Story of His Life. As told to S. M. Barrett. New York: Duffield.
Kraft, Louis. 2000. Gatewood & Geronimo. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Utley, Robert. 2012. Geronimo. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.