Geronimo or Goyathlay (“one who yawns”) was born to the Bedonkohe band of the Apache, near Turkey Creek, a tributary of the Gila River near present day Clifton, Arizona.  Specifically, he was born on June16, 1829 and died on February 17, 1909.

In 1846 (when he was just seventeen), he was admitted to the Council of the Warriors, met and married a woman from the Chiricahua band of Apache named Alope and eventually had three children.

At some point in the mid 1850, an event happened to Geronimo that not only gave him his name as we know him; it drove him to hate all Mexicans for the rest of his life and also led him to become the most famous Apache of all.

 

Camped out side a Mexican town and while gone to the town to trade, a Mexican Colonel named Jose Maria Carrasco and 400 Mexican soldiers attacked Geronimo’s camp site and killed his mother, wife and three children.  He recalled in those later years, "[m]y heart ached for revenge upon Mexico."  Wrought with grief and bitterness, he joined Cochise’s band (known as Chiricahuas) and just about a year later, began his raids in northern Mexico and across the border of U.S. Territory.  With his great hate for the Mexicans, he repeatedly attacked the soldiers with a knife, ignoring the deadly hail of bullets.  In reference to the Mexicans’ plea to Saint Jerome (“Jeronimo”), the nickname of “Geronimo” was forever created and given to this man.

When the U.S. Government attempted to move the Chiricahua to a barren wasteland in east-central Arizona known as “Hell’s Forty Acres,” Geronimo fled to Mexico and eluded troops for over a decade.  And, in fact, his band was one of the last major forces of independent Indian warriors who refused to acknowledge the U.S. Government in the American West.  During the Army’s infamous “Geronimo campaign” of 1885-86, Geronimo eluded 5,000 Army Regulators, 3,000 Mexican soldiers, some 500 Indian scouts and a huge number of vengeful civilians.

Eventually, Geronimo (induced by a promise that he and his people would be able to return to Arizona) surrendered to Gen. George Miles on September 4, 1886, at Skeleton Canyon in Arizona.  His group by this time consisted of only 16 warriors, 12 women and 6 children.  The promise was never kept by the General and Geronimo along with nearly 450 Apache men, women, and children were shipped by boxcar to Florida for confinement in Forts Marion and Pickens.

In 1994, Geronimo was moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma.  He attempted to “fit in” by farming and joining the Dutch Reformed Church (which eventually expelled him due to his inability to resist gambling).

Never having seen his homeland of Arizona again, Geronimo died a prisoner of war, of pneumonia on 1909.  He was buried in the Apache cemetery at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Side Note:  In 1918, Prescott Bush (father of George H.W. Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush) led a group of the members of the Yale secret society of Skull and Bones to steal Geronimo’s skull, bones, other items and a prized silver bridle from the Apache Indian Prisoner of War Cemetery.  These items were used in rituals as part of an initiation.  They are still being held (illegally!?!) at Yale University.