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podcast transcript
Few figures in American history embody resistance and resilience as much as Geronimo.
As an Apache leader who resisted both Mexican and American forces, his name became synonymous with courage and resistance.
But beyond the myths lie complex stories of survival, conflict, and cultural upheaval. In the process, he became an icon for the very people he fought against.
In this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily, learn more about Geronimo and how his story shaped the history of the American Southwest.
Before the Mexican-American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, the lands inhabited by the Apache included areas controlled by both Mexico and the United States.
Around 1823, a child named Goyalka (‘the yawner’) was born here. Later known as Geronimo, he spent his childhood in the Apache homeland of the desert southwest.
In 1858, Geronimo and his band of Apaches, known as Bedonkohe, were in present-day Sonora, then considered part of the Mexican state of Chihuahua. During this period, Apaches in the area conducted raiding missions that disrupted local trade and created sustained resistance.
Attacking was key to Apache survival. It was both a tradition and a necessity. The Apache people living in the arid regions of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States had little choice.
In their raids, the Apache primarily targeted wealthy landowners and ranchers in northern Mexico, often seeking food but sometimes taking rare goods for trade.
In response to the threat posed by Apache raiding tactics, the Mexican government issued a $25 bounty to all Apache raiders to deter further attacks and protect local interests.
Four hundred Mexican militiamen answered the call and fell into the Apache camp at a place known as Kas-Ki-Yeh. While most of the men were at a nearby trading post, Mexican militia attacked the tribe, killing Geronimo’s mother, wife, and three children.
Upon returning to Kas-Ki-Yeh, Geronimo suffered untold pain upon realizing the tragic loss of his family. In his 1905 autobiography, Geronimo recorded the horrifying discovery:When all was calculated, among those killed were my elderly mother, my young wife, and my three young children.”
Historians debate the exact year the massacre occurred, as some sources cite 1851, and Geronimo’s memoir says the massacre occurred in 1858. While historians debate the date, the massacre caused clear and lasting outrage in Geronimo.
Following his vision of invincibility, he launched a campaign of revenge. Geronimo said. “We will attack them in their homes. I will fight at the forefront of the battle. Even if I die, no one will have to mourn for me.”
In contrast to the peaceful Ghost Dance movement on the Great Plains, Geronimo’s campaign was marred by violence. The Apaches, led by Chief Cochise, unlike the tribes of the northern plains, preferred small raiding parties.
Geronimo mastered guerrilla warfare, using stealth and speed to harass his enemies. Legend has it that his name comes from Saint Jerome, to whom the Mexicans turned for help. The Mexican military noted that Geronimo appeared to disappear into the landscape as if attacking the wind.
Geronimo’s autobiography reveals his lifelong resentment toward Mexico for killing his family. This anger led to a fierce campaign deeper into Mexican territory as the conflict intensified.
Geronimo’s autobiography records that he considered every Mexican he met an enemy. But the challenge to the Apaches extended beyond the conflict with Mexico. As the situation changed, new enemies emerged and the scope of the struggle expanded.
Apache warriors living along the U.S.-Mexico border often straddled the border, taking advantage of international restrictions on the movement of troops from one country to another.
Life in Geronimo and the Apache nation became much more difficult in 1861. After the boy was kidnapped by a group of Apaches, Lt. George Bascom falsely blamed Cochise’s band and attempted to detain him at Apache Pass in Arizona. Cochise escaped, but several of his relatives were taken hostage.
Troops gathered on the Apaches to bring Cochise to justice. Instead, they killed several members of his family. This disturbance ended the relative peace between the United States and the Apaches and began the Apache War, which lasted nearly 40 years.
The most notable battle of the early Apache Wars was the Battle of Apache Pass in July 1862. During this battle, Geronimo’s warriors ambushed 2,500 Union troops near Apache Springs as they marched to block a potential Confederate advance from the west.
Geronimo’s Apache warriors secured a pass overlooking Apache Spring. The battle was going well until the Allies took out the Apaches’ new devastating weapon, two mountain howitzers, and changed the direction of the battle.
After the victory, Allied forces recognized the danger of Apache Pass. They built Fort Bowie to protect the route and, more importantly, to secure one of the few major water sources in the area.
The strong federal presence in the region was a fatal setback for the Apaches.
Fort Bowie changed the complexity of the war as Federal forces now had a well-fortified base in the area from which to launch a campaign against the Apaches. The Apaches knew they could no match for the Federal weapons. They will have to rely on stealth, speed, and knowledge of the land to survive.
A year after the Battle of Apache Pass, soldiers captured, tortured, and killed Chief Mangas Colorada under a white flag of peace, sparking a new wave of anger in Geronimo, who revered Mangas Colorada as a mentor.
As these events unfolded, the Apache’s position became increasingly dangerous and foreshadowed greater difficulties to come.
April 30, 1871 was the Camp Grant Massacre, one of the Apache nation’s darkest days.
A band of Aravaipa Apache, led by a chief named Eskiminzin, were living under the protection of American troops, farming and receiving rations as they attempted to avoid conflict.
Nonetheless, tensions in nearby Tucson remained high due to ongoing raids in the area, many of which were not carried out by the group. A vigilante group of about 140 men marched into the Apache camp.
At dawn they attacked while most of the Apache soldiers were away hunting, leaving the camp virtually defenseless. The attackers killed more than 100 people, overwhelmingly women and children, and captured about 30 children who were later sold into slavery in Mexico.
The following year, Chief Cochise, realizing that Apache life had changed, reached a verbal agreement with U.S. General Oliver Howard to relocate to the Chiricahua Reservation.
This agreement not only defined the land, but also included provisions and support to help the Apache transition to a new life as farmers.
Cochise understood that the transition from a nomadic to a sedentary lifestyle would be difficult. He was confident the agreement would be upheld and even sent Apache runners throughout the region to bring back Geronimo and the rest of his band, including his warriors.
General Howard’s verbal agreement restored much of the original Apache land and eventually won the agreement of Apache chiefs, including the very skeptical Geronimo.
Cochise’s friend Tom Jeffords became the booking agent and stepped up to ensure the best deal on the Apache. In a letter to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Jeffords complained that the provisions Howard had promised Cochise had not been realized. Indeed, as he points out, “Not a penny was paid to cover the costs, and not a penny was given even a hammer to do the work.”
In addition to its status as an unratified contract, the reservation deal faced additional hurdles that further tested Apache resilience. The discovery of copper shattered the peace as miners were driven into Apache lands, and the Mexican government under Porfirio Díaz put pressure on the United States to stop Geronimo’s cross-border raids.
Diaz granted the United States enormous mining and agricultural interests, and as a result the United States could no longer ignore the raids. If Cochise was the one who made reservations possible, Geronimo was the one who made it impossible for the U.S. government to ignore.
His failure to stop cross-border raids gave the Bureau of Indian Affairs the excuse it needed to break the treaty and send Apache troops into the San Carlos Desert in Arizona.
The San Carlos Reservation presented great challenges to the Apache because it was home to severe drought, limited water resources, and poor soil.
In 1877, federal troops captured Geronimo as he left the reservation, the only time they captured him by force. Federal troops took him in chains to a reservation, where he endured four long years of confinement.
During those four years, the Apaches endured constant agricultural failures, battled corrupt Bureau of Indian Affairs agents, and suffered a complete loss of freedom.
After the murder of an Apache saint and a brief battle with federal troops, Geronimo and his group of 70 fled into central Mexico. Moving at great speed, they cut telegraph lines as they raced toward the Sierra Madre Mountains, which he knew well.
Geronimo thought he could disappear like before, using the border as a weapon against the two forces hunting him. What he didn’t realize was that the Diaz regime and the United States had struck a deal. In an effort to modernize their borders, both countries now allow the other’s military to pursue fugitives across international lines.
While in Mexico, Geronimo resumed raids, built forts, disrupted the livestock trade, and re-established the spirit of the invisible warrior. He even showed courage by returning to the San Carlos Reservation and smuggling fellow rebels into the Mexican fort.
The United States, aware of Geronimo’s movements, dispatched General George Crook in 1883. Crook led a battalion of American soldiers and their Native American enemies, the Apaches, in tracking Geronimo to his stronghold.
He eluded capture until 1886, when General Nelson Miles and his 5,000-man army finally surrounded his small unit. Only after running out of supplies did Geronimo agree to surrender and return to the reservation.
Ironically, Felix Ward, the kidnapped boy who sparked the Apache War, was raised by the Apaches and later became “Mickey Free,” an Army scout who helped track Geronimo’s final surrender.
Once Geronimo was in custody, the government reneged on the prisoner agreement and changed the terms of his surrender. Geronimo then began his long journey as a prisoner of war, moving from Florida to Alabama and finally to the plains of Oklahoma, where he died of pneumonia in 1909.
There is one thing I would like to tell you because I think many people are curious about it. Why do people shout Geronimo when they jump out of a plane or off a tall object?
According to legend, the use of “Geronimo” as an exclamation when leaping into the unknown was originated by Private Aubrey Everhart of the 501st Parachute Infantry Battalion during World War II.
He adopted this name after seeing a movie about Geronimo, and used it as a symbol of fear before his first jump. This practice took hold and spread, eventually becoming a common phrase in popular culture to denote a dramatic leap or jump.
Despite being a prisoner of war, Geronimo became a symbol of courage and freedom. He used his fame to criticize the destructive effects of the reservation system on the Apache way of life, and to strongly oppose the restrictions it imposed, the restrictions it placed on native freedom, and the rampant corruption.
His autobiography only built his reputation and legacy as an unbowed warrior in the face of injustice.
But eventually he even began to doubt the path he had taken when he surrendered in 1886. “You should never have surrendered. You should have fought until you were the last man standing.”
