Geronimo: Great Loss, Avengement and Escape

Born in 1829 in Gila River country in present-day Arizona, Goyahkla or “one who yawns” grew up among the Bedonkohe subsection of the Apache Chiricahua tribe, becoming an accomplished hunter and fearless warrior by age 17.

Geronimo’s Great Loss

Five years later, Geronimo returned from a trading trip to find his wife and three children slaughtered by Mexican soldiers under the command of Colonel Jose Maria Carrasco, burning his family’s belongings according to Apache tradition, before retreating in wild grief into a nearby forest, where a spirit voice told him that, “No gun will ever kill you. I will take the bullets from the guns … and I will guide your arrows.”

After Geronimo hunted down his family’s killers, he devoted the rest of his life to avenging white and Mexican settlers who had forcefully usurped ancestral Indian lands.

After Mexico ceded much of the American Southwest to the United States following their defeat in the Mexican-American War, Apache ancestral homelands were further threatened by the Gadsden Purchase of 1854, escalating Geronimo’s attacks on white and Mexican settlements to a fevered pitch.

Great Escapes of Geronimo

Escaping the San Carlos Reservation three times over the next decade, Geronimo’s knowledge of the surrounding countryside allowed him to elude capture following each of his raids, proving a major embarrassment for politicians and U.S. Army leaders alike. Wounded multiple times, Geronimo’s ability to evade capture made him a newspaper and dime store novel sensation throughout a nation’s steady westward growth. After years of raids against Mexican and American settlements, many times involving the deaths of civilians, in March of 1886, General George Crook forced Geronimo to surrender, only to escape yet again under cover of darkness.

His escape would again prove embarrassing to the U.S. Army, who assigned 5,000 U.S. soldiers and 3,000 Mexican soldiers—nearly a quarter of the U.S. standing army—to the objective of apprehending or murdering Geronimo and his followers.

Five months later, Geronimo turned himself in to General Nelson Miles at Skeleton Canyon Arizona, followed by his imprisonment for the remainder of his life, save for the occasional government-approved trips to world’s fairs, Wild West shows and the inauguration of President Teddy Roosevelt. He passed away from pneumonia on February 17th, 1909, just 15 years before the end of the American Indian Wars.