(c. 1829-1909)
Apache leader
Goyathlay, or Geronimo, was born in about 1829. His kinship, cultural, and territorial ties transcended three Apache divisions—the Bedonkohes, Nednais, and Chiricahuas—and what became the U.S.-Mexican border. Following the Apache matrilineal custom, his father had moved from the Nednai homeland in the Sierra Madre of Mexico to an area near the headwaters of the Gila River, where his wife's people, the Bedonkohes, lived. Coming of age in that arid and mountainous terrain, Goyathlay learned how to worship Apache spirits, hunt, plant, and fight enemies. He also married a woman named Alope and had three children with her.
An 1858 episode of genocide in Mexico, together with U.S. expansion into the West, changed Goyathlay's life forever. In that year Mexican troops slaughtered many Bedonkohe women and children, including Goyathlay's wife, children, and mother, after which the Bedonkohes prepared to retaliate. Goyathlay was entrusted with the task of encouraging the other Apache bands to join the war. During subsequent years of fighting, Goyathlay avenged the death of his loved ones many times over. He also acquired recognition among his people as an intrepid, if not reckless, fighter. His success in war was attributed to a mystical power that prevented guns and bullets from killing him. The Mexicans called him Geronimo, or Jerome, for reasons that are not entirely clear. Some claim it was a transcription of the Spanish attempt to pronounce the name Goyathlay; others believe that his enemies, when attacking his forces, appealed aloud to St. Jerome for assistance. In any event, the name stuck.
The details of Goyathlay's personal life during the 1860s and 1870s are obscure. After Alope's death, he apparently wed women from the Chiricahua and Bedonkohe bands. Though these marriages produced children, at least one child, along with its mother, was killed by the Mexicans.
Meanwhile, encroaching U.S. miners, settlers, and military men had begun to disrupt Apache life, taking land, instigating conflict, and subjecting the Indians to white laws. In 1863, when U.S. soldiers used force to establish a post in Chiricahua country and murdered Mangas Coloradas under a flag of truce, bloody warfare ensued. Goyathlay apparently fought under Cochise, Victorio, and others, but the Apaches were overpowered.
By the early 1870s, most Apache bands, threatened with extermination and starvation, had accepted peace terms and reservations. Yet many of them detested the new life. They were expected to become Christian farmers under deplorable conditions that included confinement, hunger, and white supervision. Soon after moving with his family to the Chiricahua Reservation, Goyathlay became a leader in opposing the planned dismantling of Apache culture. Goyathlay's reputation as a warrior, his oratory skills, and his wisdom enabled him to command a following and have a hand in matters of war and peace. His rising influence filled a void caused by the deaths of Cochise and other prominent Apaches. Conversely, other Apaches, who viewed armed resistance as a threat to the delicate peace, cooperated with U.S. military and civilian authorities, working as reservation policemen and scouts.
In 1876, Goyathlay protested the Chiricahuas' removal to the desolate San Carlos Reservation by fleeing with his family. Although captured, arrested, and transported to a San Carlos guardhouse, he did not end his opposition to the government's program. In 1878 Goyathlay and his supporters joined other Apaches in Mexico, but in the winter of 1880, tired of fighting, they returned to San Carlos. In September 1881 Goyathlay and others bolted after U.S. soldiers forcefully suppressed a religious gathering. Goyathlay and others stormed San Carlos the following spring and led hundreds of Apaches in a desperate bid for freedom.
During these outbreaks, defiant Apaches raided Mexican and U.S. settlements, fighting soldiers and settlers on both sides of the border. Though Mexicans and white Americans had been massacring Apaches for years, land-hungry settlers and government officials nevertheless branded the Apaches as murderous renegades who deserved death, imprisonment, or banishment. Goyathlay in particular became targeted for elimination.
Apache scouts under General George Crook, the commander of U.S. troops in Arizona, located the Chiricahuas in Mexico during the spring of 1883. Pursuant to an agreement reached with Crook, the Chiricahuas returned to San Carlos. In 1884, Goyathlay's followers were placed on Turkey Creek, within the San Carlos reserve, but they fled the following year with a small group of followers and their families after hearing rumors that their leaders would be executed. With five thousand U.S. troops, several hundred Indian scouts, and hundreds of Mexican soldiers in pursuit, the Chiricahua leaders surrendered to Crook, consenting reluctantly to live in Florida for two years. Before reaching San Carlos, however, Goyathlay and some thirty followers raced back to Mexico. Low on ammunition and not wanting to risk more deaths, they surrendered to General Nelson A. Miles, Crook's replacement, in September 1886.
U.S. soldiers quickly shipped the captives to three Florida internment camps, where other Apaches had previously been sent. Among the exiles, who eventually totaled 469 people, were Apache scouts and their families, people who had once provided invaluable assistance to the United States. Irrespective of which side they had fought on, the Apaches now not only were held as prisoners of war but also were expected to adopt white culture. Incarcerated at Fort Pickens away from their wives and children, several men, including Goyathlay, performed hard labor, sawing logs. Many Chiricahuas died from heat, humidity, and disease. The survivors were forced to cut their hair, wear Euro-American clothing, and send their children to distant boarding schools.
In 1887, military officials reunited the Apache families at Mount Vernon Barracks, Alabama. While there, one of Goyathlay's two wives received permission to move to the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico Territory. She took their two children, Lenna and Robbie, with her.
In 1892, 388 survivors were shipped to Fort Sill, Indian Territory (Oklahoma). Once there, Goyathlay converted to Christianity, apparently without forfeiting his traditional beliefs and values. He sustained his family by ranching, farming, and selling autographed pictures of himself. He gained celebrity status, appearing at President Teddy Roosevelt's inaugural parade and the St. Louis World's Fair. He also told his experiences to S. M. Barrett, who recorded and edited his story in Geronimo's Story of His Life, published in 1907. Still a prisoner of war and longing for home, Goyathlay died of pneumonia at Fort Sill on February 17, 1909. He was survived by a daughter, Eva Geronimo, at Fort Sill and the two children at Mescalero.
Congress finally released the Apache prisoners in 1913. One hundred eighty-seven of them went to the Mescalero Reservation, and seventy-eight stayed in Oklahoma. By then, Goyathlay had become an American legend.
See also
Apache, Western.
S. M. Barrett, Geronimo's Story of His Life (New York: Duffield & Co., 1907); Angie Debo, Geronimo: The Man, His Time, His Place (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976).
James Riding In
Pawnee
Arizona State University
