Before you judge other people's faults, look at the footprints of your moccasins.
American Indian aphorism
Indian Wars. Among the Indian leaders who fought with the US Army, the name of the leader Geronimo (in the Mescalero-Chiricauan dialect of the Apaches Goyatlai, "The one who yawns") is one of the first. He was born in June 1829, and died on February 17, 1909. The legendary leader of the Chiricaua Apaches, he led the struggle against the invasion of whites in the lands of his tribe for 25 years, and only in 1886 was he forced to surrender to the American army.
It is believed that he was an outstanding leader and medicine man of the Bedonkoh tribal group, among which he was born and which belonged to the Apache tribe. From 1850 to 1886, Geronimo, along with the Indians of the three Apache families, Chiricaua Chihende, Tsokanende and Nednhi, carried out numerous raids against the Mexican and American military in the northern Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora and in the southwestern American territories of New Mexico and Arizona. Geronimo's raids and associated fighting were part of a prolonged conflict between the Apaches and the United States that began immediately after the end of the war with Mexico in 1848.
Immediately, we note that the concept of a leader among the Indians is not quite the same as the "leader" of civilized countries. Often all his power rested on only one authority, and he could advise his fellow tribesmen, but not order. Besides, there were usually two leaders! Peacetime and wartime. And the whole tribe was subordinate to the leader of peacetime, and only men were subordinate to the military leader. Geronimo was precisely the military leader (although he was also a medicine man), and even though he was well known, he was not the leader of the entire Chiricahua tribe or bedonkohe. But because of his fame and luck, he could call the soldiers to him at any moment, and 30-50 Apaches immediately came to him. He fought with the whites when he was sure of victory, but he did not grieve when they turned out to be stronger.
From 1876 to 1886, he surrendered three times to the pale and went to live on the Apache reservation in Arizona. But then he got bored there, and he again went out on the warpath. They caught him again, he again "raised his hands up", promised to "bury the tomahawk of war", but then he dug it out again! It was not until 1886, after a persecution in northern Mexico by American forces that followed his third escape from the reservation in 1885, that Geronimo surrendered for the last time. And not just anyone, but Lieutenant Charles Gatewood, a West Point graduate, who … spoke the Apache language, and whom Geronimo respected very much, having met him several years earlier. He handed the prisoner over to General Nelson Miles, who treated Geronimo like a prisoner of war and transported him first to Fort Bowie, and then, along with 27 other Apaches, sent him to the rest of the Chiricaua tribe, who had previously been resettled to Florida.
With Geronimo as a prisoner, the United States did good PR on him, getting him involved in various events. For the government, this was proof of his success in pacifying the Indians, but this attitude was also very beneficial for Geronimo, since he himself made some money on it. In 1898, Geronimo was brought to the Trans-Mississippi International Exhibition in Omaha, Nebraska. After her, he became a frequent visitor to fairs, exhibitions and other social events. He earned money from them by selling his photographs, as well as bows, arrows, buttons from his shirt and even a hat he made. In 1904, he participated in the St. Louis, Missouri World's Fair, selling souvenirs and photographs of his own. In 1905, the Department of Indian Affairs invited him to attend the inaugural parade of President Theodore Roosevelt. Actually, how did you invite? He simply took and "presented", because he was considered a prisoner of war, that is, he was, as it were, the property of the military authorities of the US government. However, his dignity was not infringed upon. For example, in Texas, he even participated in a staged bison hunt, where he shot one bison, and although soldiers accompanied him at all such events, they did not bother him with their supervision. By the way, the organizers of this hunt did not know that neither Geronimo's people nor he himself were buffalo hunters. By the way, being a participant in the inaugural celebrations, Geronimo turned to the president with a request to return his tribe back to Arizona, to the land of his ancestors, but he refused.
His life ended in early 1909. 79-year-old Geronimo fell from his horse and lay on the cold ground until the morning, and three days later, on February 17, 1909, he died of pneumonia in Fort Sill, where he was buried in a local cemetery among other captive Indians of the Apache tribe.
This is, in general terms, the fate of this remarkable person in his own way, which we will now consider in more detail. Let's start with who these same Apaches were, whose leader was Geronimo and how many there were.
So, Apaches is a collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans from the southwestern United States. Currently, these include the Western Apaches, Chiricaua, Mescalero (whose leader in the works of Karl May was Winnetou), Hikarilla, Lipan and the Plains Apaches (who were previously called Kiowa Apaches).
For decades, the constant conflict between Mexican Apaches and Apaches who lived in the United States was an integral part of their way of life, which they saw as a kind of "economic enterprise". The Indians attacked white settlers with the aim of stealing livestock and other prey, and also captured them for ransom or killed them, sometimes with the help of torture. Mexicans and Americans responded with retaliatory strikes, which were no less brutal and very rarely limited to identifying the real initiators of these raids. Such "blows" and "counterstrikes" have fueled the flames of bitter war for many years. This war rolled like a tennis ball between Apaches and Mexicans, and later between Apaches and Americans. This is how, by the way, Geronimo himself lost his entire family when on March 5, 1851, a detachment of 400 Mexican soldiers from the state of Sonora under the command of Colonel José Maria Carrasco attacked the Geronimo camp. It so happened that just at this time, most of the men left for the nearest town … to trade, so there was no one to defend themselves. Many women and children were killed, including a wife, three children and Geronimo's mother. According to Indian standards, such revenge was unfair and in turn demanded revenge!
That is why, all the time from 1850 to 1886, Geronimo not only lived in war, like many of his fellow tribesmen, he also sought to avenge the murder of his family by Mexican soldiers, set a kind of record of cruelty for all this time, which had no equal of the Indian leaders of his contemporaries. The American captured by him could still hope for salvation. In this case, the Mexicans faced a painful death. Geronimo himself told about it this way:
“Late one evening as we were returning from the city, we were greeted by several women and children who told us that Mexican troops from some other city had attacked our camp, killed all the men, captured all our ponies, captured our weapons, destroyed our supplies and killed many of our women and children. We quickly split up, hiding as best we could until dark, and when it got dark, we gathered at the appointed meeting point - in the thickets by the river. We quietly crept to our camp one by one, sent sentries, and when all our killed were counted, I saw that among them were my old mother, my young wife and my three young children."
The leader of the tribe to which Geronimo belonged, Mangas Coloradas (in Spanish "Red Sleeves"), sent him to the Cochiza tribe for help in order to take revenge on the Mexicans. It was from this time that the name Geronimo became famous, because, ignoring the deadly hail of bullets that the Mexicans showered the Apaches with, he attacked the Mexican soldiers with a knife and cut their throats with the first blow, and with the second, removed the scalp. Some believe that this is how his nickname Geronimo was born, as Mexican soldiers addressed their patron saint Jeronimo (“Jeronimo!”) In this way, asking him for help. Others attribute this to the mispronunciation of his name by Mexican soldiers.
In his autobiography, published in 1905, there were the following lines concerning his relationship to the Mexicans:
“I killed a lot of Mexicans, I don’t know how many, because I often didn’t count them. Some of them weren't worth counting. It's been a long time since then, but I still don't like Mexicans. With me they have always been insidious and vicious."
As for the Chiricahua tribe, here many had mixed feelings for Geronimo. On the one hand, he was respected as an experienced military leader, but many Apaches disliked him, mainly because he placed his personal revenge above tribal interests. Nonetheless, the Apache people were in awe of Geronimo's "strength", which he had repeatedly demonstrated. These abilities clearly indicated to them that Geronimo possessed supernatural powers that he could use for the benefit of people or to harm. It was said of him that Geronimo was able to foresee events that would then occur in the future. He also had the ability to heal other people, which for the Apaches was a clear indication of his close connection with spirits. It is clear that none of them dared to oppose such a person!
