Geronimo was born in southern Arizona, present-day Clifton, and given the name Goyathlay, meaning “one who yawns.” The Mexicans later gave him the name Geronimo, which is Spanish for Jerome. After his mother, wife and children were massacred by Mexicans in 1858, he joined in the raids of Cochise, Victorio, and other Apache leaders against Mexican and American settlers. He did not inherit his status as chief, having risen to leadership through the ranks.
Geronimo was chief of the southern Chiricahua tribe of Apache Indians.* In 1876, when the Chiricahua reservation was dismantled by the U.S. government and the Apaches were relocated to the dry San Carlos reservation in New Mexico, Geronimo led his followers into Mexico. He established hideaways for his followers in the Sierra Madre Mountains. The camps were well concealed to avert capture.
From this secure base, Geronimo began a decade of sporadic forays against white settlements alternating with periodic surrender, then peaceful farming on the San Carlos reservation. Once while on the warpath in March 1886, he surrendered to General George Crook, who imposed a “treaty” that would have relocated the Chiricahua to Florida, but Geronimo escaped with his band two days later. In September of that year, he and his force surrendered to General Nelson A. Miles, Crook’s replacement.
In March 1905, Geronimo was invited to President Theodore Roosevelt’s inaugural parade; he and five real Indian chiefs, who wore full headgear and painted faces, rode horses down Pennsylvania Avenue. The intent, one newspaper stated, was to show Americans “that they have buried the hatchet forever.”
After the parade, Geronimo met with Roosevelt in what the New York Tribune reported was a “pathetic appeal” to allow him to return to Arizona. “Take the ropes from our hands,” Geronimo begged, with tears “running down his bullet-scarred cheeks.” Through an interpreter, Roosevelt told Geronimo that the Indian had a “bad heart.” “You killed many of my people; you burned villages…and were not good Indians.” The president would have to wait a while “and see how you and your people act” on their reservation.
Geronimo Quote: “I cannot think that we are useless or God would not have created us. There is one God looking down on us all. We are all the children of one God. The sun, the darkness, the winds are all listening to what we have to say.”