Geronimo’s Story of His Life

Description

This story is the verbal life account of a famous Apache warrior. Written in 1905, while Geronimo was taken captive as an American prisoner of war at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, Geronimo’s life story made spectators and printing with the exertions of S. M. Barrett–Lawton, Oklahoma, Superintendent of Education, who stated in his preface that “the initial idea of the compilation of this work was . . . to extend to Geronimo as a prisoner of war the courtesy due any captive, i.e. the right to state the causes which impelled him in his opposition to our civilization and laws.” Barrett, with the help of Asa Deklugie, son of Nedni chief Whoa as Apache interpreter, composed the life story as Geronimo narrated it -starting with an Apache creation legend. Geronimo detailed gory combats with Mexican hordes, against whom he had sworn reprisal after they killed his mother, his wife, and his three young children. He narrated of treaties created among the Apaches and the U.S. Army — and treaties shattered. There were times of imprisonment on the reservations, and flights. And there were his last days on the run, when the U.S. Army placed 5000 men in the ground in contrary with his few group of 39 Apache.

Geronimo had been a captive of war for 19 years when he stated his life narrative. He was by then an elderly man, no more a trooper, and he had come to an adaptation with several things “white,” such as an admiration for money. U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs staff brought him to the St. Louis World’s Fair, where he tied cows in the “wild west show” and contracted his name for “ten, fifteen, or twenty five cents.” By then he was probably the United States’ most “famous” Indian. He was later requested to ride horseback in President Theodore Roosevelt’s foundational parade.
[amz_corss_sell asin=”177672559X”]