American Experience (1988) s21e08 Episode Script

1
(man speaking Native American
language)
It is a story
at the heart of America
one richer and more surprising
than we've been told.
(tribal drumming)
American Experience
presents a story
that spans 300 years
and a vast continent.
WOMAN:
The greatest thing a person can
have is the power.
Benegotsi. It's scary.
It is a story of hope
courage
and survival.
We were about to be
obliterated culturally.
Our spiritual way of life,
our entire way of life,
was about to be stamped out.
(roaring)
MAN:
Every tribe in this country
has a time of horror
Absolute horror when they were
confronted by this invader.
MAN:
What we did to the Southeastern
Indians, it's ethnic cleansing.
MAN:
It was done to them,
so they did it back.
But better.
MAN:
Whatever means and manner
we could,
since the Europeans
arrived here,
we've had to fight
for our survival.
An epic history of America
(whooping)
seen through Native eyes
too remarkable
too inspiring
to ever forget.
The master of life has appointed
this place
for us to light our fires
And here we shall remain.
Exclusive corporate funding
for American Experience
provided by:
Major funding provided by:
Funding for We Shall Remain
provided by:
And by the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting
and:
(birds chirping)
NARRATOR:
In 1886, in the blazing
summer heat,
39 Apaches raced across
the desert Southwest,
chased by 5,000
American soldiers.
They were the only Indian people
in the entire nation
still fighting the U.S. Army.
For many months, the handful
of men, women and children
evaded capture
Running, running,
then running some more,
as much as 80 miles a day.
Across the nation,
Americans were horrified
by details of the chase
Some real, many exaggerated.
Thirty-nine people were
on the run that summer,
but the soldiers were really
after only one man.
To his hunters he was
a vicious killer,
capable of murdering
without mercy.
To the Apaches
he was more complex
Courageous yet vengeful,
an unyielding protector
of his family's freedom,
yet the cause of his people's
greatest suffering.
In the course of the chase
and in the years that followed,
he would become a legend
and the symbol of the untamed
freedom of the American West.
His name was Geronimo.
WOMAN:
Long ago Coyote opened
a bag of darkness
and it spread over the world.
Creatures of the night loved it.
But birds and little animals
longed for day.
The little animals played a game
to win back the light.
They won, but one
night monster remained.
After the game, the first human,
White Painted Woman,
gave birth to a son.
She hid him from the monster.
When the boy was grown, he faced
the monster and killed it.
(screeching)
He was then called Apache.
All Chiricahuas are named
after him.
NARRATOR:
Geronimo was born
sometime in the 1820s
at the headwaters
of the Gila River
along the border of what became
Arizona and New Mexico.
(speaking Apache language)
NARRATOR:
As young as age six,
Geronimo learned to hunt.
He would have spent hours
crawling along the ground
sneaking up on prey, catching
birds with his bare hands.
When he made his first kill,
he swallowed the animal's heart
raw and whole
to insure a life of success
on the chase.
OLIVER ENJADY:
Young kids grow up dodging
arrows, dodging rocks.
They were taught to use the bow
and arrow very early.
They were taught to run and run
and run as young ones.
And then as they grew older,
they depended on this.
NARRATOR:
"No one is your friend,"
Geronimo was told,
"but your legs.
Your legs are your friends."
TIM HARJO:
There was always danger.
There was always that fear
that just around the corner
somebody would be coming across
it to take your life.
NARRATOR:
Surrounded by their
traditional enemies
The Utes, the Comanches,
the Navajos
The Apache numbered just 8,000
people, split into many tribes.
MICHAEL DARROW:
A lot of people think that
Apaches are just one tribe.
But they are a group of nations,
a separate people
with their own history
and their own culture
and their own territory.
The Chiricahua Apaches,
which are my people,
and we had four
different groups,
four bands within that tribe.
We had the Chihenne, who are
the Warm Springs Apaches.
We had the Chokonen, who lived
around the Chiricahua Mountains.
There were the Nednai, the band
that lived mostly in Mexico.
(bird cawing)
NARRATOR:
Geronimo belonged
to the smallest band
within the Chiricahua tribe,
the Bedonkohe.
As a teenager he joined older
Bedonkohe men on raiding trips.
The raids were lightning-quick
attacks.
Apaches seized the horses
and provisions they wanted
before melting into
the surrounding country.
There's no getting
around the fact
that Apache life was built
around raiding.
They they didn't raise
horses, they stole horses.
ANDRÉS RESÉNDEZ:
Raiding was a very good way
to obtain horses,
to obtain cattle,
to obtain captives,
and there were markets for all
of these commodities.
It was common for the
Chiricahua, for example,
to raid one settlement
and trade in another.
This had been going on
for a great many years.
ROBERTS:
It wasn't considered
by the Apache a crime.
You took what you needed
and too bad if the people
who owned it got upset.
People looked at the needs
of their people,
their group of people, and said,
"Hey, we, we need food.
"We need ammunition.
We need some cattle."
And so the raids were planned.
NARRATOR:
Raiding had been a way of life
for the Apaches
and their Indian neighbors
for generations,
but Mexicans living on
or near Apache land
found it intolerable.
In response to the constant
theft of property,
the Mexican government passed
laws offering cash payments
for Apache scalps.
Soon, bounty hunters were
roaming the desert,
killing any Indian
they could find.
(speaking Apache language)
NARRATOR:
In spite of the bounty hunters,
the Apaches continued raiding.
By the time he was 17, Geronimo
had successfully completed
four raiding expeditions.
Now, in the eyes of
the Bedonkohe, he was a man
old enough to join the hunt
and choose a wife.
He fell hard for a slender
young girl named Alope.
ROBERTS:
I think Alope was,
to use a kind of corny
Americanism,
the love of his life.
Geronimo went to Alope's father
to ask for her hand in marriage
and the old man said,
"It's going to cost you
a lot of horses."
And I think it's dad saying,
"She's too good for you."
NARRATOR:
Geronimo disappeared.
When he returned
several days later,
he led a long string of horses.
"This," Geronimo
later explained,
"was all the marriage ceremony
necessary in our tribe."
Within a few years, Alope and
Geronimo had three children.
As their young ones grew, the
couple celebrated each stage
of their lives
with age-old rituals.
ELBYS HUGAR:
When the baby is born,
there's a small ceremony
for the cradle.
And then later on,
when they start walking,
there's another small ceremony
for that.
NARRATOR:
Like most Apache women,
Alope pierced her babies' ears
to make her children grow faster
and bathed them in water
steeped with wildflowers
to make their skin strong.
And just as their parents
had done,
Alope and Geronimo taught
their children
to sing prayers to Ussen,
the Creator,
for health, strength and wisdom.
One day in the early 1850s,
Geronimo and his family
joined other Chiricahuas
on a trading trip.
The group camped on
the outskirts of a Mexican town
called Janos and the men
headed in to trade.
On the way back, the Chiricahuas
met distraught members
of their band.
Mexican soldiers had ransacked
their camp, the women cried,
stealing their ponies
and supplies,
leaving their wickiups in ruins.
The Apaches scattered.
That night Geronimo slipped back
into the camp.
There he discovered the bodies
of his mother, his wife
and his three small children,
lying in pools of blood.
ZELDA YAZZA:
When he saw all his family
massacred there,
he cut his hair, and he left
his hair there with them.
You see all the pictures
that were taken.
You see their hair short,
like mine.
That was a sign of mourning,
that they lost someone.
NARRATOR:
When Geronimo returned home,
he ripped down his wife's
paintings,
tore apart strings of beads
she'd made
and gathered his
children's toys.
And just as Apaches had done
for generations
when loved ones died,
he set everything his wife and
children had owned on fire.
SILAS COCHISE:
Geronimo's attitude changed
after his mother was killed,
after his wife was killed,
after his children was killed.
And so that created an attitude
towards the non-Indians.
It just changed him completely
and totally.
Maybe it wasn't
it wasn't a wise thing
to deal with things like that,
but he wanted revenge.
VERNON SIMMONS:
Your wife's dead,
your kids are dead,
your mother's dead.
That's your life, taken away
from you in an instant.
It would want to make
you go kill everybody.
NARRATOR:
"I had no purpose left,"
Geronimo later recalled.
"My heart ached for revenge."
WOMAN:
Power is everywhere.
It lives in everything.
It might be known
through a word,
or come in the shape
of an animal.
We all have Power, but some
tap into different rooms.
Power speaks to those
who listen.
HUGAR:
The greatest thing a person can
have is the power.
Benegotsi. It's scary.
NARRATOR:
Not long after the vicious
murder of his family,
a despondent Geronimo ventured
deep into Chiricahua country.
Alone, he buried his head
in his hands and began to cry.
Suddenly, he was startled
by a voice.
(sonic boom)
"No gun will ever kill you,"
it said.
"I will take the bullets
from the guns of the Mexicans
and I will guide your arrows."
Geronimo later said
that he had been given
what Apache people call Power,
a gift from Ussen.
ROBERT HAOZOUS:
The concept of power is
fundamental in Apache belief.
Everybody acknowledges
that somebody has
a certain power,
like the power of medicine,
the power of healing,
the power of seeing or feeling
something at a distance.
ENJADY:
There were people that knew
where you were,
people that knew about horses,
people that knew about hunting.
We call this Power.
NARRATOR:
Soon after the voice
spoke to him,
Geronimo put his power
into action.
He got permission
from the Chiricahua chiefs
to take revenge for the massacre
at Janos.
With a force of 200 men,
he lured the Mexican soldiers
who had killed his family
into battle.
Leading the charge through
a hail of bullets,
Geronimo whirled and dodged,
killing with his knife
when his arrows ran out.
So he's dashing back and forth,
running this zigzag pattern,
and obviously scaring the
daylights out of the Mexicans.
They have never run into an
antagonist quite like this guy.
I don't care what you put up
against him,
he'll come after you.
That's the kind
of fighter he was.
He was a true-blooded
Chiricahua fighter.
And he said he didn't he
wasn't scared of bullets.
That I heard from my grandpa.
NARRATOR:
Geronimo and his men
decimated the enemy.
From that day forward, Mexicans
would shudder at his name,
while the Chiricahuas would
accord him great respect.
As a sign of his status,
over the years he would take
many wives,
including the daughter of
the greatest Chiricahua chief,
Cochise.
Yet Geronimo would never be
a chief himself.
For the Apaches, he was
too impulsive, too fretful,
too vengeful.
We had many people in our tribe
who had the characteristics
appropriate for being a chief,
who were well respected
and who were known
for making careful decisions for
the well-being of the people.
And Geronimo was
not among those.
NARRATOR:
For the ten years after
his celebrated victory,
Geronimo fought one bloody
battle after another
with Mexicans.
In all that time he was
completely unknown to Americans.
His first encounter with them
was friendly.
A handful of land surveyors
came through Apache country
and Geronimo traded ponies,
skins and blankets with them
for clothing and food.
"They were good men,"
he remembered,
"and we were sorry they had gone
on into the west.
They were the first white men
I ever saw."
ROBERTS:
He may wonder, "This is a whole
different species of person
"from the Mexicans,
"who have raided and killed and
enslaved us for maybe a century.
Maybe we have something to hope
from these 'white eyes.'"
NARRATOR:
The Apaches didn't know
it at the time,
but the men who traded
with Geronimo
had been sent to mark a new
international boundary.
At the end of the
Mexican-American War in 1848,
the United States had wrested
huge swaths of territory
from Mexico, including large
areas of Apache land.
The surveyors were followed
in the 1850s
by thousands of other Americans,
as fortune hunters streamed
through Chiricahua country
on the way to California gold.
The Apaches debated how
to respond to the newcomers.
They looked to the one leader
who could speak
for all of the Chiricahua bands,
Geronimo's father-in-law,
Cochise.
Cochise was probably
the greatest warrior and chief
that the Chiricahuas
had ever had.
I think even to this very day
that that name is spoken
with great reverence.
Cochise is one of those people
who earns a reputation,
not only as a warrior
but as a statesman,
if you like, as a diplomat.
NARRATOR:
The Americans, Cochise believed,
were an irritant,
not a threat.
He negotiated a deal
allowing travelers,
goods and mail to pass through
his people's land.
But when Spanish gold mines were
rediscovered in the Southwest,
American prospectors
came to stay.
MOSES:
The miners that descend
on Arizona
are mostly a lawless bunch
of people.
R. DAVID EDMUNDS:
Mining camps are
full of young men
who are almost completely beyond
any social bounds.
They are one of the worst places
in the American West.
They are absolutely
full of racism.
Miners are disastrous for most
Native American people.
NARRATOR:
Some miners were barbarous,
poisoning the Apaches' food
with strychnine,
cutting fetuses out of the
bellies of pregnant women,
selling Apache girls
into slavery.
When Americans decapitated
a venerated Apache chief
and sent his boiled skull back
east as a gruesome trophy,
they pushed Cochise too far.
He believed in punishing someone
that was wrong,
and in punishing people that
were responsible for,
you know, his people dying
or getting hurt.
He wasn't going to let anybody
take advantage of him
or his people.
NARRATOR:
Cochise urged Geronimo and
the Chiricahuas to take revenge.
"All of the Indians agreed
not to be friendly
with the white man anymore,"
Geronimo later said.
"Sometimes we attacked
the white men,
sometimes they attacked us."
(gunshot, horse whinnying)
The Chiricahuas ambushed
stagecoaches and wagon trains,
mutilating their victims,
smashing heads with rocks,
stabbing corpses
with their spears,
dangling bodies over fires.
ENJADY:
What happened back then happened
because they were humans.
It was done to them
so they did it back.
But better.
NARRATOR:
In his 40s now, Geronimo's face
showed the ravages of war.
ROBERTS:
The scars from bullets
across his cheek
one journalist spoke of how
one of those injuries had caused
him to seem to have
a perpetual sneer,
a sneer of hatred,
a sneer of contempt.
KEITH BASSO:
The man had a very
impressive face,
extremely handsome in his way.
In Apache, one would say hashke.
There is a measure of meanness
and anger in the face.
(birds chirping)
NARRATOR:
Through the 1860s, as the war
with the Apaches raged,
the growing population
of white settlers
became increasingly angry
that the government was not
protecting them.
In the frontier town of Tucson,
to the east of Chiricahua
territory,
newspapers called
for retribution.
While "utter extermination"
might not be considered
practical,
one columnist wrote,
"sound whippings" of Apaches
should be encouraged.
"We must stand by our race, for
blood is thicker than water,"
declared another.
"Let slip the dogs of war in
good earnest upon all Indians."
News of the escalating violence
shook Washington.
To bring order to the Southwest,
President Ulysses S. Grant
sent his most respected Indian
fighter to Arizona.
A veteran of the Civil War,
General George Crook had been
fighting Indians ever since.
Though he would prove ruthless
in his pursuit of the Apaches,
Crook had an unusual empathy
for Indians.
DARROW:
General Crook, from the
perspective of our own tribe,
was one of the generals
who tried hardest
to understand things from
an Apache's perspective.
And it was something
that our people at that time
greatly appreciated,
that there was somebody who
would actually talk with them.
BASSO:
Crook was forever talking about
how intelligent Apaches were.
He was a firm believer
that with proper forms
of formal education,
Apache people could quickly
become "civilized"
and become upstanding members
of society.
NARRATOR:
Crook was charged
with implementing
a new federal Indian policy.
Instead of treating Native
tribes as sovereign nations,
as the U.S. had been doing
for more than a century,
Indians would now be
wards of the state.
Over the next decade,
the American army would force
tribe after tribe
onto reservations.
PHILIP DELORIA:
The reservation becomes
this dominant way
of containing Indian people.
This place where Indian people
can be contained
and then worked on, right,
transformed and changed
so that they can have a future
within American society.
Crook's strategy was as simple
as it was difficult
to enforce.
His basic idea was that
if Apache people would stay
on their reservations, he would
do everything he could
to make their lives comfortable.
But those who refused and
who continued raiding,
he vowed to hunt down
to the very last man.
NARRATOR:
Ten years earlier the Apaches
neighbors, the Navajos,
had faced a similar choice
Comply with the American demands
or fight.
The Navajos chose war.
After a brutal
military campaign,
the American army forced them
into submission.
Survivors were marched off their
ancestral land
to a distant reservation.
Along the way hundreds died
of starvation and disease.
Apaches knew this history well.
HARJO:
The Navajo people
and Apache people
knew one another,
they shared information.
There was a whole network
of information exchange
between the tribes in the area.
NARRATOR:
Many Apaches reluctantly agreed
to settle on reservations.
Crook played Apaches
against each other.
He offered them incentives
to become scouts
for the U.S. Army
and lead the hunt for Apaches
who refused to give in.
(speaking Apache language)
NARRATOR:
For several years,
as one by one Apache chiefs
agreed to reservation life,
Cochise and the Chiricahuas
continued to fight.
But the time came when the great
Chiricahua leader realized
his people could not
resist forever.
ROBERTS:
Cochise recognized
that the Anglo-Americans
were a more formidable foe
than the Mexicans.
They had better technology,
their army was far more
efficient
and he sensed that there was
too many of them;
there were so many people
compared to his people.
NARRATOR:
After a decade of war, Cochise
agreed to halt the killing
and to end Apache raids north
of the Mexican border.
In return, the Americans would
create a reservation
for the Chiricahua on their
ancestral homeland,
a pristine wilderness of
mountains, canyons, streams
and open fields.
Prime land in the eyes
of the settlers.
DARROW:
The United States told them,
"Well, all you have to do is
just stay in this one spot."
That was the arrangement
they had made
in order to stay
on their own land.
NARRATOR:
With minimal interference
from the U.S.,
the Chiricahuas lived much as
they had for generations,
raiding into Mexico whenever
they needed horses and supplies.
But just two years later,
Cochise died,
and the deal he had struck with
the Americans was put at risk.
ROBERTS:
Cochise's death was
an irreplaceable loss.
No one would ever take
his place,
no one would ever unite the
various bands of Chiricahua
the way Cochise succeeded
in doing.
The death of Cochise brought out
what the Americans thought
was an opportunity
to open up that area of land
for mining and settlement,
and that without leaders
such as Cochise,
they would be much easier
to eventually conquer.
NARRATOR:
With Cochise gone,
the federal government decided
to move the Chiricahua
150 miles north to
a mosquito-ridden reservation
called San Carlos.
This would open the valuable
Chiricahua land
for American settlement
and appease the Mexicans,
who were fed up
with Apache raiding.
A young reservation agent
named John Clum
was sent from San Carlos
to deliver the news.
Reluctantly, the Chiricahuas
agreed to move.
Clum's final meeting was with
Geronimo's brother-in-law,
Chief Juh.
Juh stuttered, so Geronimo
spoke for him.
"We will move to San Carlos,"
Geronimo told Clum.
"Just give us a little time."
That night, after strangling
their own dogs
so the barking would not
give them away,
Geronimo, Juh and some 700
Chiricahuas slipped away.
Clum was furious.
Blaming Geronimo, not Juh,
he became obsessed with
capturing the Indian
he believed responsible
for the double cross.
On April 21, 1877, Geronimo rode
into Clum's carefully laid trap.
As he arrived at Ojo Caliente,
New Mexico,
to trade some horses,
dozens of Apache scouts
Including Cochise's son Naiche
Surrounded him.
They carted him back
to San Carlos in chains.
ROBERTS:
He thought he was going to die.
He thought he would be executed.
MOSES:
He understands that
he may not die in battle,
something that his power tells
him, "This will never happen."
But it didn't say much
about him dying
at the end of a hangman's rope.
NARRATOR:
Clum threw Geronimo into
the San Carlos guardhouse,
confident that he would
soon be hanged.
But Clum was unexpectedly
relieved of his command.
The new reservation agent
saw no need
to keep Geronimo locked up.
After four months, he was
released from the guardhouse.
But he was hardly free.
Soldiers treated him like any
Apache on the reservation.
They took away his gun, made him
wear an identification tag,
forced him to attend
a daily head count
and demanded he obtain an
official pass to go anywhere,
even to hunt for food.
They ordered him to plant
vegetables and dig ditches.
DARROW:
It was too hot and too rocky
and too thorny.
If there was any good land,
it probably belonged
to somebody else.
YAZZA:
There was nothing there.
They didn't like it at all.
(bird caws)
Not even the dogs like it there.
HARJO:
To top it off, they were
expected to become farmers.
Not only are we not farmers,
but there's nothing to farm.
NARRATOR:
For four years,
Geronimo struggled with life
on the reservation.
Then, in the summer of 1881,
he was drawn to
the startling message
of a charismatic Apache medicine
man called the Dreamer.
A former military scout well
versed in American ways,
he urged a return to traditional
Apache life.
Apaches came from miles around
to attend his ceremony.
The Dreamer marked east, south,
west and north
with sacred cattail pollen.
People circled around him
as he preached.
Apaches should not take revenge
against the white man,
the Dreamer said.
Ussen would see that
the Americans suffered
for their sins in the afterlife.
It was a plea for
unity and peace
for a people who had seen
little of either.
(speaking Apache language)
NARRATOR:
Reservation officials feared
that the medicine man
might incite a revolt and sent
85 soldiers and 23 Apache scouts
to arrest or kill him.
When the soldiers seized
the Dreamer,
a group of angry Apaches
surrounded them.
Suddenly a firefight erupted.
(gunshot)
Within moments the Dreamer
had been wounded.
Enraged by an attack
on a peaceful medicine man,
Apache scouts turned their guns
on the soldiers.
(gunshot)
When the shooting was over,
seven cavalrymen, 17 Apaches
and the Dreamer were dead.
(speaking Apache language)
NARRATOR:
The Americans limped back
to their fort.
The scouts who had mutinied were
arrested and several hanged.
News of the battle shot
across the country.
The New York Times claimed
that Apaches in Arizona
had carried out a massacre as
horrible as Custer's last stand.
Anxious officials called for
reinforcements from New Mexico
and California.
Soon San Carlos was swarming
with U.S. soldiers.
No one felt more endangered
than Geronimo.
It didn't make sense to stay
in an area
with a large group of soldiers
who you knew had a history
of them trying to kill you.
NARRATOR:
On September 30, 1881,
accompanied by Juh
and 72 Chiricahuas,
Geronimo escaped from San Carlos
and headed south.
It was the beginning
of five years
of bloody Chiricahua resistance,
the last Indian war ever fought
on United States soil
and the transformation
of Geronimo into a legend.
Geronimo raced towards
the relative safety of Mexico.
When he passed near
the frontier town of Tombstone,
terrified businessmen
demanded protection.
The town's newly elected mayor
was John Clum,
the former San Carlos
reservation agent.
He relished the opportunity of
a second chance at his nemesis.
He rounded up a posse,
including a former sheriff made
famous by a recent gun fight
in Tombstone, Wyatt Earp.
"If we get Geronimo this time,"
Clum declared,
"we'll send him back to the army
nailed up in a long, narrow box
with a paper lily on his chest."
For two days the posse
pursued Geronimo,
but never even caught
a glimpse of him.
Geronimo headed for the one
place Chiricahuas felt safe,
a part of Apache territory
high in the Sierra Madre
that no outsiders
had ever penetrated.
The Americans called it
the Apache Stronghold,
but it was much more than that.
HARJO:
What you're really talking about
is a whole territory
of land or place
that a group of people
called home,
you know, stretched for hundreds
and hundreds of miles.
NARRATOR:
There, Geronimo joined the
greatest Apache force assembled
since the days of Cochise.
They were the only Indians in
the entire nation still fighting
the American army.
In the past two decades,
one tribe after the next
had been defeated.
The Kiowa
the Comanche
the Cheyenne had been forced
onto reservations.
The Lakota had surrendered.
Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce
had agreed to terms.
Only the Chiricahuas
were still free.
They celebrated with a dance.
(man chanting)
ENJADY:
Everything that an Apache does
is sacred.
Even the dancing.
(chanting, drums beating)
(man yells)
ROBERTS:
They feel a power
and invincibility.
They say, "Well, maybe
we have to give up
"Arizona and New Mexico.
"Maybe we can't live anymore
north of the border,
but we can live forever here."
NARRATOR:
For several months, Geronimo and
the Chiricahuas enjoyed a return
to their traditional life.
The men hunted and raided;
the women gathered mescal,
dried beef
and made clothes
from plundered Mexican cloth.
But Geronimo couldn't
stop worrying.
He knew that it was becoming
increasingly risky
to raid local villages
and Mexican troops were
gathering in the mountains.
And he understood
that as long as they lived
off the reservation,
the American army would
be after them too.
They needed more people.
To get them, Geronimo posed
an audacious
and controversial plan.
In a heated debate,
he argued they should return
to San Carlos,
abduct their own people 400
Chiricahuas under Chief Loco-?
And force them to join
the resistance.
ROBERTS:
Geronimo was
a brilliant manipulator.
He was able to talk people
into things
that their better judgment told
them would not work.
Geronimo was said to be
a good talker.
That seems to be one of his
primary characteristics.
SILAS COCHISE:
Geronimo was a person
that came to some conclusion
and he wanted to do something
about it right then,
no matter what
the situation was,
no matter what the cost was.
NARRATOR:
At dawn on April 19, 1882,
Geronimo and a group
of armed Chiricahuas
slipped onto San Carlos
reservation.
They confronted Loco
with guns drawn.
"Take them all,"
one of Geronimo's men shouted.
"Shoot down anyone who refuses
to come with us!"
SILAS COCHISE:
Loco didn't want to leave.
He wanted to settle down.
A lot of these small group
leaders wanted to settle down.
ANITA LESTER:
It seems like all
the other leaders
were trying to make peace
for their women and children.
NARRATOR:
Loco and his band were forced
on a harrowing trip
to the Stronghold.
Within sight
of the Sierra Madre,
they rode into a Mexican ambush.
Geronimo's hostages were unarmed
and whole families were
slaughtered on the spot.
78 Apaches, mostly women
and children, were killed.
Many of the survivors blamed
Geronimo.
"We were filled with gloom and
despair," one of them recalled.
"What had we done to be treated
so cruelly by our own race?"
MOSES:
Geronimo's unwillingness
to consider
the wishes of Loco
and his people
points to a certain selfishness
on his part.
ROBERTS:
Cochise would not have done
the same thing.
Cochise respected the idea
that Loco could have chosen
for himself.
NARRATOR:
Geronimo saw it differently.
He had added more people
to the Chiricahua band,
the last living free
off the reservation.
If he had any regrets,
he never spoke of them.
WOMAN:
Coyote threw a stone into water.
He said, "If this sinks,
all that live will die."
Coyote knew all along
that the stone would sink,
for he is the trickster.
Because of his stone,
man must die.
All that men do,
Coyote did first.
NARRATOR:
One spring night in 1883,
U.S. soldiers apprehended
a young Apache man
slipping onto the San Carlos
reservation.
His name was Tzoe, but the
Americans called him Peaches.
They suspected he might have
information
that would lead them
to Geronimo.
They put him in chains,
suspended him by his arms
and interrogated him.
Finally he broke down and told
a remarkable story.
Although he wasn't Chiricahua,
he said he had been taken
by Geronimo with Loco's band.
When the group was ambushed
by Mexicans,
he lost both his wives.
For a year, Peaches lived
in the Stronghold,
but he missed his family.
Peaches, we must remember,
is not a Chiricahua.
He is kept under surveillance
in the Stronghold,
because people already think
he might be a turncoat.
JENNIE HENRY:
NARRATOR:
Life in the Stronghold,
Peaches said, was hard.
The Chiricahuas moved every
few days and were low on food.
Yearning to see his mother
at San Carlos,
Peaches slipped away one night
and walked backed
to the reservation.
It was the break Crook needed.
Peaches knew where
the Stronghold was
and how to get there.
He could lead the U.S.
Army to Geronimo.
(thunder)
Six weeks later, Geronimo
was in Chihuahua, Mexico,
when he had a premonition.
"Our base camp,"
he told the other men,
"has been invaded
by U.S. troops."
They raced back to find
that Crook had occupied
their camp
with several hundred soldiers
and Apache scouts.
The Stronghold had been
breached.
Now there was nowhere
for the Chiricahuas to hide.
It dealt an absolutely
shattering psychological blow
to Geronimo and the other
Chiricahua.
They believed, "We are always
safe here in the Stronghold.
"We can always, even if we can
never live in
north of the border, we can
always come here and flourish."
NARRATOR:
Reluctantly, Geronimo
and the band agreed
to return to the reservation.
For almost two years, it seemed
as if peace had come to Arizona.
Intent on keeping
the Chiricahuas
on the reservation for good,
General Crook allowed them
to decide
where they wanted to live.
They chose the fertile banks
of Turkey Creek,
a spot resembling the cool
mountain pastures
of their traditional home.
For the first time in years,
most Chiricahuas felt settled.
Not Geronimo.
He tried his hand
at farming, but didn't like it,
and he bridled
at being bossed around
by young, white officials.
Finally, he'd had enough.
On May 17, 1885, Geronimo
and nearly 150 people
fled Turkey Creek,
leaving the majority of
Chiricahuas on the reservation.
U.S. troops followed
close behind.
SIMMONS:
"We were running all the time,"
my grandpa said.
"Always living one part
one night,
"moving someplace the next time.
"The cavalry was always
chasing us somewhere.
We were running,
always running."
NARRATOR:
The fleeing Chiricahuas
dispersed.
Geronimo led a small group
of men, women and children.
Now in his 60s,
he was respected as an elder.
Although he was not a chief,
his band looked to him
for leadership and guidance.
HARJO:
In times of danger,
he was the man to be with.
ROBERT GERONIMO:
According to my grandmother,
they were walking miles
and miles and miles.
SILAS COCHISE:
The men would run
and the women would ride
the horses and follow.
The Chiricahua people, they
could move 70 miles or 80 miles
in one day, you know,
where the cavalry
that was following them
a lot of times couldn't keep up.
HUGAR:
They were running
from the cavalry
and they ran into these rocks.
And they turned themselves
into rocks.
MOSES:
Among Geronimo's powers
was the ability to suspend
time and space.
On one particular raid,
he was actually able
to hold off the dawn
for a few hours,
and so they could approach
in darkness.
NARRATOR:
The Chiricahuas killed anyone
who crossed their path.
"If we were seen by a civilian,"
one Apache recalled,
"it meant that Geronimo would be
reported to the military
"and they would be after us,
"so there was nothing to do
but kill.
"It was terrible to see
little children killed,
but the soldiers killed
our women and children too."
Once, Geronimo feigned
friendship with a rancher,
asking him to slaughter
some sheep
and cook them for his men.
After they feasted on mutton,
Geronimo shot
and stabbed his host
and the man's wife and children.
He would have killed
the White Mountain Apache family
living on the ranch,
but members of his band
intervened, guns drawn,
forcing Geronimo to back down.
He was driven, and his people
were driven
to such a sense of desperation
and futility and humiliation
that that striking back
in anger could take, you know,
oftentimes really quite awfully
horrific sorts of forms.
You don't take over a continent
in an easy way
and you don't give up a
continent without fighting hard.
So there is a long history
that everyone understands
that that's what the fight
is about
and that it's going to be bloody
and awful and violent
and painful.
NARRATOR:
Most settlers in the Southwest
now saw Geronimo
as simply a vicious killer.
Every time someone died
or got raided,
it was always Chiricahuas.
Even if they were far away.
And it was because Geronimo
was about, here and there,
bragging and saying things.
NARRATOR:
By early 1886, the years of
hiding, raiding and running
had taken their toll.
Even Geronimo was tired.
ROBERTS:
Morale is pretty low.
There are too few of them.
There's a sense of doom hovering
over the Chiricahua existence.
NARRATOR:
That March, Geronimo arrived
at Cañon de los Embudos,
south of the Mexican border,
to meet with General Crook.
Surrounded by two dozen
armed Chiricahuas, he sat down
to talk about terms
for surrender.
Beads of sweat rolled down
his temples.
"There are very few of my men
left now," Geronimo said.
"They have done some bad things
but I want them all rubbed out,
and let us never speak
of them again."
Crook had orders to demand
unconditional surrender
from the Chiricahuas,
but he knew that Geronimo would
never agree.
After several days
of negotiating, Crook promised
that if the Apaches spent two
years in an East Coast prison
they could return to Arizona.
Geronimo and the Chiricahuas
finally accepted
Crook's terms.
"I give myself up to you,"
Geronimo said.
"Do with me what you please.
"Once I moved about
like the wind.
Now I surrender to you
and that is all."
It wasn't all.
Geronimo has one last change
of heart, one more vacillation,
his always vacillating mind.
How did he know this wasn't
another double cross?
NARRATOR:
Two days later,
as most of the Chiricahuas
headed north with Crook,
Geronimo led a group of 21 men,
14 women and six children,
mostly members of his family,
into the night.
HAOZOUS:
When Geronimo made
that final break,
it's hard to understand what was
going through his mind,
because he knew.
He knew what he was facing.
ENJADY:
Maybe they wanted to go back
for one more last look,
to say thank you for all that
this land has provided them.
ROBERTS:
I don't think he had
a coherent plan
for a survival strategy that
would last for another decade.
He was an improviser.
NARRATOR:
Geronimo took his band
into New Mexico.
"We were reckless for our
lives," he later recalled.
"For we felt every man's hand
was against us.
"If we returned
to the reservation,
"we would be put in prison
and killed.
"If we stayed in Mexico,
"they would continue to send
soldiers to fight us.
So we gave no quarter to anyone
and asked no favors."
Word spread across Arizona
and New Mexico
that Geronimo was
on the loose again.
Ranchers pleaded with the
White House for protection.
"We are surrounded by Apaches,"
one wrote.
"We have many small children
and women with us.
For the sake of humanity,
send us some soldiers."
ROBERTS:
The terror,
the psychological trauma
that Geronimo wrought at the end
created this fantasy,
the great American
Western fantasy:
"I'm surrounded by Indians.
They're going to kill us all."
NARRATOR:
Incensed that Crook had allowed
Geronimo to escape,
federal officials removed him
from his post.
His replacement, General Nelson
Miles, was a hard-liner
with little use for Crook's
Apache scouts.
Miles requested thousands
of reinforcements
to bring in the fleeing
Chiricahuas.
The Chiricahua were a tricky
group of people.
Smart, wise decisions were made.
The U.S. military hunted for
them almost all over Arizona
and on into Mexico,
but they were chasing spirits.
ROBERTS:
They're being pursued
by 5,000 American troops
One quarter of the U.S. Army,
3,000 Mexican troops,
possibly a thousand vigilantes.
So you've got 9,000 hunters
against 39 fugitives
and they never succeed
in capturing
a single man, woman or child.
If that isn't brilliant,
nothing is.
NARRATOR:
Journalists flocked
to the Southwest
and provided lurid and riveting
accounts of the fugitives.
MOSES:
He had achieved a notoriety
that went well beyond
the American Southwest.
ROBERTS:
That's when he really becomes
the most famous Indian
in the West
and, in the phrase of the day,
the "worst Indian
who ever lived."
Geronimo assumes an important
symbolic status.
His resistance is seen
as the last resistance,
not only of Chiricahua Apache
people,
but of Indian people
in North America.
NARRATOR:
After three months
of fruitless searching,
Miles was forced to turn
to the scouts he disdained.
Within weeks,
two Chiricahua scouts
with family ties to Geronimo
climbed towards his remote
mountain camp.
Geronimo wanted to kill them,
but a member of the band
intervened.
YAZZA:
My grandfather drew his gun
against Geronimo
and told him not to shoot
because they're family.
If Geronimo had his way,
those two would have never
climbed that hill.
NARRATOR:
"The troops are coming after you
from all over
the United States,"
one of the scouts said.
"If you are awake at night and
a rock rolls down the mountain
"or a stick breaks,
you will be running.
"You even eat your meals
running.
You have no friends whatsoever
in the world."
"I live at the agency,"
he added.
"Nobody bothers me.
"I sleep well.
I have my little patch of corn."
Geronimo finally agreed to meet
with an army officer
who outlined the terms
of surrender.
SILAS COCHISE:
In spite of the feelings
that Geronimo might have had,
the wisdom that came
with the Chiricahuas
was still a part of his life.
I think in the end
the wisdom took over.
And so he negotiated
with the cavalry, you know.
NARRATOR:
Geronimo and his band would be
sent to a prison in Florida.
The president himself
would determine
when they could return home.
As the negotiations wore on,
the Chiricahuas learned
that the Americans had decided
to deport their entire tribe.
Even the scouts
and those living peacefully
at Turkey Creek
would be sent to Florida.
"My wife and children have been
captured," one of the men said.
"I love them
and I want to be with them."
The Chiricahuas began
to surrender, one by one.
Geronimo was the last
to give in.
Family.
It's just that's everything,
and that's it.
Everything else is secondary.
DARROW:
The whole of our history
is primarily of parents
and the children and the cousins
and the aunts and uncles
and grandparents
and grandchildren.
All of that is integral
to Apache community,
is the Apache existence.
And the men didn't exist
in isolation.
NARRATOR:
On September 8, 1886, Geronimo
and his band boarded a train
bound for Florida.
Like most of the Chiricahuas,
Geronimo had never set foot
on a train before and had never
left the Southwest.
HUGAR:
I had a grandfather
and a grandmother,
along with their
children, went on this train.
It wasn't their fault.
SILAS COCHISE:
The Apaches that were
on that train
felt like it was the end
of their time,
that the non-Indian was going
to wipe them out.
This was another trick
of the non-Indian world.
NARRATOR:
When they finally arrived,
Geronimo's band was imprisoned
alongside Chiricahuas
from Turkey Creek
and the scouts who had loyally
served the U.S. Army.
The entire Chiricahua tribe
now numbered fewer than 500,
just one quarter of those
who had lived free
in the days of Cochise.
They were all paying
a terrible price
for Geronimo's brave
but stubborn resistance.
Families were separated,
the men taken to Fort Pickens,
the women and children
to Fort Marion,
more than 300 miles away.
Almost immediately,
the prisoners began dying
of malaria and other
tropical diseases.
The humidity, the heat, the
even the bugs were different,
the mosquitoes
and everything else,
and it's just to them
it was miserable.
NARRATOR:
Within three years,
119 people had died,
including Geronimo's wife
and four-year-old daughter.
ENJADY:
The United States almost put
that final dagger,
should I say,
into the hearts of our people
almost carried out
that manifest destiny,
in a land, in a place that
was worse than San Carlos.
NARRATOR:
Government authorities took
the Chiricahua children
to a boarding school
in Pennsylvania.
School officials cut
the children's hair,
forbade them to speak Apache
and tried to convert them
to Christianity.
DARROW:
Our people were being told,
"Well, that's all over with.
"You can't go back.
Don't clutter their minds
with all this old information."
HAOZOUS:
They taught them how
to be Western,
how to dismiss their religion,
how to dismiss their power,
how to dismiss the power
of their elders.
NARRATOR:
Tuberculosis spread through
the boarding school.
Only children dying
of the disease
were allowed to return
to their families.
After less than two years
in Florida,
all the Chiricahuas were sent
to a prison camp in Alabama,
then moved again
to Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
In all, they would spend
27 years as prisoners of war.
LESTER:
What the government did
is deplorable.
And they should be somehow
held accountable.
NARRATOR:
Even when the federal government
finally freed the Chiricahuas
in 1913, the state of Arizona
refused to allow them
to return to their homeland.
DARROW:
Most people in the United States
don't realize
that there was an entire tribe
of people who were imprisoned
not because they'd done
anything wrong,
but because of who they were.
NARRATOR:
In a few short years,
Americans came to view Geronimo
in an entirely new way.
When he had first arrived
in Florida,
crowds gathered
at the prison to gawk
at "the wickedest Indian
who ever lived."
Eight years later, as Geronimo
was being taken
from Alabama to Oklahoma,
crowds gathered again.
This time they came to cheer
a national hero.
What had changed
was America itself.
Geronimo's surrender had ended
the Indian wars
that had raged for nearly
three centuries.
Once that moment is
perceived to be over,
there's an almost immediate turn
to a kind of nostalgic
sensibility.
"Boy, you know, those were
the days, right,
"when we faced off against
these, you know,
"these challenging, dangerous
Indian opponents.
Gosh! I miss those times."
NARRATOR:
Once the despised savage,
Geronimo was now the valiant
warrior who had held out
against impossible odds.
ROBERTS:
By the 20th century,
Geronimo comes to stand
for some of the values we hold
most dear in America
The lone battler,
the champion of his people,
the guy who never gives up,
the ultimate underdog.
He becomes an icon,
a sentimental icon
of what was once a real enemy.
And there's something
amazingly American
about that transformation.
NARRATOR:
While other Chiricahuas
were kept under guard,
Geronimo was allowed to travel.
He attended expositions and
appeared in Wild West shows.
Geronimo adopting, or seen
to adopt, American culture
represents a major
symbolic victory.
American civilization
has arrived,
and even Geronimo
is now embracing it.
NARRATOR:
In 1905, President Theodore
Roosevelt asked Geronimo
to lead his inaugural
procession.
As the 80-year-old Apache rode
down Pennsylvania Avenue,
people threw their hats
in the air and shouted,
"Hooray for Geronimo!"
Several days later,
Geronimo met with the president
and asked if he could return
to Arizona.
"My hands are tied
as with a rope," Geronimo said.
"I pray you to cut the ropes
and make me free.
Let me die in my own country."
"It is best for you
to stay where you are,"
Roosevelt replied.
Resentment still burns
in Arizona, he explained.
"That is all I can say,
Geronimo."
One day in February 1909,
the most famous Indian alive
was riding home
when he was thrown
from his horse.
He lay out in the freezing cold
all night.
When an old friend found him,
Geronimo was gravely ill.
He died six days later,
still a prisoner of war.
Although Americans
celebrated him,
Geronimo provoked
complicated feelings
in the hearts of many Apaches.
HARJO:
We have different perspectives
on the man
Who he was, how he lived his
life, why he did what he did,
and how that affected the rest
of the tribe.
Apache people suffered
because of him.
We all suffered with him.
HAOZOUS:
Most of the tribe
were angry with him
and they blamed him.
We don't look at him as a hero.
LESTER:
He wasn't alone.
And when these white people
think about all these things
that were going on,
they should name all the group
that was with him
instead of just Geronimo.
Because he didn't do it alone.
ENJADY:
And then there are
a lot of other names also,
lost in history,
lost in the canyons of Mexico,
lost in the mountains
of the Chiricahuas,
names long forgotten.
NARRATOR:
While other Apaches remained
in the Southwest,
the Chiricahua had paid dearly
for Geronimo's resistance.
They were never allowed home.
HUGAR:
Well, he killed a lot of people.
Why is he remembered when
he did all these bad things?
It's because he put a mark
on the American people.
He put a scar on them.
NARRATOR:
In the end,
even Geronimo had regrets.
On his deathbed, he summoned
his nephew to his side.
"I should never have
surrendered,"
the old man whispered.
"I should have fought until
I was the last man alive."
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