Geronimo and the Apache Resistance (American Experience/WGBH, 1998, 2007)
While watching Geronimo and the Apache Resistance, my mind kept drifting back to a week-long backpack trip I made to the Chiricahua Mountains in southeast Arizona, the Chiricahua Apache homeland of craggy canyons, verdant forests and meadows, and life-giving streams. (Today, most of this land is part of a U.S. national forest and national monument). While hiking many miles, exploring their former Apache native land which they had inhabited for hundreds of years, I recall how much I admired their heroic resistance to the US government which was stealing their land and removing the people to desolate central Arizona reservations. Looking at the impressive rock formations and narrow canyons, I wondered how foolhardy it was for the U.S. cavalry to venture into this maze in search of Geronimo and his renegade band. I wished then that they had never caught them.
Geronimo was not a war chief, but rather, a formidable shaman, a medicine man with reputed powers of seeing into the future, walking without creating footprints, and many curative skills. When his family was wiped out by Mexicans and bounties of $25-100 were offered for Apache scouts, he rebelled, stating that, “His heart would ache for revenge.” As a cunning warrior, he led effective guerilla campaigns against the settlers, army and Mexicans for 35 years.
This film deftly details the determined efforts of a small Chiricahua Apache band to resist the encroachment into their land of Mexicans, miners, ranchers, farmers, settlers and the U.S. government, as they sought to exploit it for profit and settlement. This is a familiar tragic tale in US history, but, in this case, the harsh treatment and intensity of hatred were exceptional in the wars against the Apaches. As documented with haunting black & white photos, letters, books, journals and newspaper accounts, it is an unpleasant story of cruelty, prejudice and betrayal. The government eventually won the war and moved the Apaches as prisoners to unhealthy reservations far away in Florida and later Oklahoma.
The photos of the defeated small Apache band of resisters (“freedom fighters”) and even their Apache scout captors being loaded on to railroad cars like cattle for transferal to Florida is painful to watch. Nevertheless, it is part of an important part of history for all students—and indeed all of us-- to learn. There are lessons for all of us to learn about the disgraceful behavior of the U.S. government in breaking numerous treaties, confiscating Apache land, mistreatment of peaceful Apaches, hostile environment and poverty on the scrub reservations and keeping the rebellious Chiricahua Apache prisoners for 27 years—the longest tenure for prisoners of any American war opponent.
It is very sad to watch the Apache children taken from their parents and schooled in white culture in Pennsylvania. Appearing in formal Victorian attire with closely cropped hair and unsmiling faces, the Apaches students, far removed from their homelands and traditional ways, appear like prisoners of spirit as well as culture. Some Apaches were later moved to Oklahoma reservations to farm and eventually some chose to stay there. Others eventually decided to go back to central Arizona to a desolate reservation of the Mescalero Apaches. Their homeland was never returned to them.
The viewer must go beyond this injustice and inhumanity to appreciate the uplifting story of the valiant resistance of a small band of Apaches (sometimes only 39 men) in fighting and eluding the overwhelming superior force of the U.S. cavalry (sometimes 5,000 soldiers). What is particularly inspiring in the film is that today’s descendants speak for the first time on film about the terrible wars and clearly express their pride and respect for the heroic efforts of Geronimo and his band. They fought to maintain their ancestral homeland, their beloved mountains and meadows, the link which bonded their people to the universe. One poignant moment in the film occurs when some of these descendants, including Geronimo’s kin, travel back to view the Chiricahua Mountains for the first time and react with a mixture of tears and joy in being in their native land and following in the footsteps of Geronimo.
That moment helps the viewer withstand somewhat the documented violent Apache Wars spanning 15 years from approximately 1861-1876. The Apaches were attacked relentlessly as worthless savages by many groups who sought their land. Ft. Bowie was established in 1861 in the mountain pass there to keep peace and for a few years this worked as many Apache bands moved to a forlorn central Arizona reservation. Many just wanted to survive and did not want to fight. (I also walked among the ruins of Ft. Bowie National Monument, recalling the clash of two cultures. I also found by the trail a tiny humble, isolated tombstone for one of Geronimo’s children).
Many of them resented the insurrection of Geronimo and his band’s rebellion because they felt those actions would doom the tribe. One surprising fact I learned from the film was that three-quarters of General George Crook’s army was comprised of Apache scouts and that was what ultimately led to Geromino’s several captures. Only they had the skills to track him in the vast forbidding territories of New Mexico, Arizona and Mexico. When General Nelson Miles attempted to foolishly track and capture Geronimo later after another escape, using 5,000 regular soldiers, it was a failure until the Apache scouts took over, forcing Geronimo to surrender for good in 1886. (For a more dynamic portrayal of Geronimo as a cunning, fierce leader, see the 1993 feature film, Geronimo: An American Legend..
The legendary warrior evolved into a “tamed” grandfatherly farmer in Oklahoma, appearing in Wild West shows, writing a biography and continuing as a shaman, until he died in 1909 at the age of 80. Rather than remembering him as a settled old farmer dressed in a Western-style suit, I prefer to recall the photo of Geronimo as the fierce warrior with a headband wrapped around long hair, carrying a rifle with a defiant gaze who heroically tried to save the Apache land in the Chiricahua Mountains where, “you can still hear the singing.”
Kenny Karem Collegiate School kennykentucky@aol.com
