Geronimo's Life was Both Thrilling and Tragic
Geronimo, My Life, is Another Sobering Look at U.S. Betrayal
May 29, 2009
Geronimo – My Life, as told to S. M. Barrett (Dover Publications, 2005) is a thin volume with a heavy heart. It is yet another overlooked book that details the betrayal and abuse of the Native American by the invading white man.
History, as taught in most schools, blithely skips over many sordid details regarding the settling of America. While pioneers and rugged men forged their way across the nation, thousands upon thousands of people who already lived in that nation were uprooted and, in many instances, exterminated.
Geronimo’s Story
Geronimo’s story is just one of many stories of suffering and betrayal that could be written . Born in 1829 into the Bedonkohe Apaches, Geronimo was raised at the headwaters of the Gila River. He died in 1909 after experiencing far too many years of duplicity and wrong doing by both the Mexicans and the Americans.
This book is particularly instructive as the author actually interviewed Geronimo to obtain this information. Naturally, one might think that Geronimo’s side of the story is biased, yet his side is regularly substantiated by white witnesses who tell much the same account of things that Geronimo does.
The story covers Geronimo’s life and many wars with Americans and Mexicans, his heartbreaking loss of his beautiful wife, three daughters and mother, and his subsequent quest for revenge against those who swept into his village killing mostly women and children.
Were Geronimo and his Apache kinsmen (and Native Americans in general) to experience this type of genocidal abuse today, the world itself might rise in retaliation against the United States for such wrongdoings.
Indian Treaty Violations
As author Paul Wellman (Death in the Desert and Death in the Plains) substantiates, every treaty made between the Native Americans and the white man, was first violated by the white man. It was the white man and the Mexican who gave the Apache plenty of “…examples of lawlessness…and that he (the Apache) was a very apt scholar in this school of savage lawlessness” (p. 60). This is the same white man who professed to be a Christian. Truly, the hypocrisy is blatant, painful and inexcusable.
Unwritten Laws of the Apaches
There is a particularly interesting chapter on unwritten laws of the Apaches in which Geronimo discusses Indian practices, ceremonies and beliefs. Topics range from adoption, to dances, to the preparation of a warrior. Geronimo also shares the Apache belief regarding the creation of man and the world. Their word for God is Usen, and as Geronimo poignantly expresses it, “We are vanishing from the earth, yet I cannot think we are useless or Usen would not have created us.”
His deepest wish was to return to Arizona from whence he and his people came. This wish was never granted. Instead, Geronimo, one of the most fearless, intelligent, strong Indian leaders of all time was put on display at the St. Louis World Fair.
Can a nation that contemplated completely exterminating the Native American ever achieve lasting peace? History says no.
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