The Mammoth Book of the West (52 page)

The warm and humid land of Florida, so unlike the dry country of Arizona and New Mexico, was not healthy for the Apaches. Eighteen died of a disease diagnosed as consumption within only a matter of months. Their children were sent away to a school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where they were to be readied for integration into White man’s society. Our job, said the school’s founder, is to “kill the Indian and save the man.”

After two years of misery in Florida, the hostile warriors were transferred to Mount Vernon Barracks in Alabama. To their great joy, there they were finally reunited with their families, with Geronimo seeing an infant daughter Lenna for the first time. To those accustomed to seeing the Apache warlord as an “inhuman monster”, the care he showed for his daughter was striking. One visitor wrote: “I had luck today . . . Saw Geronimo . . . He is a terrible old villain, yet seemed quiet enough today nursing a baby.” Aside from family reunions, the pleasures to be found at Mount Vernon were few. The Apaches were put to work at hard labour. Their rations were pitiful. There were several outbreaks of tuberculosis and pneumonia. Many became depressed. Nineteen of the 352 Chiricahua prisoners died within eight months.

If it had not been for the efforts of a few White friends of the Apaches such as John Clum and George Crook, many more would have died at the barracks on the Mobile
River. In August 1894 the War Department was finally persuaded to move the Apaches back West, although not as far west as their original stomping grounds. They were sent to Fort Sill, in southern Oklahoma, which their old enemies, the Comanches and Cheyenne, generously offered to share with them.

Here the White men set about turning the Apache into dark-skinned White men. They were given small log houses, made to learn handiwork, made to garden, growing melons and cantaloupes on small patches of land, and made to farm. At one point, Geronimo was forced to learn how to be a cowboy. The Apaches, in fact, did well at raising cattle, but only moderately well at the other trades.

Something at which Geronimo excelled in captivity was selling himself. The Apache had always had a hard head for business and was soon making and purveying Geronimo souvenirs for the steady stream of visitors who dropped by to view him. One such visitor wrote:

Geronimo has an eye to thrift and can drive a sharp bargain with his bows and arrows, and quivers and canes, and other work, in which he is skillful. He prides himself upon his autograph, written thus, GERONIMO, which he affixes to what he sells, usually asking an extra price for it. He had a curious headdress, which he called . . . his war bonnet . . . He seemed to value this bonnet highly, but finally in his need or greed for money, offered it for sale at $25.

In 1898, Geronimo met with General Miles at the Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha, where the old warrior was the prime exhibit. He asked the former clerk to use his influence to allow him to return to Arizona.

“The acorns and piñon nuts, the quail and the wild
turkey, the giant cactus and the palo verdes – they all miss me,” said Geronimo.

“A very beautiful thought, Geronimo,” laughed Miles. “Quite poetic. But the men and women who live in Arizona, they do not miss you. Folks in Arizona sleep now at night. They have no fear that Geronimo will come and kill them. The acorns and the piñon nuts will have to get along as best they can without you.”

Later that year Miles visited Geronimo at Fort Sill. The Army man again told Geronimo that he would not be allowed home. However, he did agree to Geronimo’s request that he might be excused from forced labour because of his age. He was 69 years old.

In 1905 Geronimo was taken to Washington to ride in Theodore Roosevelt’s inaugural parade. People bought his autographs for 25 cents as quickly as he could write them. Geronimo stole the show. Only the president himself attracted more attention.

When the parade was over, Geronimo was able to meet with Roosevelt. He took advantage of the occasion to plead for a return to Arizona:

Great Father, other Indians have homes where they can live and be happy. I and my people have no homes. The place where we are kept is bad for us . . . We are sick there and we die. White men are in the country that was my home. I pray you to tell them to go away and let my people go there and be happy.

Great Father, my hands are tied as with a rope. My heart is no longer bad. I will tell my people to obey no chief but the Great White Chief. I pray you to cut the ropes and make me free. Let me die in my own country, an old man who has been punished enough.

Roosevelt was sympathetic, but his reply was essentially
the same as Miles’s. The people of Arizona would not stand for it. He told Geronimo, “I am sorry, and have no feeling against you.”

In the autumn of the same year, Mr S. M. Barrett, the White Superintendent of Education in Lawton, Oklahoma, secured permission from Roosevelt to interview Geronimo about his life. Geronimo related the tale in the Apache language to Asa Daklugie, the son of Juh, who translated it into English for Barrett to write down. More than anything in his old age Geronimo wanted to be allowed to return to the land of the Chiricahuas, and in telling his life story he politically left out most of his dealings with Americans. The book,
Geronimo’s Story of His Life
, was dedicated to President Roosevelt.

By now Geronimo’s years were piling up, and his rugged squat body showing signs of wear. Yet it took an accident to kill him. On a cold night in February 1909 he fell, drunk, off his horse and lay in a freezing creek all night. He developed severe pneumonia. He fought the illness for seven days, but it eventually overwhelmed him. Geronimo died at 6.15 in the morning of 17 February, and was buried the following day in Fort Sill’s cemetery. He was about 80 years old, and still technically a prisoner of war.

He was never to realize his dream of returning to Arizona. But he was always proud that to finally subdue him and his band of 37 Chiricahua Apache it had taken 5,000 White soldiers.

The whole world is coming,

A nation is coming.

The Eagle has brought the message to the tribe.

Over the whole earth they are coming;

The buffalo are coming, the buffalo are coming,

The Crow has brought the message to the tribe.

With the final capture of Geronimo in 1886 all great chiefs were within the reservations. Some, like Quanah Parker of the Quahadi Comanche, took up White ways, trying to do their best for their people by beating the Americans at their own games, like politics, real estate deals and money-making. Occasionally they won. Usually they lost. Every year the reservations got smaller, as did government allotments of beef and clothing. In 1889 drought came to the West; there was starvation on the reservations, and when measles struck the children they were too weak to resist.

It was a time for hope, a time to dream. A time to remember the buffalo which used to coat the plains, the chokecherries which used to hang by the mouthwatering bunch, and the freedom to roam over the range.

There were many shaman dreamers, but the most powerful
was the Paiute Wovoka. Just before dawn on New Year’s Day, 1889, far out in remote Nevada, the 34-year-old Wovoka fell ill. In his delirium he dreamed he visited the Great Spirit in heaven. There, he was told that a time was coming when the buffalo would once again fill the plains and dead tribesmen would be restored to their families. If the Indians refrained from violence, and if they were virtuous and performed the proper ritual dance – the Ghost Dance – they could hasten the coming of the new world, which would cover the old, and push the White men into the sea.

Some Indians, like the Kiowa and Comanche, were sceptical. But among the former tribes of the northern plains the Ghost Dance religion took a powerful hold. It spread wildly and rapidly across the reservations, from the Arapaho, to the Cheyenne, to the Wichita. In the winter of early 1890, a holy man of the Teton Sioux, Kicking Bear, brought the new gospel to Dakota.

The Sioux began Ghost Dancing in the spring, in secret ceremonies away from White Eyes. Adapting Wovoka’s original ceremony to the Sioux Sun Dance, they danced around a sacred tree. At Kicking Bear’s behest, the dancers also wore “ghost shirts” painted with magical symbols to keep away White bullets.

By mid-autumn of 1890, the Sioux were in something approaching a religious frenzy. Thousands of Sioux were now participating in the Ghost Dances, shuffling around in great circles, which speeded up until the exhausted dancers reached a state of delirious ecstasy where they saw the dead “come to life”. Normal life on the reservations all but stopped. Even the schools were emptied, as the Indians spent all day dancing and chanting.

In October, Kicking Bear was invited by Sitting Bull to come to his isolated reservation at Standing Rock and teach the Huncpapa Sioux the Ghost Dance.

Sitting Bull’s personal attitude to the Ghost Dance was one of disbelief. Yet, he considered that it would give succour to his people, and began to supervise personally the Huncpapa’s dances.

The news that Sitting Bull, the great Sioux war leader and patriot, was Ghost Dancing caused White officials to panic. They already considered the situation out of control; with Sitting Bull involved they thought it might turn into an uprising.

On 17 November General Nelson Miles ordered troops to the Sioux reservations, including the all-Black 9th Cavalry and the late Custer’s regiment, the 7th Cavalry. By December a third of the armed forces of the US was on alert. The former Indian agent Valentine McGillycuddy was dispatched by Washington to assess the gravity of the situation on the Sioux reservations. He went and saw, and counselled patience. “I should let the dance continue,” he wrote to Washington. “The coming of the troops has frightened the Indians . . . . If the troops remain, trouble is sure to come.”

Unfortunately, the government did not listen to McGillycuddy. Instead they listened to James McLaughlin, head of the Standing Rock Agency, who urged that Sitting Bull was dangerous and should be arrested. The government acceded, and McLaughlin sent 43 Sioux policemen up to Sitting Bull’s cabins on the banks of the Grand River.

Just before daybreak on the dreary morning of 15 December 1890, the Sioux police surrounded Sitting Bull’s home. Some of them had ridden with him at Little Big Horn. But now the Sioux were a divided and suspicious people. The police entered Sitting Bull’s cabin, and the senior policeman, Lieutenant Henry Bull Head, found the old chief asleep on the floor. Waking him up, Bull Head brusquely informed him, “You are my prisoner. You must go to the agency.”

At first, Sitting Bull agreed to go quietly. He sent one of his two wives to get his clothes, and asked one of the policemen to saddle his pony. But then the police began manhandling him and searching the house for weapons, something which upset Sitting Bull, for he then started cursing them. Meanwhile, more than 150 of Sitting Bull’s most ardent followers had crowded around the police outside.

When Sitting Bull and Lieutenant Bull Head appeared outside the cabin, the situation became electric. People started shouting “You shall not take our chief!” As the 59-year-old Sitting Bull was pushed towards his pony, he suddenly declared that he was not going to Fort Yates and called upon his followers to rescue him. A brave named Catch the Bear shot Lieutenant Bull Head in the side. As he fell, he fired at Sitting Bull, hitting him in the chest. Almost in the same moment another policeman, Red Tomahawk, shot Sitting Bull through the head.

Sitting Bull was killed by his own people, as he had once been foretold by a meadowlark.

After Sitting Bull fell, a wild fight ensued in which police and Huncpapa (including women) fought and killed with guns, knives and clubs at point-blank range. The police, after suffering six dead, were only saved by the arrival of the cavalry.

Sitting Bull’s body was taken away on a wagon and was buried in a pauper’s grave.

Following the fight at Sitting Bull’s cabin, some of his Huncpapa surrendered at Fort Bennett but some, half starving and half clad, fled to other reservations. Thirty-eight joined the Miniconjou Sioux chief, Big Foot, whose village was on the forks of the Cheyenne River. The Army
considered Big Foot another Ghost Dance troublemaker and he was under overt surveillance. Already disturbed by the supervision, Big Foot became deeply fearful when the Huncpapa refugees told him of Sitting Bull’s death. Then troops were sighted nearby. Believing that he was going to be murdered, Big Foot led his people – 333 men, women and children – out from their camp on the night of 23 December. He headed south towards the Pine Ridge Reservation, hoping to find protection with Red Cloud.

The Army pursued the fleeing Indians, sending out three regiments, including the 7th Cavalry. As the army scoured the wintry prairie, Big Foot’s band trudged south and reached the Dakota Badlands.

At two o’clock in the afternoon of 28 December, the Army caught up with Big Foot, now so ill with pneumonia that he was being carried in a wagon. He surrendered without protest, and accepted a military guard. Since the day was closing in, the Indians were directed to camp for the night at a nearby creek, Wounded Knee. The troopers took up positions in the surrounding hills to prevent any escape.

While it was still dark, Colonel George A. Forsyth (of Beecher Island fame) arrived with reinforcements from the 7th Cavalry. By the morning of the 29th there were 500 troopers ringing the Sioux.

The day dawned bright and clear. Forsyth called all the Sioux men and elder boys to stand in a semi-circle in front of their tents. Numbering 106, they squatted on the ground, wearing their bright-coloured Ghost Dance shirts. Troopers then began searching the tents for weapons.

Women began wailing. The men sitting in the council circle immediately became alert. A shaman named Yellow Bird jumped up and told warriors: “I have made medicine of the White man’s ammunition. It is good medicine, and
his bullets can not harm you, as they will not go through your ghost shirts, while your bullets will kill.”