Freedom fighters in Geronimo

In Review of Geronimo, I critiqued the storytelling aspects of the fourth episode of PBS's We Shall Remain series. Now I'll concentrate on the content.

It seems the key question surrounding Geronimo is whether he was a hero or a villain. An opening line summarizes the episode's POV:To his hunters he was 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.Let's consider the evidence presented in Geronimo. As before, I'll quote or paraphrase the narration.

Geronimo's early career

Before the coming of the white man, the Apaches traditionally raided Mexican villages, taking horses, cattle, and captives. They didn't consider this a crime.

Not surprisingly, the Mexicans found this intolerable and offered to pay for scalps. Bounty hunters killed any Indians they could find. The going rates for scalps were: child’s, $25; woman’s, $50; warrior’s, $100.

While Geronimo was trading at a Mexican village, soldiers entered his camp and killed his mother, wife, and three children. After that his attitude toward non-Indians changed. He wanted revenge.

He lured the Mexican soldiers who had killed his family into battle and decimated them. For 10 years following this victory, he fought bloody battles with the Mexicans. At this point he was unknown to most Americans.

The narration eventually says that Mexicans had been raiding, enslaving, and killing Apaches for a century. This mutual hostility doesn't surprise me. I suspect it was more or less a lawless land where might made right.

My response would be the same as it was in Justified Killings at Richland Creek. The Apaches were there first. The Mexicans were encroaching on their territory. If they wanted to avoid bloodshed, they should've stayed out. Moving into and taking Apache territory was akin to an act of war.

The white man cometh

The Apaches' first encounter with white men was friendly. They traded with a scouting party. They considered whites to be a different breed from Mexicans.

Americans began streaming through Apacheria on way to California for gold. The Chiricahuas looked to Cochise, their chief, for a response. He was probably the greatest warrior and chief the Chiricahuas had ever had. He earned a reputation as a statesman and diplomat as well as a warrior.

Cochise negotiated an agreement to let the Americans pass. But then prospectors began staying in Apache territory.They were mostly a lawless bunch of people. The mining camps were full of young men almost beyond any social bounds. They were the worst racists in American West, disastrous for Native Americans.

Some miners were barbarous, poisoning Apaches’ food with strychnine, cutting fetuses out of the bellies of pregnant women, selling Apache girl 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 his people dying, or getting hurt. He wasn’t going to let anybody take advantage of him or his people.Unfortunately, Geronimo is silent on several key issues here. Did Cochise have an informal or formal agreement with the Americans? Did he warn them of the consequences if they violated the agreement? What percentage of the American intruders were "barbarous" miners and what percentage were "innocent" settlers?

The Indians strike back

In any case, Cochise urged Geronimo and the Chiricahuas to take revenge. They began ambushing stagecoaches and wagon trains--"mutilating the victims, smashing heads with rocks, stabbing corpses with their spears, dangling bodies over fires." As one Apache explains:What happened back then happened because they were humans. It was done to them, so they did it back. But better.If you're going to kill people, I'm not sure it matters if you mutilate the bodies. The point is, the Chiricahuas thought the miners and other trespassers were violating their sovereign territory. It wasn't hard to guess that the Americans eventually would take their land and remove or exterminate them. Therefore, they were justified in going to war against the Americans--even the so-called "civilians."

Throughout the 1860s, the settlers became increasingly angry that the government wasn’t protecting them. "Let slip the dogs of war in good earnest upon all Indians," said one editorial. In response, President Grant sent General Crook to pacify and "civilize" the Apaches.

Crook was in charge of implementing a new policy:Instead of treating tribes as sovereign nations, as the US had done for a century, they would be wards of the state.

Over next decade, the Army would force tribe after tribe onto reservations.There the US could contain, Christianize, and assimilate Indians into society.

The Apaches had seen this happen with the Navajos, whom the Americans captured and marched to a concentration camp at Bosque Redondo. They knew what was in store for them: "Kill the Indian, save the man." A total loss of culture and identity...genocide.

War and peace

Many Apaches settled on reservations, but for several years, Cochise and the Chiricahuas kept fighting. Eventually Cochise realized his people couldn’t win. The Americans were more formidable foes than the Mexicans, with better organization and technology and simply greater numbers.

After a decade of war, Cochise agreed to end the raids north of the Mexican border. In return, the Americans would create a reservation for the Chiricahuas on their ancestral homeland. It was prime land in the eyes of the settlers, but never mind. Justice called for everyone to sacrifice something.

This seems like a fair deal to me. The Apaches would end all hostilities against the Americans. In return they'd get to live as they wished on their own land. Land for peace...a classic formula. Exactly what many tribes had bargained for many times.

Needless to say, it wasn't to be. The US was going to screw over the Indians once again. America's Manifest Destiny cowboy mentality was going to triumph over the godless savages.

Up until this point, I'd say Geronimo's actions were largely justified. He didn't have to be cruel, but he was fighting for freedom against occupying hordes of Mexicans and Americans. If people try to take your land, you're allowed to do whatever it takes to stop them.

For more on the subject, see Dustinn Craig on Geronimo, Defeating Apaches = Defeating Terrorists and Dueling Views on Geronimo.

Below:  Chief Cochise.