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N0KFQ > TODAY 05.09.12 02:12l 50 Lines 2289 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 27844_KB0WSA
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Sep 4
Path: IZ3LSV<IW0QNL<JH4XSY<JE7YGF<N9PMO<KC5CNT<N0KFQ<KB0WSA
Sent: 120905/0001Z 27844@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQK1.4.52
Sep 4, 1886:
The last American Indian warrior surrenders
For almost 30 years he had fought the whites who invaded his
homeland, but Geronimo, the wiliest and most dangerous Apache
warrior of his time, finally surrenders in Skeleton Canyon,
Arizona, on this day in 1886.
Known to the Apache as Goyalkla, or "One Who Yawns," most
non-Indians knew him by his Spanish nickname, Geronimo. When he
was a young man, Mexican soldiers had murdered his wife and
children during a brutal attack on his village in Chihuahua,
Mexico. Though Geronimo later remarried and fathered other
children, the scars of that early tragedy left him with an
abiding hatred for Mexicans.
Operating in the border region around Mexico's Sierra Madre and
southern Arizona and New Mexico, Geronimo and his band of 50
Apache warriors succeeded in keeping white settlers off Apache
lands for decades. Geronimo never learned to use a gun, yet he
armed his men with the best modern rifles he could obtain and
even used field glasses to aid reconnaissance during his
campaigns. He was a brilliant strategist who used the Apache
knowledge of the arid desert environment to his advantage, and
for years Geronimo and his men successfully evaded two of the
U.S. Army's most talented Indian fighters, General George Crook
and General Nelson A. Miles. But by 1886, the great Apache
warrior had grown tired of fighting and further resistance seemed
increasingly pointless: there were just too many whites and too
few Apaches. On September 4, 1886, Geronimo turned himself over
to Miles, becoming the last American Indian warrior in history to
formally surrender to the United States.
After several years of imprisonment, Geronimo was given his
freedom, and he moved to Oklahoma where he converted to
Christianity and became a successful farmer. He even occasionally
worked as a scout and adviser for the U.S. army. Transformed into
a safe and romantic symbol of the already vanishing era of the
Wild West, he became a popular celebrity at world's fairs and
expositions and even rode in President Theodore Roosevelt's
inaugural parade in 1905. He died at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in
1909, still on the federal payroll as an army scout.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: n0kfq@winlink.org
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