How Native American Leader Geronimo 'Defied Death'

It’s Arizona in 1886: the United States has all but tamed the Wild West, but one Native American rebel stubbornly refuses to surrender. Geronimo, the last insurgent, rides across the desert with his wily band of renegades. Some 5,000 U.S. soldiers have been dispatched to apprehend him, but still he evades capture. Few people know his life story, but according to his followers, he is an extraordinary man with supernatural gifts...

Resistance Fighters

The Apaches were a people defined by their ferocious resistance to Mexican colonists and, after the westward expansion of the U.S. border, American settlers too. Geronimo was the most famous and ruthless of Apache warriors – the last in a long line of spirited freedom fighters. He was also a medicine man, a malcontent and a fearless leader of outlaws.

Free To Come And Go

Indeed, few things were as important to an Apache as freedom – especially freedom from laws, governments and hierarchies. Apache society had no central leadership, no class system and no overarching political structure. Every Apache was free to go wherever he chose and to follow whoever he wished. Wild and free, they were a people characterized by rugged individuality.

Untamed Lands

Of course, the Apache heartlands were themselves as untamed as their indigenous inhabitants. Spanning northern Mexico and the Southwest United States, the patchwork of lands collectively known as Apacheria included rambling mountain ranges, lush valleys, evergreen forests, plains, vertiginous canyons and mile upon mile of flat, scorching, wide open desert.

Distant Relatives

However, the ancestral homeland of the Apaches was most likely in the far north of the continent. Indigenous peoples in Canada and Alaska, for example, speak forms of Athabaskan – the same linguistic family as Apache languages. As such, the Apaches are thought to have migrated to the Southwest between 500 and 800 years ago and settled into several distinct but related tribes.