Geronimo, struggle, agony and resurrection of the Apache nation

Goyahkla, an Bedonkohe apache who would later be known as Gerónimo, was born in the 1820s in a town that the Apaches called No-doyon at the headwaters of the Gila River, currently in the southeastern Arizona state. His birthplace is today a place of reverence among the surviving Apache people.

His father's name was Taklishim - "The Gray Man", son of the Mahko chief of the Apache-Bedonkohe tribe from whom he inherited the traditions. His mother, taught him the mythical origins of his people, taught him to pray to Usen, the supreme being, also called the life giver. He explained the legends and exploits of supernatural beings, the Woman in White, the Child of Water, entities that are closely connected with the origin of the Apache people and the kind spirits of the mountains, who lived in hidden caverns and that They were honored at the ceremonial Apache.

When Goyahkla and his brothers and sisters were old enough they helped their parents in the fields. They worked the land with sowing sticks and hoes. They planted the corn, the beans entangled in the stems and the pumpkins covering the ground with their big leaves. In autumn they collected the products of the harvest in baskets transporting them to their homes, often using the caves in the mountains as storage sites.

Goyahkla's life was spent suffering the struggles, defeats and tragedies of the Apache nation. When he was 19, Mexican troops killed his mother, his wife and three children. The Apache chief would comment some time later: "My life lost all purpose."

Under the leadership of Cochise first and Victorio and Nana later, the Apaches resisted the American and Mexican invasions. The aggression continued and despite the fervent struggle they were gradually displaced from their territories to more arid and less productive areas.

When Victorio and Nana were defeated and killed, the leadership was assumed by Goyahkla and Juh. At that time, and to avoid greater sacrifices to their people, they entered into negotiations with the US government.

The representatives of the US government offered them an extension of land in exchange for their weapons. The place, called San Carlos, was arid and totally inappropriate.

Daklugie, son of Juh described it illustratively.

“The Creator did not make San Carlos. It is an older place that He simply left as a sign of how things were done before He appeared. Take stones and ashes and thorns, and throw some scorpions and rattlesnakes, put all that on top of red-heated stones, add the United States army chasing after the Apaches and so you will have San Carlos. ”

The Apaches rejected the offer and continued the fight. They retreated to the mountains to continue the resistance.

Six years after the fall of Victorio, in 1886, Juh died and Geró¬nimo remained as the only chief accompanied by a handful of men, women and children in the rugged mountain. At that time in his life, Gerónimo was 56 years old.

The last Apache stronghold faced two powerful armies on both sides of the border. They were only seventeen warriors with their families. They were surrounded by five thousand soldiers and thousands of civilian militia from the United States side and three thousand Mexican soldiers in the Mexican sector.

In spite of the unequal situation the Apaches continued the fight. Daklugie commented it this way:

“At that time Gerónimo also had Lozen, known as the Warrior Woman, Gerónimo was weakened, also by the presence of women and children who had to be defended and fed. No one ever captured Geronimo. I know it. I was with him. Anyway, who can capture the wind? ”218

Some time later the US army kidnapped and transferred women and children leaving men alone in the fight.

A few months later, exhausted and discouraged by the absence of their families, Gerónimo and the Apache warriors who accompanied him surrendered to General Nelson Miles of the US Army with the promise that the Apache chief would be released in two years and It would allow you to live in peace in your reserve.

The promises were broken again. Geronimo was held in prison for twenty-three years. He died in 1909 still captive. The rest of the Apaches, a few hundred were sent to Oklahoma and New Mexico.

Currently the Apaches are concentrated in the Fort Apache and San Carlos reserves in Arizona. Most of the Chihuahuan Apaches, Mescaleros and Lipan live in the Mescalero Reserve of southern New Mexico. The Jicarilla Apaches have a reservation in the north-central area of ​​New Mexico.

In all the reserves, some 60,000 Apaches survive who seek to heal the wounds left by the genocidal war of which they were victims.

The first goal has been the recovery of their culture and their land.

For this they begin to count on the help of many brothers from the continent and from other parts of the world. His fight has been long and very hard but it is not over yet.

Geronimo was not left alone even after his death. Nine years after his death a group of young people belonging to the most rancid elite of American society violated his grave and seized his remains to lock them in "The Tomb" of the University of Yale.

Perhaps Gerónimo's skull and remains are in Yale today. We do not know for sure. They can actually be somewhere else, anywhere.

What we do know is that his spirit has long been freed from the bonds of repression, imprisonment, kidnapping and abuse.

More than a century after his death, the memory of Goyahkla-Gerónimo remains alive in the most dignified history of the First Nations of America.

From the book “Amerrique, the orphans of paradise”, D. Antón, Piriguazú Ediciones