Geronimo

Geronimo, Goyaałé of the Bedonkohe Apache, died at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, on February 17, 1909. He was seventy-nine. Born in June 1829 in what is now New Mexico or Arizona — the maps have changed around the birthplace — he led a long resistance after Mexican troops killed his family, then spent his last decades as a prisoner of war far from the mountains. He appeared at fairs, dictated an autobiography, and asked to go home. The government said no. Fort Sill is where he died and where he is buried, still a prisoner on paper. The name the newspapers used is the name this page keeps, with his own beside it.