February 18, 1909

Old Apache Chief Geronimo Is Dead

Special to The New York Times

LAWTON, Okla., Feb. 17.--Geronimo, the Apache Indian chief, died of pneumonia to-day in the hospital at Fort Sill. He was nearly 90 years of age, and had been held at the Fort as a prisoner of war for many years. He will be buried in the Indian Cemetery tomorrow by the missionaries, the old chief having professed religion three years ago.

As the leader of the warring Apaches of the Southwestern territories in pioneer days, Geronimo gained a reputation for cruelty and cunning never surpassed by that of any other American Indian chief. For more than twenty years he and his men were the terror of the country, always leaving a trail of bloodshed and devastation. The old chief was captured many times, but always got away again, until his final capture, in 1886, by a small command of infantry scouts under Capt. H.W. Lawton, who, as Major General, was killed at the head of his command in the Philippines, and Assistant Surgeon Leonard Wood, today in command of the Department of the East, with headquarters at Governors Island.

The capture was made in the Summer, after a long and very trying campaign of many months, in which Lawton and Wood gained a reputation which will be long remembered in the annals of the army. Geronimo was at first sent to Fort Pickens, but was later transferred to Fort Sill. Until a few years ago he did not give up the hope of some day returning to the leadership of the tribes of the Southwest, and in the early years of his imprisonment he made several attempts to escape.

Geronimo was a Chiricahua Apache, the son of Chal-o-Row of Mangus-Colorado, the war chief of the Warm Spring Apaches, whose career of murder and devastation through Arizona, New Mexico, and Northern Mexico in his day almost equaled that of his terrible son. According to stories told by the old Indian during his last days, he was crowned war chief of his tribe at the early age of 16. For many years he followed the lead of old Cochise, the hereditary chief of the Apaches, who died in 1875 and was succeeded by Natchez, his son, who, however, was soon displaced by Geronimo with his superior cunning and genius for the Indian method of warfare.

After trailing the band led by Geronimo for more than ten years Gen. Crook would probably have captured him in 1875 had he not been transferred to duty among the Utes just as success seemed to be near at hand. For seven years after this the situation in the Southwest was the worst ever faced by the settlers. Crook was sent back in 1883. A large body of troops was placed at his disposal, and in a month he had succeeded in driving Geronimo back to his reservation, capturing him and his men on the Mexican border.

In 1885 Geronimo broke out again, and this time was surrounded by Crook in the Canon de los Embidos. But the Indians succeeded in slipping away, and Crook was removed and Nelson A. Miles placed in command. Miles had already gained a reputation as an Indian fighter, and while he did not exactly cut the field wires behind him to prevent interference from Washington, stories are told of the frequent disregard of troublesome messages.

Lawton and Wood were placed in command of the scouts late in the Summer of 1885. They asked permission to take a picked body of men into the hostile territory and endeavor to run down Geronimo. Gen. Miles finally sent them off with many misgivings. There followed months of privation and hardships which were never forgotten by the men who went with the two young officers. They were gone nearly a year, Gen. Miles often not knowing even where they were or whether or not they had been destroyed by the enemy. On the night of Aug. 20, 1886, the General was sitting at the telegraph instrument in the office at Wilcox, Ariz., waiting for dispatches, when the key suddenly clicked off the news that Geronimo and his men had been surrounded at the junction of the San Bernardino and Baische Rivers, near the Mexican border. Miles hastened there and met the chief on his way north under guard of Lawton. The old warrior was surrounded by about 400 bucks, squaws, papooses, and dogs. They had little else than their blankets and tent poles, and as Gen. Miles afterward stated in his memoirs, "The wily old chief had evidently decided to give up warfare for a time and live on the Government until his tribes gained sufficient strength to return to the warpath."

Gen. Miles writes: "Every one at Washington had now become convinced that there was no good in the old chief, and he was, in fact, one of the lowest and most cruel of the savages of the American continent." The people of the West demanded that he be not allowed to go back to the reservation. He and his bucks were accordingly sent to Fort Pickens and the squaws and papooses to Fort Marion, Florida. It was finally decided to keep Geronimo confined as a prisoner of war. His desire to get back to the West was so pitiful, however, that he was transferred to Fort Sill, where he spent the remainder of his days.

Gen. Wood tells an interesting anecdote of an incident which occurred one afternoon when he was guarding the old chief while Lawton went in search of his command, the location of which he had lost soon after the surrender: "About 2 o'clock in the afternoon the old Indian came to me and asked to see my rifle. It was a Hotchkiss, and he said he had never seen its mechanism. When he asked me for the gun and some ammunition I must confess I felt a little nervous, for I thought it might be a device to get hold of one of our weapons. I made no objection, however, and let him have it, showing him how to use it. He fired at a mark, just missing one of his own men who was passing. This he regarded as a great joke, rolling on the ground and laughing heartily and shouting, 'Good gun.'"

Gen. Miles, in his memoirs, describes his first impression of Geronimo when he was brought into camp by Lawton, thus: "He was one of the brightest, most resolute, determined-looking men that I have ever encountered. He had the clearest, sharpest dark eye I think I have ever seen, unless it was that of Gen. Sherman."