I’m closer to Geronimo’s world than the one I’m currently inhabiting. Geronimo died in 1909, a prisoner of war at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. I was born in 1947. We’re separated by only 38 years. I know with absolute certainty we could have a good meaningful conversation, and that would be an unlikely scenario with your average zombie adult in the 21st century. The information on the back of the bookmark says that Geronimo converted to Christianity. I find that hard to digest. Not that I’m against Christianity. Not in its original form, before its central message was distorted by the fundamentalists who are incapable of reading metaphor in the New Testament and can only think of it as a literal text. What is it that drew Geronimo to Christianity? What did the Chiricahua Apache believe?
“Two elements are thought common to most Apache medicine men (shaman) and their relationship to diyi’,” writes Charles River, author of The Apache and Comanche: The History and Legacy of the Southwest’s Most Famous Warrior Tribes. “As renowned Apache scholar Keith Basso explains, ‘the term diyi’ refers to one or all of a set of abstract and invisible forces which are said to derive from certain classes of animals, plants, minerals, meteorological phenomena, and mythological figures with the Apache universe. Any of the various powers may be acquired by man and, if properly handled, used for a variety of purposes.’ Thus, the primary responsibility and expectation of the village shaman is to effectuate and maintain a personal relationship with such forces.”
I wonder if Geronimo’s conversion to Christianity came about as a natural perception of Christ as the Geronimo of his time, a seditious energy in the Roman Empire as it extended into the deserts of the Middle East. There was that, but also the way kindness and mercy are put forward as central values.
Toward the end of his life, Geronimo became a national celebrity. He was able to attend the St. Lewis World’s Fair in 1904. He was surrounded by guards wherever he went. He wrote about his experience at the fair. “One time the guards took me into a little house that had four windows. When we were seated the little house started to move along the ground. Then the guards called my attention to some curious things they had in their pockets. Finally they told me to look out, and when I did so I was scared, for our little house had gone high up in the air, and the people down in the Fair Grounds looked no larger than ants. The men laughed at me for being scared; then they gave me a glass to look through (I often had such glasses which I took from dead officers after battles in Mexico and elsewhere), and I could see rivers, lakes and mountains. But I had never been so high in the air, and I tried to look into the sky. There were no stars, and I could not look at the sun through this glass because the brightness hurt my eyes. Finally I put the glass down, and as they were all laughing at me, I, too, began to laugh. Then they said, ‘Get out!’ and when I looked we were on the street again. After we were safe on the land I watched many of these little houses going up and coming down, but I cannot understand how they travel. They are very curious little houses.”
Geronimo also rode in Theodore Roosevelt’s inaugural parade.
“According to Smithsonian,” writes Bess Lovejoy in her essay “When Theodore Roosevelt Refused Geronimo’s Plea,” “a member of the 1905 inaugural committee asked Roosevelt, ‘Why did you select Geronimo to march in your parade, Mr. President? He is the greatest single-handed murderer in American history.’ Roosevelt replied, “I wanted to give the people a good show.’”
Geronimo’s plea was a simple one: he wanted he and his people to return to their native land. They and their cattle were dying in Oklahoma for lack of the proper means for survival. “Let me die in my own country, an old man who has been punished enough and is free,” he put forward to Roosevelt. Geronimo’s request was never granted.
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