The Geronimo Campaign

The surrender of the great Apache leader Geronimo to U.S Army Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood in August of 1886 brought to an end a struggle that had begun in the early years of the century, and had figured prominently in the western campaign of the Civil War. The words addressed by Gatewoodto Geronimo as they met along the banks of Mexico's Bavispe River echoed those spoken in many such a meeting between victorious American commander and vanquished Native American. "Accept these terms or fight it out to the bitter end," said Gatewood. The terms were forced relocation to Florida andthe ceding of the ancestral homeland of the Apaches to white settlers; the bitter end was, quite simply, annihilation....