(GOYATHLAY)

In Arizona Territory,
grandfather, old Mahko
was gifted from the spirits
with the child, Geronimo

His true name was Goyathlay
meaning, “One who yawns,”
a medicine man called of God
thru’ eighty years of dawns

Born in eighteen, twenty-nine,
honored and cursed by men,
he made his mark in history
as a man of many sins

Chiricahua Apache
was Goyathlay’s true blood line,
he grew to honor and respect
the people of his kind

The fierceness of their battles
told ‘round the tribal fires,
pricked the conscience of his soul
and stirred ancestral desire

Taught by old and wise ones
the many Indian ways,
he lived with grandfather Net’na
thru’ his youthful days

He married while a young brave,
took the maiden Juh as wife,
and though he married others,
truly loved her all his life

    (WARRING YEARS)

The Apache were a peaceful tribe
until ordered from their land,
Geronimo and others
then formed a guerilla band

They fled south to old Mexico,
and lay low for a spell,
returning to land of their birth,
they fought for it like hell

Arizona and New Mexico
was where they ventured then,
renegade and bloody murderer
is what settlers would call him

Mexican soldiers named him
“The fierce Geronimo,”
for they thought he had great powers,
and filled enemies with woe

They claimed that he resisted
the bullets of white men,
fought bravely thru’ his battles,
and would somehow always win

Chiefs of the Apache
sought wisdom from this one,
to live again as free men
from dawn till setting sun

Vengeance and blood-raiding
brought honor to the tribe,
great massacres and killings
the braves would oft’ describe

(TURNING POINT)

Geronimo felt the sting of death
at home, when he returned
from a trading expedition,
a hard lesson he then learned

The year was eighteen fifty-eight,
when he found his family killed,
three children, wife, and mother dead,
his hatred was then sealed

Captured in eighteen seventy-six,
with Chiricahua he would go,
to San Carlos Reservation,
but land was arid, life too slow

He fled again to Mexico
and for more than a decade,
eluded scouts and soldiers,
and continue more to raid

They only caught him once
in eighteen eighty-two
he escaped again to wander
where the mighty, great hawk flew

It took eight thousand soldiers,
Mexican troops, and scouts,
to find the camp of Geronimo,
and finally roust him out

In March of eighty-six,
he surrendered with his band,
to General Crook, the leader,
and not a lesser man

As usual, the government
made agreements they would breach,
to put them on reservations
and not Florida’s sandy beach

With four hundred of his comrades,
he was sent south to a fort,
far away from home and family,
his raids government would thwart

Fort Pickens was the name of it,
and in winter they would freeze,
sweat in long hot summers,
and sleep down on their knees

They languished there for eight years
and survived, for they were tough,
the Congress back in Washington
thought they had had enough

They gathered them, and shipped them
by train to old Fort Sill,
forcing them to settle there
in hopes to break their will

(LAST DAYS)

Geronimo was a rancher
until his dying day
in Fort Sill, Oklahoma,
but he kept the Indian way

He rode in the inaugural,
a parade for Roosevelt,
for Teddy could most sympathize
with how the Indians felt

His death in nineteen ought-nine,
was told across the land
of the last guerilla fighter
to lead an Indian band…

EPILOGUE

By the first time Geronimo was captured in 1882, all but two of his
eight siblings were deceased. After his final capture in 1886, he was
never to be reunited with any family members…

           IN HIS WORDS*
                                              
I was warmed by the sun, rocked by the winds, and sheltered by the trees~

We are not useless people or God would not have created us~

There is but one God looking down upon us. We are all His children.
The sun, the darkness, the wind all listen for His words~

The soldier tells only of misdeeds of the Indian, not of the government~



*Taken from Geronimo’s Autobiography written during his imprisonment in Fort Pickens, Florida…
 

Tamara Hillman

©2005