Geronimo was not always the central figure.

There were other leaders — Cochise, Victorio, Nana, Naiche — who played important roles in different phases of the Apache resistance.

But Geronimo’s tenacity, his ability to evade capture, and his willingness to continue fighting long after most of the Chiricahua had settled on reservations made him the enduring symbol of that resistance in the American imagination.

What Geronimo Himself Said

Geronimo’s autobiography, dictated to Asa Daklugie through an interpreter and published in 1906 as “Geronimo: His Own Story,” provides a first-person account of his life that is valuable not as a straightforward factual record — like all autobiographies, it reflects the perspective and concerns of its subject — but as evidence of how he understood his own experience.

The autobiography describes the events of his life in terms that are direct and specific: the attack on his village, the death of his family, the specific engagements of the various campaigns.