Fort Sill, in the Lawton area of what is now southwestern Oklahoma, was not a comfortable exile.

The Oklahoma climate was closer to the Apache homeland than Florida or Alabama had been, and the land was more familiar in some ways.

But it was still confinement.

The Apache prisoners of war at Fort Sill were not permitted to return to Arizona.

Geronimo would petition, through various intermediaries and through his own public appearances, for the rest of his life, seeking permission to return to the Chiricahua homeland.

That permission was never granted.