Geronimo’s Legacy In Apache Culture

Geronimo’s significance for Apache communities is not reducible to his famous name or his skull mystery.

He is a figure of specific cultural importance whose memory is maintained in specific ways by specific communities.

For the Chiricahua Apache and their descendants, Geronimo is a complex figure: a war leader of great capability, a man who continued fighting long after most of the Chiricahua had accepted reservation life, a person whose actions contributed to the specific catastrophe of the 1886 removal of all Chiricahua — including those who had served as Army scouts — from Arizona.

The Apache Army scouts who had helped the Army track Geronimo were themselves exiled to Florida along with Geronimo’s band when the final surrender came.