Geronimo by Robert M. Utley (review)

Geronimo is arguably the most recognized Indigenous leader in history. Thousands of scholarly and popular publications have explored nearly every aspect of the Bedonkohe Apache man’s life, history, and legend in the nearly 140 years since he was first recognized by non-Apaches as a leader of resistance to Euro-American hegemony. In recent years, he has come to the public’s attention once again in books, museum exhibits, television programs, and the wildly inappropriate use of his name as US military code in the search for Osama bin Laden.

Though characterized as a biography of Geronimo, Utley’s book is more accurately described as a military history of the Chiricahua Apache. Outside the loosely presented narrative of Geronimo’s autobiography, little detail is known of his life before he was recognized by US authorities in the 1870s, when he was in his fifties. As a result most discussion of the man prior to this time is filled with conjecture. The first nine chapters of this book represent competent scholarship of Chiricahua relations and conflict with Euro-Americans but do not contribute new information about Geronimo’s life.

The most significant shortcoming of the book is its perpetuation of unidimensional stereotypes of Apache people. Non-Native scholars have rarely ventured far beyond the shallow caricature of them in nineteenthcentury journalism and fiction as ferocious, subhuman (or occasionally later as superhuman) fighters. For example, Utley repeatedly asserts that US Army capture of Chiricahua camps had no meaningful impact on the people because they could simply resupply through raids. The failure of the army to capture Apache people certainly illustrates the nation’s remarkable capacities to escape, but the continual loss of their tools, animals, and most importantly, food was catastrophic. Chiricahua people of the 1880s were not materialistic. Loss of their supplies meant hunger and hardship that was doubtless demoralizing and demanded an escalation in raiding that was dangerous and costly in time and energy. Utley makes a few attempts to portray his interpretation of how Apache people may have experienced some of the events he chronicles. However, he ultimately relies on the same information used in most previous portrayals: military and other non-Apache narratives. The result is redundant and awkward descriptions of events that do not convincingly imagine Apache perspectives.

Utley begins to explore the complexity of Geronimo’s character at the end of the book, and this is where this work’s most interesting contributions are found. Geronimo was a complicated figure whose legacy is no simpler than his life. He certainly engaged in behaviors that caused hardship, pain, and even death to Chiricahua and non-Chiricahua Apaches as well as non-Apaches. As a result, some White Mountain Apache—elders in particular—still assert he was no hero. His repeated flights from the reservation and the subsequent violence committed upon American and Mexican settlers was the proximal and perhaps ultimate cause for the United States’ unconscionable removal and near-three-decade imprisonment of all the Chiricahua people. But his actions were in response to what was already an almost unimaginable situation. Decades of nearly constant conflict destroyed many Apache lives and families. Geronimo lost several wives and multiple children to military attack, massacre, and enslavement.

A more fully balanced exploration of Geronimo’s life and Chiricahua history would acknowledge the shortcomings of previous scholarship and seek to understand the experiences of people who were not just extraordinary fighters but also loved their children, grieved for their dead, and struggled to make the best decisions for their families in the face of seemingly endless trauma.