Biography
Geronimo was a Chiricahua Apache leader of the last major Indigenous armed resistance to U.S. expansion in the Southwest. Surrendered to General Nelson Miles on September 4, 1886 after years of guerrilla resistance to forced relocation. Imprisoned by the U.S. Army for 23 years as a prisoner of war — first at Fort Pickens (Florida), then Mount Vernon Barracks (Alabama), then Fort Sill (Oklahoma) where he died on February 17, 1909. Never permitted to return to his Arizona homeland.
Army correspondence documents an intermediate confinement at San Antonio before Geronimo was sent to Fort Pickens. On September 10, 1886, General Stanley reported that Geronimo and his party had arrived and were held under guard in the quartermaster’s depot. Stanley separately examined Geronimo and Natchez on September 30; his report records their understanding that surrender had been accompanied by promises that their lives would be spared and they would be reunited with their families in Florida. His October 27 account says that the prisoners left San Antonio on October 22 and that Geronimo and Natchez protested their separation from their families as a violation of those assurances. This records the chiefs’ reported understanding, rather than independently adjudicating the disputed surrender terms.