Two Monuments—Geronimo

Two Shafts Recall Apache

By SHELTON G. DOWELL Chairman, Arizona State Highway Commission NEW monument to peace was dedicated at Apache, Ariz., on April 30, 1934. It commemorates the surrender of Geronimo, last of the Indian warriors. Built by the citizens of Douglas, it rises sixteen feet and marks the spot where the wily medicine man of the Apaches surrendered to General Nelson A. Miles of the United States Army on September 5, 1886.

Geronimo, through a short period of years had caused great trouble to the army and terrorized the whole of southeastern Arizona. Unlike his predecessor Cochise, Geronimo was purely a murderer, according to accounts of those pioneers who knew him; he was not a chieftain, but a medicine man, and he preyed on the superstitions of his followers.

Facts herein outlined are taken largely from addresses made at the dedication by President Shantz of the University of Arizona and Judge Lockwood of the Arizona supreme court.

With thirty-five warriors, half of them boys, and one hundred and one women and children, and with no base of supplies, this crafty leader defied a Force of five thousand United States Infantrymen and Cavalrymen for a period of eighteen months, in a stretch of country two hundred miles wide and four hundred miles long.

Thousands of words have been written on the history of Geronimo. There is no need to repeat them here. We are concerned only with his surrender, the date of which has been mentioned above.

During the time Geronimo was rated as a renegade, seventy-five white men and women in Arizona and New Mexico, of whom there is official record, and at least a dozen of Apache Scouts, two commissioned officers and eight soldiers, to say nothing of an untold number of Mexicans, were slain. These data are taken from a book by Lieut. Britton Davis, the Truth About Geronimo. Lieutenant Davis was a principal in the campaign against the Apache medicine man. Losses of the Apache, insofar as is known, were six men, two boys, two women, and one child.

General Miles has always been accredited with Geronimo's capture. That is more or less erroneous. Geronimo, of course, surrendered to General Miles, but it was through the efforts of Lieut. Charles B. Gatewood. Gatewood went into the warrior's stronghold, down in the state of Sonora, Mexico, where Geronimo had been raiding and pillaging, and there he told him that he must come back to Arizona and return to a reservation. We quote from an editorial by J. W. Spear in the Arizona Republic.

"Without detraction from the value of the military services of the late General Nelson A. Miles, the news of the dedication of a monument next Sunday, to commemorate the surrender of Geronimo and his chiefs, has called attention to a great injustice that has been done by neglect to Lieut. Charles B. Gatewood. This is the subject of an indignant letter in this paper yesterday by Anton Massanovich, who was a soldier long engaged in the chase of the Apaches and was familiar with the circumstances of the surrender.

"This view has long been confirmed by persons living in Arizona then. But for Gatewood, there would have been no surrender at that time and at that place, where the memorial has been erected.

"The surrender was in consequence of no battle on this side of the line. The pursuit of the marauding savages in Arizona had become so relentless that the Indians could find a refuge only in Mexico, and, no doubt, Geroni-

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