Hardcore History 19 - Apache Tears

It's hardcore history. You know, you listeners will have to keep a close eye on me. Because there are times when I can get a little mystical. You know, almost teary-eyed about certain things. I'll look back on history and see a what-if moment and just get into one of my moods where I'm thinking, gosh, there must be a reason that happened.

Thank heavens for that. Or where would we be now? Get into these moods sometimes, and they're a little mystical, and you have to watch me. And I had one of those moments about 30 minutes ago. I was reading yet another passage of something that I want to include in the show. And that feeling hit me. You know, that feeling of, thank heaven for this.

And in this case, it was a person. It was the person who wrote the book I was reading. Her name was Eve Ball. She died in the early 1980s. And she's one of those people. Who you just wonder what things would be like if she hadn't come around. And her story is something that could happen to any one of you. It's one of those...

encounters with history. She's a great figure in history in her own right and has preserved history for all of us. And she stumbled into it after the age of 60, I believe. She may have been in her late 50s. Now, I don't have the whole Eve Ball story, but I've read biographies about her. And her story is she was born back east, I think like in Kentucky, somewhere around there.

And she lived a completely normal life. I think she taught English. And as she started to get up there in years, I think she was in her late 50s, early 60s when this happened, she moved to the state of New Mexico. And this would have been probably in the 1940s. May have been the early 1950s is when she did this. And she relocated to a town that just happened to be right near one of the big Apache reservations.

that are down in the American Southwest. This one happened to be the Mescalero Reservation, but there were a couple of different Apache bands that made their home there at the time when Eve Ball relocated to that place. And one of the biographies I was reading about her had said that she had intended to do a little amateur writing, maybe come across some old codgers who could remember some old New Mexican history, and if she got a good story, maybe she could send it away to a magazine.

Occasionally publish a little piece here or there, you know, a retired English teacher. Might want to do a little writing. And she apparently noticed, not too long after relocating, that she was running into a lot of Native Americans. Not hard to believe with the Mescalero reservation right there. But after a while, she started to realize that these people she was running into were...

The direct descendants or people that actually took part in some of the greatest stories of Native American history. There were still people. who took part in the great events that history records of the Indian Wars when Eve Ball was living next to the Apache Reservation. And as sort of mystical fate would have it, right, she noticed that she was running into some of them.

on a daily basis. And there's a little fate involved here because it would not have been easy for her to know. The Apache were not exactly gregarious. Not now, especially not then. With white eyes. Their word for us. Unless you're Native American, in which case you probably already knew. And Eve Ball didn't speak Apache. And nobody was volunteering information to her. But something happened in the relationship between this lady who moved from back east to near the Mescalero Reservation.

And some of these Native Americans on the Mescalero Reservation that made it clear to Eve Ball that she had a huge story on her hands if she wanted to write it. You know, fate had dropped one of the great historical tales in her lap. And I often think what would have happened to our knowledge of this wonderful people had it not done that. Because Eve Ball is pretty much the only person who wrote down what the Apache had to say about their history.

And when you're reading the exact words of Apache now, you probably got it from this lady. Eve Ball, I shouldn't say she was the only one who ever wrote the Apache viewpoint. There were a couple of other books. For example, there was a book that was written by some white men who talked to Geronimo through an interpreter while he was still alive and supposedly gave his story, but they heavily embellished it.

And Geronimo is a POW, still worried he was going to be hung for some of the things he did, did not tell the whole story. There were also books like one Apache named Jason Bizzinez wrote some Apache chronicled information. And the Apaches themselves didn't much like what he had to say. To them, the representation that gives their point of view accurately is Eve Ball's work. Without her, we don't really know the Apache side of the story.

As the Apaches wanted to be known. This little mystical twist of fate became a 30-year endeavor for her. where she chronicled and got file cabinet after file cabinet of direct information from the people who rode with Geronimo and who had seen the teepee of Cochise and who remembered... the massacre of the medicine man at CBQ. And he'll remember being carted away as POWs to a long... faraway place, the 19th century version of Guantanamo Bay, Florida. She was talking to people who were there.

Who wouldn't be there very much longer, too. These people were dying out. And if Eve Ball didn't write down this stuff, we wouldn't have it today. And the coup of her career... was an interview she said she spent four years trying to get. It was with a man who was a chief on the reservation, if you want to call him a chief. He didn't like that term.

But in the 1950s, when she was living next to the Mescalero Reservation, this was a big man in the tribe. He wasn't a Mescalero. He was a Nedinghi Apache. Now, I might have massacred that... Apache name because I don't speak Apache and she didn't provide pronunciation guides. But the Nidini were related to the Chiricahua. And the Chiricahua were the small band.

of this larger group of people we call Apaches that's responsible for the fact that that name is famous worldwide. The Apaches have a wonderful culture and religion. They make beautiful baskets. But that's not why their name is the most famous of all the Native American tribes. They're the most famous of all Native American tribes because they have a reputation.

General George Crook, who fought them for many years, called them the tigers of the human species. And for a very long time, we had had... the history of the tigers of the human species, these Apaches, from the people who killed the tigers. Thanks to the mystic fate that dropped this story. into Eve Ball's lap, and thanks to Eve Ball, we also have the Tiger's point of view. And make no mistake about it,

These people were tigers. When Eve Ball got her interview after four years of trying with this big man on the reservation, the man whose Apache name was Doc Lukey. When he was captured as a boy, as a young man, and sent away to the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania to be educated in the white man's ways, they lined all the Apaches up.

and they gave them names out of a book. The first Apache got the first name in the book, second Apache got the second name in the book, and they were all in alphabetical order. Doc Lugie was the first in line, and they named him Asa. He never liked that name. Asa Daglugi was known on the reservation as Ace. And she'd been trying to get an interview with Ace for years. All the people in the tribe that she'd befriended.

and that had gotten to know her and trust her, said, if you really want to find out what was going on in those days, you have to talk to Ace. He was there. Ace was the son. of one of the most famous of all the Apache chiefs during the Apache Wars, a leader named Ho. Although if you see his name in a book, it can be written a bunch of different ways. The most classic way it's written is J-U-H.

You would pronounce it Ja. Another book will write it as W-H-O-A. Whoa. But Eve Ball says the name was Ho. And Ace Dagluki was Ho's son. And he remembers living wild in the mountains of northern Mexico and his father coming back from killing Mexicans and Doc Lugie taking the horse by the reins and seeing his father dismount. He has many other darker memories as well. And when he finally opened up to Eve Ball after years of prodding in the middle 1950s on the reservation in New Mexico...

Ace Dakhlugi shocked Eve Ball. He said, My father was a very good man. He killed a lot of white eyes. Ace Dakhluki still didn't like white people. He told her that if the Russians ever came, to the U.S. and conquered the Americans and made them dig ditches, then they would know how he felt about white people now. He was hoping that an atomic bomb wiped out white civilization. And the red man could take over again. He was angry. And you read books like Inde by Eve Ball.

And you get a good feel for Ace Doc Lugie close up. And he's no movie Indian. As I said, he went to the Carlisle Indian School. He could write and speak better than most Americans. In the book. A man who sounds like a sweet old man. A childhood friend and lifelong friend of Ace Daglugi. The son of an Apache chief also, named Chihuahua. His name...

And he got it the same way Doc Lugie did, standing in line, out of a book, in alphabetical order. He was Eugene. So his name was Eugene Chihuahua. And Eugene... when he was dying in the hospital in the late 1950s, sweet old man that he was. The nurses said they couldn't keep him from getting out of bed because any time he heard a little baby cry, he would get up to try to comfort it.

But they also said when sweet, mild-mannered Eugene Chihuahua, who also remembers being a free and wild Apache in the days of the Apache Wars, when he would get delirious, He would stand up on the bed, wild-eyed, brandishing an imaginary axe and talking about killing white eyes. That is somebody who has been... we would use the modern term, a victim of post-traumatic stress disorder. And when you read about these things these people live through,

You're darn right they're victims of post-traumatic stress disorder. Imagine yourself living through some of this stuff. First of all, just imagine being an Apache near the end of the Indian Wars with the Apache. The Indian Wars... that were fought with the Apache, lasted through the 1800s. The Mexicans were dealing with terrible problems with Apache throughout the whole period. The Americans showed up in the region in the 1840s.

By 1861, they're at war with Apaches. And those wars don't end until Geronimo finally surrenders in 1886. Practically modern times, by the way, folks. It sounds a long time ago. But Winston Churchill was a teenager. If he wasn't a teenager, he was 12. So not as long ago as you think. Eugene Chihuahua and Ace Doc Loogie? weren't taken into custody until the middle 1880s. And they were both sent to Florida with the POWs. And you're darn right they had post-traumatic stress disorder. In the last...

You know, 50 years of their freedom, the Chiricahua and related Apache bands were a hunted people. You read the stories that James Kawakla... Another Apache survivor of these wars told Eve Ball in the 1950s about what the evening ritual was when Apache parents put their children to sleep. And now try to put yourself in that position. Imagine living like this.

Imagine telling your four-year-old what to do if your camp is ambushed in the night. First of all, they told you to keep your food pouch on you. All the Apache children had a food pouch with dried food in it attached to their belt. Also, every child's blanket was a major survival necessity. So the first thing you were taught, even if you're attacked, is roll the blanket up and take it with you. There was also a water jug, which was also required.

And then the children would be told where the secure meeting place was that they were all to regroup at if an attack came. You know, imagine telling your four-year-old that at night. You know, while you say your prayers before bedtime. James Koweikla was four or five when he was hearing it. And it happened to him. Ace Doc Lugie talks about when it happened to him.

Just one of a couple of occasions. Wouldn't you be a victim of post-traumatic stress disorder if this happened to you? Doc Lugina's family were asleep when Mexican cavalry had found and attacked his camp. Doc Lugie, by the way, was the nephew of the famous Apache medicine man Geronimo. His mother was Geronimo's sister. And they were all camping when this Mexican attack occurred in the middle of the night.

Duck Loogie told Eve Ball. Warriors grabbed weapons and ran to the defense of the camp. By the light of a burning brush arbor, I saw horsemen riding fast. They dashed through the camp, firing as they came. I struggled to my feet. attempting to roll my blanket as I had been taught. My mother was gathering up food and ammunition. My sister, Jakali, recently married, had rolled up her blanket and was gathering the water jugs. A teepee close by burst into flame.

And the next thing I knew, Delzini, my brother, was firing over my head at a Mexican whose horse just missed coming into our door. Gicali's husband, rifle in hand, rushed in and told us to take my baby sister and run for the Arroyo. As my mother started to lift the toddler, a bullet struck the baby, and she went limp. Mother then reached for the rifle discarded by Delzini and began loading it. I started toward the door and saw Mother stagger and fall. Jakali rushed to her.

Stopped suddenly, grasped her knee and sank to the earth. Delzini and Gicali's husband continued to fire, with Gicali reloading as fast as she could. They were taking careful aim and riders were dropping just outside. I knew that we had little ammunition. and that every bullet must count. I could see flames as brush arbors were set on fire, and I could hear horses running madly. Suddenly the firing ceased, and the Mexicans pulled back to reorganize for a second charge on the camp.

They won't be long, said my mother. Get away before they come back. Delzini stooped to lift her, but she told him that he must not, that she was dying and that he must save the others. But I can't leave you, he said. You must. Again, he undertook to carry her.

but she refused to permit it. Save your sister, she said. Carry her to the arroyo, lower her into it, and hide her in a thicket close to the water. Take my blanket and knife for her, and run, all of you. As the two men attempted to lift my sister in her blanket, her husband fell. mortally wounded. Delzini lifted Gicali and carried her toward the watercourse. I followed with food bags and my blanket. He laid my sister on the bank, jumped down, and with Gicali in his arms,

waded up the shallow little stream toward the thick clump of brush. When he had hidden her in it, he laid food, a knife, and a small jug of water beside her. He spread my blanket over her and said, If I live, I'll come back for you. I do not think they'll find you. But if they do, you have a knife. They will not take me alive, she promised. Doc Lugie went back to his camp.

The Mexicans were getting ready to charge again. His mother was dead. His baby sister was dead. His sister's husband was dead. Is it any wonder, Doc Lugie, hated Mexicans and hated white people. Look what he'd been through. Is it any wonder Eugene Chihuahua was killing imaginary white eyes in his delirium as a man in his 80s?

He'd been traumatized. But you see, that post-traumatic stress disorder worked both ways. The Apache... the people that Doc Loogie and Eugene Chihuahua were both descended from, scared the heck out of the settled urban people around them. I'm reminded of a phrase, and the first time I ever heard it used, somebody was using it about George Washington. And it blew my mind, because I never thought of it that way. But it really applies to these Apache...

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. These Apache that were fighting to maintain their way of life were freedom fighters. But the men who led them were also unquestionably terroristic. Just ask the people that were their victims. The Apache may not have been the roughest, toughest, meanest of the Native American peoples, but they sure have that reputation. Hollywood has done its part for sure.

And the media also has because the Apache coming so late as they did in the Indian Wars were victimized and hyped up by a relatively modern media machine. The newspapers in Arizona and New Mexico, you know, around the time of Geronimo's breakout, for example, were every bit as sophisticated and yellow journalistic as ours are today or ours can be today. And because of that.

All the atrocities were played up and exaggerated and sometimes made up. And all of the fear was stoked, oftentimes to sell newspapers. And the Apache were victimized by that. There's a great book called A People Called Apache by Reverend Thomas Mayles, who's a great defender and friend of the Apache. But even he said about the rumors of Apache atrocities, what can I say? He said.

An angry Apache was a terrible thing. Those reports stand. And the Apache were supposed to be inventive torturers. If using terror...

as a weapon, as a way to intimidate your enemy, is terrorism, then the Apaches were terrorists. One of their favorite methods... that was recorded by people of the time that the Apache liked to use was to truss up their victims and hang them over a slow fire. Setting them on fire, burning them at the stake was common.

All of the traditional, you know, burying people up to their neck in anthills, staking them out in the hot sun, sometimes with leather thongs that had been wet and that were going to tighten in the sun around vital organs like necks. and arms. The lurid accounts of what Apaches would do to you if they captured you were played up in the media. And yet there was enough truth to all this stuff to scare the people.

in Arizona and New Mexico, and to scare the people in northern Mexico. When the last Apache breakout occurred, led by a medicine man named Geronimo, the press freaked out. out in Apache country. The residents of that region are said to have been hysterical about it. And when you think about our reaction to terrorism today, just imagine you had a bona fide killer.

with a group of about 100 people leading them off into the mountains right near you. You might freak out too, especially if they had this fearsome reputation. Now, Geronimo's band, that final band that left the hated reservation and ran off into the mountains in 1885, was a pathetically small group of people. Probably 30 warriors, a bunch of women.

A bunch of children, including little children. Think about having to provide for them as well. And he led them off the reservation into the incredibly rugged country of southern Arizona, southern New Mexico, and northern Mexico.

And you could not get an Apache out of that country without extreme measures being taken. The Apache are one of the greatest guerrilla fighting people of all time. And when I say Apache right now, I'm talking principally about the Chiricahua band and related sub-bands. You know, the Bendonkohe, the Nideni, the Chihena. I know I'm mispronouncing those.

My Apache is non-existent. But these bands, this little percentage of the entire Apache nation, which isn't big to begin with, are the ones who held out the longest against U.S. and Mexican domination. Those were principally the people that Geronimo was leading off into the hills in 1885. And the political pressure to get him out of there was intense.

Remember, Geronimo was going to live in those mountains the Apache way. And the Apache way meant hiding and then ambushing people. This rugged mountainous terrain. Go online if you want. Look at a picture of the Dragoon Mountains, for example, in southern Arizona. Now imagine it crawling with Apaches. It's made-to-order ambush country, and the Apaches were some of the best ambushers that ever lived.

General George Crook, who fought them for many years, he said fighting in a patch usually meant not seeing anything but a puff of smoke out of a craggy mountain, and then nothing. They were very frustrating to fight. The Apaches, to sustain themselves, would do what warlike Apaches always did. They would raid. Raiding is a key issue in Apache history. It was one of the ways they...

supplemented their economy. It was something that most tribal warrior societies throughout world history do. They swoop down on ranches and farms and mining camps. They attack. wagons and travelers in order to steal stuff. The Apache's favorite target were usually horses or cattle.

And they'd steal hundreds of them at a time sometimes. They were expert at herding them and getting them out of corrals and driving them back up into the mountains. They would certainly steal food supplies. They would steal clothing. They would steal weapons, of course. And they'd often kill people. In these farms and ranches and mining camps and wagons that they encountered. A lot of times they kill the women. A lot of times they kill the children. Geronimo.

Probably the greatest example of, you know, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, was said to hang little children on meat hooks. Sometimes... These freedom fighters can be quite terroristic. And someone once said to me to describe what I thought an Apache raid was like. You know, try to throw off the romanticism of the Old West a little bit and get down to reality. What was an Apache raid like? And I thought about it a minute.

And, you know, raiding was the main way the Apaches inflicted casualties on the settled societies around them. There wasn't a lot of, like, warfare and battles. Much more of an ambush and raiding sort of... And in these sorts of conflict, the casualties would tend to be small. The Apaches would swoop down on a farm, you know, kill all the people there, which might be four, eight people, and then get away.

Now, that doesn't sound like a lot, but if the Apaches did the rating a lot, those numbers added up quickly. Not just that. When you think of four to eight people, well, that's a Manson murder, isn't it? And what I said to my friend who asked me what I thought an Apache raid, the aftermath of an Apache raid, was like, I said, imagine you were one of the police officers that was the first to show up at one of the Manson murder scenes.

The Mansons of course were a group of hippie cultists in the late 60s that committed some terribly grisly murders in Los Angeles, the hills around Los Angeles. They cut up people. There was blood everywhere on the walls, signs of tortures and atrocities, furniture tipped over, that kind of thing. I said, it's like you walk into a Manson murder every time you find an Apache raid.

We do have surviving accounts, by the way, of what that was actually like, written at the time by people who were said to have been stunned by their experience. If you walked in on a... murder scene like the Manson murder scene and saw that that would stay with you for quite a while wouldn't it well if you'd ever seen an Apache raid and the aftermath you never forgot it in 1861

when the great Apache chief Cochise was on the warpath against the Americans, his Chiricahuas destroyed a ranch called the Kanoa Inn. And they killed four people. during the raid. And the two people, a man named Raphael Pampelli and Charles Poston, wrote about coming upon the aftermath of the raid, and they were stunned.

They wrote, The sides of the house were broken in, and the court was filled with broken tables and doors, while fragments of crockery and ironware lay mixed in heaps with grain and the contents of mattresses. Through the open door of a small house on one side of the court, we saw a naked body, which proved to be the remains of young Eugene Tarbox. As in the case of many of the settlers, the first Apaches he had ever seen were his murderers.

Under a tree beyond a fence that divided the court, we found the bodies of the other American and a Papago Indian, who probably, driven in by the Apaches, had joined in a desperate struggle that had evidently taken place. These bodies were pierced by hundreds of lance wounds, he writes. The Apaches often mutilated the bodies of their victims, another way that they scared people.

What's more, in the 1860s when Cochise was on the warpath, he virtually owned southern Arizona and parts of southern New Mexico and parts of northern Mexico. You couldn't travel. There are accounts of taking the very dangerous stagecoach through Apache country during this period when the Apaches owned the countryside and what the side of the road looked like. Rock pile graves everywhere.

Bleached bones. One writer saw a skull with a face on it, he said. Overturned, burned wagons. Signs of atrocities having been committed all along the way. This was, by the way, not a unique time or occurrence. All you would have to have done at that era is go ask the Mexicans. The Mexicans had been dealing with Apache depredations long before the Americans showed up to the region.

The Apaches could be terrible trouble to the settled, civilized states around them. Think of the challenges we would have today if a hundred Apaches ran off to the hills around the Grand Canyon. That kind of terrain. With modern weapons. You know, give a hundred Apaches from the 1860s. Bring them through your time machine. Give them rocket-propelled grenades.

Shoulder-fired anti-aircraft weapons, landmines, IEDs, machine guns. Then turn them loose up in the Dragoon Mountains of southern Arizona. I have a feeling... Most modern governments would have a hard time getting those people out of those mountains now. You give them modern weapons like that. And if you think that's nuts, well, think about the fierce Afghan tribesmen in Afghanistan.

with those same kind of weapons, in terrain that is not all that different from the terrain the Apaches operated in. The Apaches would often devastate... the Mexicans' northern states of Sonora and Chihuahua. There were times in the 1830s, 1840s, 1850s when whole frontier regions were just depopulated by Apache raids. And it wasn't that the Apache were so devastating in open warfare against Mexican forces, because they weren't.

The problem was, is you couldn't keep Mexican forces everywhere all the time, and the minute they were gone, the Apaches made it impossible for people to live. In 1840, 1841, the Mexican harvest! hardly came in from those states because nobody would go out in the field to farm because if they did, the Apaches would kill them. In 1833, Mexican records say that more than 200 Mexicans were killed by Apaches in these.

You know, raids, like we were talking about. Raid may sound like a small-scale deal. And a lot of times to the warrior tribes, that's how they were seen. That was part of the... differences in culture that made it hard for these tribes to live next to settled societies. To an Apache, a little horse thievery was almost a prank. To the people in Arizona...

It was a capital crime. Hanging horse thieves is a legendary part of the Old West. You can see right there how the cultural differences between tribes like the Apache and their settled neighbors like the Americans, Mexicans, and before them the Spanish. could rub up against these settled societies in ways that caused friction. And this friction led to misunderstandings. And these misunderstandings often led to violence.

Raiding was a principal cause of outbreaks of violence happening. And the Mexicans bore the brunt of it through most of the modern Apache historical era. In 1850, the Apaches killed 111 Mexican citizens in one state alone, Sonora. The year after that, they killed 200 Sonorans. 59 of them in August alone. What settled government could allow that to continue? The Apaches...

were victims of Mexican and American aggression. There is no question. But the Mexicans and Americans were victims of Apache aggression too. And I'm not sure those two sides...

ever could have lived next to each other peacefully unless one had their culture destroyed. One of the biggest charges leveled against the European descendant countries. the Spanish, the Mexicans, and the Americans, is that they all try to wipe out traditional Apache culture. And this is obviously true.

But when you realize that traditional Apache culture, especially of these bands that gave the Apaches their reputation, that made them famous worldwide, these Chiricahuas, these are warrior people. These are people that cannot become full-fledged parts of the male Apache society until they've gone on four of these raids. You know, these things that could be like Manson murder scenes.

If you were going to live next to these people, you were going to have to pacify them. You were going to have to stop them from doing that. That right there... would be destroying the traditional culture of a warrior society. If you make them peaceful, they're not a warrior society anymore. And the Spanish and the Mexicans and Americans all had policies to try to pacify the Apache.

And the Apache did not want to be pacified. They wanted peace a lot of the time. But you would read these accounts of how they behaved. And the Apache wanted peace with town A, but they still wanted the right to raid town B. Or they wanted peace with the Americans so that they could raid the Mexicans. Or they wanted peace with the Mexicans so they could raid the Americans. They really didn't want to stop raiding. That was a part of their culture.

When the Apaches were for the most part put on the reservations in the 1880s, many breakouts happened. And Apaches didn't have dictatorial leaders. What would happen is someone would say, I'm breaking out or I'm leaving. Anyone who wants to go with me can come.

And based on, you know, how much personal charisma or sway or experience or whatever this leader had, that's how many people would follow him off the reservation. And many of the people that followed leaders like Geronimo or before him the great. guerrilla leader Victorio off the reservation were people that were bored with reservation life.

Apache didn't want to be farmers. The Apache were warriors. The Apache were proud of who they were. And tales would come back from these renegades running up and down the mountains raiding about how fun it was to live the old life again, how satisfying it was, how much of a warrior they felt. like and what they accomplished while they were out away from the reservation. And they'd lure more young, you know, energetic, bored Apaches with them because that was a part of their society.

Geronimo, as I said earlier, wasn't even a chief. He was a medicine man. The great chiefs were dead by Geronimo's time for the most part. One of the greatest was that one I mentioned just before him, Victorio. Not well enough known. But Victorio led one of the great breakouts from the U.S. reservation system in 1877, managed to elude tons of forces, sort of a pre-Geronimo version of forces, for three years before he was finally...

trapped and ambushed at a place called Tres Castillos by the Mexicans. And the Mexicans would be brutal to the Apaches because there was a life or death struggle going on in some of those northern territories. The Mexicans executed the boys after the battle. They took the rest back to be slaves in Mexico. They found any Apaches hiding in the grass. They just killed them.

The Mexicans were desperate, too. Throughout their history, they did terrible things. One of them was something called a scalp bounty. The Spanish had done this before the Mexicans. The Spanish were the first ones to encounter the Apaches and for 300 years lived next to them. The Mexicans would pay people for the scalps of Apaches.

The scalps were proof that you had killed Apaches. The Mexicans were desperate to kill Apaches, and they'd give you gold if you brought in scalps. You know, something like 250 pesos sometimes for a male scalp. And then a lot of times they'd pay you a smaller amount for a female scalp and a smaller amount for a child scalp. The Americans also offered scalp bounties throughout their history with the Apaches. The Spanish did, the Mexicans did, and the Americans did.

The Mexicans just used it the most and the longest. And the Mexicans were not fools. They knew that there were downsides to this policy. Downside number one, how do you know a good Apache scalp from a bad Apache scalp? Downside number two, how do you know an Apache scalp from another Indian scalp? Downside number three, how do you even know an Indian scalp most of the time from a Mexican scalp? The Mexicans realized there were downsides with this bounty policy.

They also were desperate for some way to stop the Apache depredations that were killing hundreds of people a year in Mexico. The scout bounty payoff money was raised from the Mexican citizens. And they were enthusiastic about this program. Shows you what they thought of the Apaches. And how traumatized they were. Imagine you living through an Apache raid.

be pretty traumatized, wouldn't you? Well, that's how they were. American correspondents in Mexico in the 1840s report seeing Apache scalps on display in the plazas. So... Somebody was getting scalped, and somebody was getting paid. And some of the worst massacres against the Apaches, and there were so many, were conducted by American bounty hunters. There was one named Johnson. There was another one named Kirkur.

who took a terrible toll on the Apaches. And they, like the Mexicans, used to get Apaches drunk. There's something historically about the tribal societies, all through history, where their warriors are vulnerable to... ambushes while they're intoxicated. You know, the settled people will lure them into a situation where they get them drunk, and then when these formidable warriors are incapacitated by the alcohol, kill them.

You know, the great Greek historian Herodotus writes that that's how the Medes, the forefathers of the Persian Empire, got rid of their tribal warrior problem. Herodotus said the Scythian horse archer, the nomadic horse people from the southern Russian steppes, had conquered the Medes and had ruled them for more than 20 years. And he said the way the Medes...

settled, civilized urban people threw off that conquest was to get the Scythians dead drunk at a festival and then kill them while they were intoxicated. The Mexicans did this to the Apaches a bunch of times. One of these occasions, more than a hundred were lured into a treacherous situation where the Mexicans pretended to be their friends, got them blind drunk, and then reportedly bashed in their heads with sticks, including women.

More than a hundred died in one of them. The great Apache leader Cochise's father may have died this way. James Kirker said that he stumbled upon an encampment of about 50 Apache warriors who had gotten... severely intoxicated, and that he and his men simply walked around and slit their throats, although there have been charges made that Kirker might have provided the alcohol himself. In the Johnson Massacre,

Apaches were lured into a trading situation by supposedly friendly people. And then at the last minute, cannons, which had been hidden under like canvas tarps or something, were quickly uncovered and fired like buckshot into this... group of women and children and Apache warriors. And most of the time it was for the scalp money. The Apaches never forgot any of these massacres, by the way.

They were traumatized the same way Doc Loogie and Eugene Chihuahua were traumatized by their experiences. And it made the Apache angry and it made them distrustful. It's no wonder they have a reputation for atrocities.

they had a lot of payback to inflict. I mean, think about Geronimo as just one example. There is no question Geronimo hated Mexicans with all his heart. Doc Lugie was actually at Geronimo's bedside holding his hand when Geronimo died. He was the only one there. For days, Geronimo suffered with pneumonia and would go in and out of consciousness.

And Doc Loogie says the last thing he was talking about was killing Mexicans. His actual words were, don't tell me Geronimo didn't hate Mexicans. I was there at the end. Sometime in the 1850s, historians disagree. Some think 1851, some think 1853, some think 1858. But when the Apache-Mexican Wars were really going hot, Geronimo, as an average warrior...

with his band led by his chief, went into Mexico to do some raiding or trading, depending on who you believe. And they brought their families who were in camp nearby, guarded by a couple of warriors. When Geronimo and the warriors who had gone into this town to raid or trade came back, they were met halfway back by survivors of a massacre. In the same way Doc Lugie's camp, where his mother, Geronimo's sister, was killed, was attacked by Mexicans.

The camp of Geronimo's people in the 1850s was attacked by Mexicans. And they went back there and Geronimo found his aged mother, his young wife, and his three little children murdered by the Mexicans. Probably scalped. He writes later about what that did to him. And post-traumatic stress would be the understatement of the century.

If Geronimo was a terrorist as well as a freedom fighter, I'm thinking a lot of people listening to my voice right now who'd gone through what he went through might fall into a similar category. And raids, like the one that killed Geronimo's family, were extremely damaging to the Apache. One of the main disadvantages they had against the urban settled societies they faced...

Where those societies could produce lots of kids, there were always going to be lots more Mexicans, for example. But the Apaches had a relatively low birth rate, and raids like the ones Geronimo lived through. could decimate a whole band of Apaches. He was a Bendonkohé Apache, a little teeny band already. And raids like that one forced his little band to merge with a larger Chirikawa-related band later on.

Because there just weren't enough of them left. The Apache may have a decent-sized population by Indian tribe standards, but Indian tribes were not really large anyway.

I said earlier the ones who made the tribe famous were actually just a small fraction of the overall tribe. But these Apache-N people... are a group of southwestern Native American peoples that are connected by their language. They all speak a similar tongue. And the scientists believe that they are originally from the Siberia region of the world and that they...

traveled at some point to what's now modern-day Canada, where there are people there who still speak a similar language. And then sometime between 1400 AD... And about 1600 A.D., this group moved down into the American Southwest. Arizona, New Mexico, Southern Colorado, Western Texas. Some people even think all the way to Kansas and Nebraska.

And then wars with other Native American tribes push them even farther into the American Southwest. And that's when they encounter their first European peoples in the... 1500s, early 1600s, and that would be the Spanish. The Apache were already a warlike people at that time, raiding their more peaceful Native American neighbors.

bumping up and rubbing up against the Spanish in ways that caused friction. The Mexicans report a particularly strong attack of Apaches, for example, in the 1700s. May 1st, 1782, actually. where they say 600 Apache warriors attack the city of Tucson, you know, in modern-day Arizona. When you think about what Geronimo... was able to do with 30 or 35 warriors in the 1880s against a much more sophisticated enemy makes you wonder how the Spanish ever dealt with 600 Apaches.

The Spanish were eventually evicted from the New World by a revolution, and the government of Mexico took over. This happened in the early 1800s. The revolution broke out in 1810. By 1830, you have Mexico. And Mexico controlled the whole American Southwest when it was first emancipated from Spain. Texas was part of Mexico.

Arizona, New Mexico, California was part of Mexico. So was all the Apache land. Let's understand something, too. The Spanish didn't think there was any Apache land. They claimed all that territory for Spain. And then when the Mexicans inherited the Spanish land, they didn't think any of that was Apache either. When the United States arrived on the scene, which is in the 1830s and 1840s.

They think that land's all Mexican, too. They end up having a war with Mexico in the 1840s, the Mexican-American War. And that and something called the Gadsden Purchase right afterwards gives them control. of all of these states that used to be Spanish before they were Mexican, that are now American, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, those places, then they inherited.

This group of Apaches, whose land they didn't recognize. You see, the Americans didn't steal the land from the Apaches. The Spanish did. And then the Mexicans inherited it from the Spanish. And then the Americans took it from the Mexicans. And the Apache were just sort of there the whole time going, this is ours. Nobody recognized them as a significant factor unless and until they were out there killing people and causing problems.

And I often like to speculate how it might have been if violence had never broken out between the Americans and the Apaches. Because it didn't look like it had to at first. The Americans arrived on the scene after getting all this land. The Apache... Land was right on the border, the new border between the U.S. and Mexico. And the Apaches looked like they might have been content to just stay at peace with the Americans. They were still going to be a warrior people. They were still going to raid.

But they would just raid the Mexicans. And then to their delight, they found that the Mexicans wouldn't cross this border. So they could raid the Mexicans, and then when they were being chased or pursued, they could just run over this invisible line, and the Mexicans wouldn't follow them.

This became one of the classic Chiricahua and related band Apache techniques. Use the border to evade pursuit. If the Americans were chasing you, run into Mexico. If the Mexicans were chasing you, run into the U.S. Turned out to be a wonderful gift to the Apaches that the border ran right through their territory. A lot of other Native American tribes would have loved to have had that advantage. The Sioux, for example, there was no place for them to run.

You think of the Sioux and tribes like that, those Plains Indian tribes. They were the ones who wore the stereotypical Hollywood feathered headdresses. Some of them were so flamboyant they'd have their horse made up with feathered headdresses and stuff too. That wasn't what the Apache were like. The average Chiricahua-type Apache would be dressed so much more simply than that. They'd have maybe a Spanish or a Mexican shirt on.

They'd have a breech clout, which is a long piece of cloth that you would pull up under the front of your belt. weave between the legs and then flap over the back of your belt. It would hang down the two ends between your legs about a foot usually. They had buckskin, knee-high moccasins that they would wear.

And usually these moccasins had enough material where you could roll them up all the way to the thighs if it was cold. And then for head adornment, your average Chiricahua-type Apache simply had a strip of cloth. or a scarf tied around their long black hair to keep it out of their face. They were extremely utilitarian. The Apaches were supposed to be able to cover more than 25 miles a day on foot.

More than 100 miles a day on horseback. They lived in country that could get to be 120 degrees Fahrenheit easily. The Apache were mountain people, but between all these mountain ranges that they used to love to live in were these desert valleys that got hot as hell. If you didn't... bring lots of water and lots of supplies with you, whole army columns could, you know, die of thirst in that kind of terrain. The Apache being the ultimate survivalist. I always think of the Apache...

as an extreme example of a human type. I often like to say that, you know, all we people are like cars. And most people in the world today are like Fords and Chevys. And we're mixes and blends of all kinds of different peoples. But some people are like Ferraris. Specifically geared for unique tasks.

I think of the Spartan Spartiate hoplites, for example. These warriors bred, born, and designed, perfected to just be warriors. An extreme example of a human type. I find that fascinating. A Mongol horse archer. from the 13th century. Same thing. You know, that amazing archer that was almost one person with that horse. I'd love to see that on video, what they looked like. It's an extreme example of a human type.

Well, the Apache was also an extreme example of a human type. These survivalist machines. They knew every inch of their territory, where every cave was, where every watering hole was. They used to stash food and ammunition, cooking utensils, and clothing gear in the mountainous caves in places where no one could find.

You'd get the Apaches trapped in their home mountains and you'd think they'll eventually come out when they run out of stuff. And a lot of times they had stuff already stashed away in those mountains. What a resourceful people. They could hide better than any people.

I think, in the world, especially in that terrain. That was the main thing the Apaches had going for them that allowed them to be a thorn in the side of the United States government longer than any other Native American tribe, is you couldn't find them. John Cremany was a soldier fighting the hostile Apaches in the 1860s.

And he worked with Apache scouts. And he didn't understand why they just couldn't find these Apaches in the mountains. And one of his Apache scouts volunteered to hide right in front of him while he was there and defy him to find the Apache.

Listen to what Kremany wrote. While crossing an extensive prairie, dotted here and there by a few shrubs and diminutive bushes, Quick Killer, the Apache Scout, volunteered while resting at noon to show me with what dexterity an Apache could conceal himself, even when no special opportunity existed for such concealment.

The offer was readily accepted, and we proceeded a short distance until we came to a small bush, hardly sufficient to hide a rabbit. Taking his stand behind this bush, he said, Turn your back and wait until I give the signal. This proposition did not exactly suit my ideas of Apache character, and I said, No, I'll walk forward until you tell me to stop. This was agreed upon, and quickly drawing my pistol, keeping a furtive glance over my shoulder, I advanced.

but had not gone ten steps when Quick Killer hailed me to stop and find him. I returned to the bush, went around it three or four times, looked in every direction. There was no possible hiding place in sight. The prairie was entirely smooth and unbroken, and it seemed as if the earth had opened up and swallowed this Apache. Being unable to discover him, I called and asked him to come forth, when, to my extreme surprise,

He arose laughing and rejoiced within two feet of the position I then occupied. Cremoni says that the Apache had buried himself in the sand under a bunch of grass. He arose right in front of the American. Imagine what a group of people who could hide like that could do.

Not just that, the Apache women were as dangerous often as their men. James Kawakla told Eve Ball that his mother often left him with his grandmother so she could go fight with her husband against the Mexicans and the Americans. She would usually load his rifle in the heat of battle, but she was a crack shot herself. A lot of Indian tribes were not really good marksmen. The Apaches were the exception to the rule. His mother, he said,

killed several human beings on several occasions with one bullet from the rifle. And then he talks about someone he calls a warrior woman, someone Eve Ball heard about from several of her Apache. subjects. This was Victorio's sister, Lotson. And Lotson was every bit the warrior man was. A crack shot with a rifle.

James Kawekla talks about battle scenes going on and Lotson in the thick of the battle doing heroic things. She never married. She fought with the men. And Lotson had a magical, mystical power. given to her by the Apache gods. The Apaches believed that she could tell where enemies were. Victorio said, Lotzin is a shield to her people. And James Kawakla said that...

The way she would do this is hold her arms outstretched and slowly turn around in a circle while praying, and the Apache god would let her know where the enemies were. The Apaches believed in these kind of powers and that some people had them. Geronimo was supposed to have had some as well. Geronimo was supposed to, on several occasions, have made the sun stop climbing in the sky so the Apaches could get away in darkness. He's supposed to have known about distant events occurring.

Once he jumped up from a meal with a raiding party and said that their camp, hundreds of miles away, had just been attacked. And the Apaches got up on their horses and rode back to the camp, and sure enough, it had been attacked. That was Geronimo's power.

Well, there were Apaches who told Eve Ball in the 1950s that the great Victorio never would have been ambushed at Tres Castillos if Lotzin had been with the band at the time. She wasn't, and they didn't know the Mexicans were hiding there for them. The Apaches think they would have had Lotson been there. Lotson was there, by the way, though, at the end. She was with Geronimo in 1886 at the final surrender.

She's one of a small group of people photographed being carted off to Florida as POWs. And she would die years later on one of these POW reservations back east of these sorts of...

viruses like smallpox and others that were killing the Apaches in large numbers. I've often wondered what would have happened had the Apaches not gone to war with the Americans, but one of the most stupid Incidents in all of Native American-American relations assured that the Apaches would be. I tend to think war would have broken out anyway, but the Americans, when they first arrived on the scene, had peace with the Apaches for about 20 years.

And eventually, one idiot proving to us all how much of a difference one person can make in history changed all that. And that road that I told you about... from Mexico through Apache country to Arizona that was strewn with corpses and bones and burnt wagons, were all a result of this one-man stupidity. That's a famous story in Apache history.

The incident was triggered, as so many of these Apache tragedies and misunderstandings were, by raiding. In this case it was an Indian raid on an American rancher's farm. His name was Ward, W-A-R-D. And in this raid, the Indians stole a bunch of his cattle or horses or both and also took a 12-year-old boy who was Ward's stepson.

And Ward ran to the nearest army fort and complained to the commander of the fort. Ward said that these Indians had run off with his stuff and his boy, that he trailed them a little ways, and that he was sure they were Cochise's Apaches. who were at peace with the U.S. at this time, but raiding was a problem. Cochise was never really implicated, but a lot of people had ideas that the Chiricahua were at least stealing horses. The commander of this fort sends out a young...

Brave, it must be said, but wet behind the ears, 20-something, inexperienced, no Indian understanding at all lieutenant named George Bascom to investigate. Bascom goes out to Ward's ranch with his troops, looks around. Sure enough, it does look like the tracks go into Chiricahua country. Bascom goes back to his commander at the fort, says, yeah, looks like it was Cochise's people.

And the commander says, well, you take some soldiers, go up to Cochise's area and have a talk with the old chief and get the boy back. So Bascom leads these soldiers up into Indian country. These rugged hills. where the only people close by are the people at the stage depot, and they see Cochise from time to time. But otherwise, he's like a semi-legendary figure to most Americans. He's fighting the Mexicans all the time.

But basically he stays up in his mountains. This great Indian chief, right? So Bascom gets up by Apache Pass, pitches the tents, and lays out a camp, and sends some local people, some Mexican women. up into the hills to go find the Apaches and tell them that they want to have a talk with the great chief. Now Cochise takes his time coming down, irritating Bascom, but eventually he arrives.

This great chief of the Apaches, this regal figure, everyone who saw him and wrote down what he was like, commented that he was one of the most finely formed Indians they'd ever seen. Close to, if not six feet tall, which was... Big for an Apache. Cochise's contemporary and a chief he often worked with, Mangus Colorados, was a full 6'4", 6'5", 250 pounds, and had a giant head.

Well, Cochise was a big Apache, just like Mangus Colorados. He had a Roman nose, long black hair with a little hint of gray in it. Cochise was probably about 50 or a little older. and a very regal aristocratic bearing. He comes down from the mountains with his wife, his little boy, his brother, and some nephews, expecting no trouble at all, figuring he's not at war with the Americans.

Got nothing to worry about. Comes down the hill, and we have different accounts of what happened next from different viewpoints. But here's what seems to have happened. Cochise and at least some of the males, maybe the whole family, were brought into a tent with Bascom. And Ward actually acting as interpreter. No conflict of interest there. And soldiers around the tent, maybe inside the tent as well, armed. Bascom tells Cochise that this raid has happened and accuses him of taking the boy.

Cochise says he didn't take the boy. Some other Apaches took the boy. He's done some research. He knows who they are. He thinks he can get the boy back is what he's supposed to have said. Bascom is supposed to have accused Cochise of not telling the truth. And even though Apaches could lie just like anyone else, Cochise was pretty proud of telling the truth, and this upset him. Bascom told Cochise that getting the boy back was exactly what he wanted, so...

They could have a deal, but that Cochise and his family were not going anywhere until the boy was returned. Now, it took Cochise about a quarter of a second to process what this meant after the interpreter explained it to him. And when he realized that he was now a hostage of the white man in this tent with his family, he and his brother, without exchanging any sort of glances or any signs or signals at all, are supposed to have...

Whipped out hidden knives and slashed the side of the tent before anyone had any idea what was happening and took off running. Cochise's brother falls down and trips and is captured. Bascom is supposed to have told his troops to open fire, and more than 50 bullets are supposed to have been fired at the fleeing, aging Apache chief who's running full bore up into the mountains. He's supposed to have been hit, too. But he gets away.

And now Bascom has a real, real problem on his hands. He's just antagonized the most powerful, important Apache chief over a minor incident. About an hour later, Cochise is supposed to have appeared on a rock outside the army encampment and asked to see his brother. Once again, here's a chance for Bascom to overturn the mistakes.

of an hour ago. Instead, he answers Cochise's plea with some rifle shots in his direction. Cochise runs back off into the mountains. The next day, Cochise asks for a parley and... a very suspicious group of five or so Americans meets a very suspicious group of five or so Apaches in the middle of a field and try to have a conversation.

It goes much like the night before. Coach, he's saying he doesn't have the ward boy. Bascom saying you have to have the ward boy or you're not getting your family back. It actually ends in gunshots and everybody runs for cover and people die. This makes Cochise determined to get his own hostages, and over the next day or two, he gets several. He ends up with four. Leaves a note offering to trade him to Bascom. Makes one of these hostages at gunpoint write the note.

There's question whether or not Bascom ever saw the note, but the Apaches get really upset when they see Bascom as not willing to trade, not willing to be flexible, and not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they didn't take this boy. And by the way, it's pretty clear from history that they didn't.

A bunch of White Mountain or Cayotero Apaches probably had the boy. Nevertheless, when it becomes clear Bascom is not going to trade the hostages, Cochise kills his. He's supposed to have mutilated them. And maybe they died by torture, but he made sure that they were out where Bascom and his people would find them. And they did. The response from the army?

was to hang most of Cochise's relatives. They let the wife go and the little boy go, but Cochise's brother and his nephews were hung in response to what Cochise did to his hostages. This incident, by the way, has gone down in Apache oral tradition.

to be known as Cut the Tent. And Cut the Tent is when the Chiricahuas go to war with the United States. It lasts for more than a decade. And if someone more competent than Lieutenant George Bascom is handling the old chief, it might never have happened. The course of history has changed. The year after that, in 1862, the Apaches would ambush a major American column of troops.

coming over to fight Confederates in the Civil War. 500 Apaches attack this column from the hills above a gully, and they're driven off by howitzers, which turned out to be a turning point. in Apache history. Once they realized the kind of weaponry the US had and the kind of numbers the US had, the Apache started looking for ways to have peace.

By the way, the day after that big battle where the howitzers shot into the hills and drove the Apaches off, the Apaches attacked the next morning and a group of cavalrymen cut this small party of American cavalry off, a group of Indian cavalrymen. And after killing most of them, the Indians went after one of the cavalrymen who was hiding behind a dead horse. And he said later he took aim at the big Indian on his horse and shot him.

and managed to hit Mangus Colorados, one of the greatest of all Apache chiefs, in the chest. This six-foot, five-inch-tall, 250-pound Apache fell off his horse, and his warriors completely forgot about the U.S. cavalrymen who just shot him. In a famous story, maybe not even true, they're said to have rushed Mangus Colorados down to Mexico. Not wanting to trust the Indian medicine, they took him to a famous surgeon in the Mexican town of Llanos.

And the story is that these Apaches, still wearing their cartridge belts and war paint, burst into the surgeon's room, clear everything off a table, take this giant Apache chief, put him on the table, look at the surgeon and say, if he dies... This whole town dies. That's called a pressure situation. Mangus lives, though, and goes back up to the mountains to recover.

And many historians believe at that point came to the conclusion that you had to have peace with the white eyes or you were going to die. It wasn't long after this that the Apaches started referring to themselves as the dead in death. And he called the white man the living, a word that sounded just like India, India. The U.S. and the Americans and the white eyes would live, and the Indians would die.

And Mangus Colorados became one of the Apache chiefs who first said, I'm going to see if I can get my people to live. And there was an American column of troops nearby. And under a flag of truce, he went to the general commanding these troops and decided he wanted to talk peace. And instead, in another one of those famous incidents, the general put Mangus Colorados under arrest. He's supposed to have ordered...

some sort of incident to occur in the night so that Mangus could be killed. And the Apaches said they watched as these troops heated their bayonets at night who were guarding Mangus while he slept by the fire, touching the hot bayonets to his legs and feet, irritating him.

And when he sat up to protest this treatment, they emptied their guns into the old chief, who was about 70 at the time. To make matters worse, they scalped him, buried him in a shallow grave, then dug him up again, cut his head off. put the head in a vat of water to boil the skin off of it, and sent the head back east through the body of this great Apache chief in a ditch. And the Apaches witnessed it all.

And then you wonder why they were hanging people upside down over slow fires when they captured them. As their great defender, the Reverend Thomas Mayles, said, the Apache were a fearsome enemy when aroused. And injured and hurt. And when they were post-traumatic stress victims. Well, the Americans...

And the Apaches fought on and off for years. Eventually the Apaches were moved to reservations. Their story follows the typical Native American tragic story. Broken treaties. Reservations revoked. land taken from them, the whole nine yards. Geronimo's last breakout in 1885 freaked everyone in the region out so badly, you know, the media was up in arms, that the United States sent 5,000 U.S. troops down.

to deal with Geronimo's band of less than 100, less than 35 warriors. In addition to the 5,000 U.S. soldiers, the U.S. brought Apache scouts because there was no way to find these Apaches in their home mountains without Apaches.

Remember how well they could hide? The U.S. government had more Apaches fighting for them than they were trying to capture. In addition, because they were worried Geronimo would run right off to Mexico, they had the Mexicans involved for a change. That didn't usually happen. And the Mexicans had 3,000 soldiers on their side of the border trying to corral Geronimo. And finally, the U.S. had brought out the heavy artillery. They didn't see Geronimo as a freedom fighter.

They saw him as a terrorist, and they were going to use everything in their arsenal. And the latest gadgetry was something called a heliograph. It was a mirror system to flash light signals across the desert valleys from mountaintop to mountaintop. Sort of like a primitive version of radio to try to capture Geronimo. And it still took them a year to get him out of those mountains. The Apaches were the most costly.

Indian war of them all. And they were the last. Four years after Geronimo's surrender, there would be a massacre at a place called Wounded Knee. But that wasn't a battle. The only American deaths, I think, were from friendly fire. Geronimo's surrender in 1886 was the end of any sort of major outbreaks, and the U.S. government was taking no chances. The Apaches had such a fearsome reputation, and it took so few of them to cause major problems that they shipped Geronimo.

And for good measure, all of the scouts that had helped catch him. And for good measure, all of his tribesmen on the reservation that they thought were even sympathetic to the 19th century version of Guantanamo Bay, where we would send terrorists. We sent them to Florida.

Matter of fact, for a while, their warriors had to be on an island off the coast. That's how scared we were of them. The Apaches started dying from disease in that different climate, so they were moved a few times. Moved from Florida later. You know, they were prisoners of war. Then they were moved to... Alabama as prisoners of war, then they were moved to Oklahoma as prisoners of war. In 1905, when probably the first of the modern U.S. presidents...

was holding his inaugural parade, Teddy Roosevelt. He wanted some flash and some color in his parade, and so he invited some of the surviving Native American personalities of the time. The Old West was very popular. It hadn't even been gone that long, and they were already holding nostalgia shows and Old West shows. These Native American personalities were in high demand.

Roosevelt rounded up six famous Native Americans, and they rode in the parade on their war ponies, dressed in Native American costume by that time. And the media of the day... says that one of these Native Americans stole the whole show, upstaged everyone but Theodore Roosevelt himself. The crowd was cheering his name. And it was the, by this time,

late 80-year-old, you know, 85, 86, 87-year-old Apache medicine man, Geronimo. And one of Geronimo's biographers wrote, that standing near the president was the son of an Indian agent who had some of those memories of what an Apache raid's aftermath could be like burned into his brain.

turned to Theodore Roosevelt and said, Mr. President, why did you invite Geronimo here? He's one of the greatest murderers in American history. And Theodore Roosevelt was said to have turned back to the man and said, I wanted to give the people a good show. Well, four days later, Theodore Roosevelt actually met Geronimo face to face. Geronimo got a chance to talk to the great white father.

And we're told that the first thing he asked was to be allowed to go home. Even though he was allowed to come to Washington to ride in the parade, in 1905... Nine years before the start of the First World War, Geronimo still wasn't allowed to go home. And Theodore Roosevelt thought about it and turned. Geronimo's request, down. He said that he bore no ill will to the Indian, but that the people in the region still would be up in arms if Roosevelt sent him back.

And that there was no guarantee that violence wouldn't break out again. General Crook, who fought the Apaches, had said that if they ever got off the reservation again, they would never come back. And... Theodore Roosevelt may have been right about the whole not letting Geronimo go home in 1905. Because you see, even though major hostilities ended when Geronimo came in and was sent off to Florida, there were...

Tiny small groups of Apache, renegade Apache, still operating in those hills of Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico. Some authors say that the last groups of hostile Apaches weren't... removed from those mountains until 1935. And U.S. and Mexican forces were working to get them out as late as that. Pancho Villa, the famous Mexican bandit slash revolutionary leader, depending on...

whose point of view you have, claimed that there were Apaches in those mountains in 1913, 1914, when he was operating around there, and that he knew where they were. And it makes you think that Pancho Villa probably knew where they were. so that he could steer clear of them. And so Theodore Roosevelt's decision to not let Geronimo go home looks ridiculous when you look at it now, until you realize that there were still hostile Apaches in the hills.

in the Southwest, during the Theodore Roosevelt administration. When you realize that, well, it starts looking like it might have been a good idea to leave Geronimo and his band of Chiricahua experienced. Bitter. Chiricahua. Where they were. And not take any chances with the tigers of the human species. Thanks to everyone for posting comments about the show on iTunes. They help get the program noticed.