Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Geronimo, one of the ten greatest Americans who ever lived.

Wrong on that score, Amigo. Not as to whether it was a fact, but my Great Grandmother got in the line for the Wichitas, rather than for the Comanches where she belonged, precisely because of the rumor of the infected blankets that was circulating among the Indians.

He showed us the power of courage and determination. Paratroopers said his name as they stepped into the clouds.

There were well documented instances (officers talking about it and ordering it in official correspondence) of attempts to give smallpox infected blankets to Indians in colonial times. The siege at Ft. Pitt during the French and Indian War comes to mind.

A gal friend of mine was raised in the Gila, and has left many thousands of miles of horse tracks up there.
She wrote this years ago, it's my favorite of all of her songs and poems.



Lozen's Return to the Gila

Deep and dark in the Gila's reaches,
Beats the drumbeat, sings the flute,
Speaks the whisper of the pine trees
and a song in running water
echoes indistinctly in the deepest canyon

Silent still a a hushed murmur
Like the fall of muffled hoofbeats
Walks so quiet the Deer and Elk
Pads the foofalls of the Coyote
and as a liquid shadow moves the cougar

With the quiet rush of wing and wind,
the owl, a bird of silent flight,
and the hawk of canyon crying
on the songbirds joy at morning
even quiets the babbling quail

The breeze is restless and it carries
one brief message spoken , sung
among the spirits and the beasts
pass the whisper and the message,
“Joyous now for one is coming, one is coming home!”

Now the cry of eagle soaring
and the voice of river roaring
echoes of a Shaman's coming, harks the spirit horse from grazing
“Lozen—Shaman--Woman Warrior, Lozen is coming home”

Brief the message walks the Gila
and the timeless and forgotten
deep and silent feel the joy
for surely now deep in the Gila
comes a spirit home to rest !

Many miles now from the Gila
in a far and distant barracks
Rain falls thickly on a rooftop
where the sick and dying lie
Indian clinic at the fort in Alabama.

Wasted body racked with choking,
Old beyond the years in age
chilled and sick and surely dying
Lies Lozen—Shaman--Woman Warrior
Brave Apache horseman, Sister of Victorio.

This is Lozen, Warm Springs Apache
who fought beside the bravest warriors
who unafraid took the wildest lonely trails
that laced the land of the Apache
and who rode a horse as one possessed

Oft the campfires of her people
were graced with her presence and her power
that foretold of enemies coming
and even the warriors and chiefs most noted
spoke in reverence of Lozen—Woman Warrior

She rode in dignity with great courage
beside her brother Victorio and and with Nana
and with the warriors of Geronimo.
Many were the Apache children
who would speak of Lozen the Woman Warrior

Raised from childhood in the Gila
knew the canyons and the ridges
knew the trails and knew the mountains.
Lozen knew well the Gila's reaches
and loved this land of untamed majesty

“Clever Little Horsethief,” her brother called her
“Bruja—Witch Woman,” the Mexicans said
now in a rainslaked fort in Alabama
another Apache prisoner lays dying
of the white man's coughing sickness

They do not hear the pony's hoofbeats
Spirit Pony coming quickly
nor see his sunglossed mane fly wildly
nor hear the snort of his nostrils
He comes to bear the Shaman's spirit home

In that distant lonely barracks
only one word escapes her fevered lips
rides with her spirit from her body
to the waiting spirit pony
just one word, whispered word, “Gila !”

As the spirit grasps the pony
rides the wind, the white maned breeze,
joyous, joyous hoofbeats coming
comes Lozen, rides the Shaman,Woman Warrior,
comes the spirit home to rest

Linda Locklar

Greg.... that's just fantastic. It deserves a better word.. but I know none.

Thanks cross. Very well done.

Pretty funny seeing the memes on facebook by many of my indigenous neighbors who happen to think that it was some peaceful utopia here in NA before the white man showed up.

so geronimo stole horses? Who didn't?
Having actually been in/on a large part of arizona, i admire any man/woman who survived prior to a/c.
things change. The yavapai around my home in central arizona had some issues with white people in the 1800's. White people were among their biggest supporters in the 1900's, leading to their rez being established. My father was friends with the chiefess, a woman, for most of his life. They were not all alcoholics. Neither were the ones i was raised with.
No, it was no utopia. I have been all over the aqua fria national monument established by clinton. Before it was the aqua fria national monument. And having some rather special maps, i know where most of the ruins are. And my opinion active warfare and cannibalism was present. Which changes nothing from the idea they were able to survive and reproduce in truely challenging conditions.

You've posted some incredibly stupid schit, but this one - and comparing horse thief and butcher to Lee and Jackson - might be in the running for the top 10 of dumbschit you've put out there.

Gila River country...

Her book, "Lure of the Dim Trails" (publ.1994) is a fine little compendium of poetry and song, .....Jack Sprunk Howell ( I believe Palidun knows the guy ?) had this to say about her,

"Always one to focus on the spiritual side of life, the tall pines, dark mountains and clear streams of the Gila held the voices of the past with which her Native American ancestors felt all nature was endowed.
This collection comes not from second hand information but from years spent horseback in the magical Gila country,....etc."

GREAT book to throw in the ruck, good tent and campfire reading with kids.

Spirit Song Publications
PO Box 332
Silver City , New Mexico 88062

You are a crass lewd and ignorant product of a modern law school system. You hate Christians and detest Christianity. Please don't even take the names of Lee in Jackson into your foul mouth. You dishonor the sacred soil of Virginia by your presence; you belong in the North East with all your ilk.

Miscreant reprobate quisling.

For some insight on how the Chiricahua Apaches and other Apaches viewed their history read Eve Ball's book entitled INDEH. My addition was printed in 1988. I see there is a newer version being offered on line.

She was an educator who moved to the Ruidoso NM area near the Mescalero Reservation in 1942. Quote from Eve Ball:

"While it was the Mescalero reservation those Apaches began to share the reservation with the remnants from the Chiricahua, Warm Springs, and the Nednhis and the Bedonkohes, allied bands with whom they had fought heroically for their homeland and lost out only to irresistible white pressure, being all but destroyed in the process. After nearly three decades of eastern exile the remnants of the peoples had been permitted to return as far west as Mescalero."

It took many years for Eve Ball to start up a friendship with the last of the Chiricahuas. She began to document the many stories relayed to her while befriending the many Apaches living there.

One person that was repeatedly written about was Daklugie the son of Juh. According to her:

"Juh was the ablest of the militant Apaches after Victorio, although his fame was mainly among his own people, while for his enemies it lay submerged beneath the flood of reports, and ballyhoo, surrounding his subordinate, Geronimo, in every way a lesser man."

Daklugie spent a dozen years at Carlisle Indian School. During his time he learned animal husbandry. According to this book he is largely responsible for the Mescalero reservation members taking up cattle ranching.

Eve Ball's intention was to "tell the world the Apache's side of a heroic story."

I have begun to read it a second time. It is unique in that it is THEIR stories of what took place not ours.

After reading all the other comments in this thread I wanted to share.

Eve Ball also wrote a book titled, "In the Days of Victorio", or at least I THINK so.

According to my dearest Linda, was available through University of Arizona press.

GTC

When I was a young buck growing up in NW Oklahoma with the Cheyenne and Arapaho, I learned one lesson that I will never forget. There wasn't much in the way of normal entertainment in our small town so fist fighting with the young Indians became at least a weekly event. My lesson was that they never gave up until they had been beat bad enough that their energy was completely gone. Even though one would lose the fight, he would be ready to go again the next time you met up with him. And the legend about having a fair fight just didn't exist back then. The only fair fight was the one you won.

They were usually content with having a one-on-one fight, the black kids wouldn't fight unless they had us outnumbered by at least two to one.

Lots of good schooling back then.

Mind if I borrow this?

My mailman can't read an address to save his life and I need some new material to utter under my breath when we meet up again.

"And mothers shall but smile when the behold their infants quartered by the hand of war"

Sorry,,,,, just remembered another line from the Bard.

Mirrors my experiences.

It appears to have shut Sean up, at least on this thread.

That's quite an accomplishment. When his post count under his former handle ,VAnimrod, is added to his present total, nobody has spouted as many words on this forum as him.

A magic incantation which I shall commit to memory.

I had to look up quisling.