Steve's review of the PBS documentary "Geronimo and the Apache
Resistance" contains several factual errors. I have researched the
history of the Apache bands involved for, all together, more than eight
years and know whereof I speak. Moreover, we have this video, and only
one of these errors is made in it. We assume that Steve has either
misinterpreted what he saw, or has based some of his statements on
another source. Sorry if this sounds like a flame, but these errors
are a disservice to the Apaches interviewed on this video, many of
whom we know and respect.
Before correcting the errors, I should note what the promises
made to gain the surrender of Geronimo and his *faction*, and which
were never kept, were. He and his followers were told that the
families of all except Geronimo, whose family was with him, were
already on their way to Florida (TRUE); that they would be sent there
to join them if they surrendered (IT WILL BE SEEN BELOW THAT THEY
AND THEIR FAMILIES WERE IMPRISONED SEPARATELY); and that they would
be returned to Arizona in two years (FALSE). The War Department and
President Cleveland had no intention of releasing the Apache POWs
before Geronimo's death. They remained prisoners of war for 27
years. Now for the errors:
1. Geronimo and sixteen other men, who had been involved in
hostilities, were incarcerated at Ft Pickens, *on an island a mile
south of Pensacola, Florida* for two years (1886-1887). Nearly 500
Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apache men, women, and children were
confined in Ft. Marion, the old Spanish fort (also known as Castillo
de San Marcos), in St. Augustine, Florida, for six months to a year.
2. Only 136 Apache children and teenagers, ten years of age or
older, were sent to Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.
Eight others, girls, were sent to Hampton Institute in Virginia. The
remaining children received education either among their families,
or within commuting distance of them.
3. The reports of the Indian agents for these Apaches specify
that they began wearing "white-man clothes" in the early 1870s.
4. The Apache POWs sent seven years (1887-1894) at Mount Vernon
Barracks, a military installation 22 miles north of Mobile, Alabama,
as a *temporary* location while the War Department sought a permanent
one. At no time during the 19 years they spent (as prisoners) at Ft.
Sill in Oklahoma, were they "taken in by the Kiowa" or any other tribe.
5. One of the Apaches interviewed in the video stated that 82 of
the former POWs remained in Oklahoma. The actual number of *heads of
families and single adults* who chose to do so was 87. One died
in an accident before they were settled on allotments in 1914, making
86 who were actually allotted.
Grosvenor Pollard
via Elizabeth B. Pollard
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Univ. of Ala./Huntsville Compuserve: 72457,1560
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