Geronimo, whose real name was Goyathley (one who yawns), was a medicine man from the Bedonkohe Apache's, who had first joined Mangas Coloradas and then Cochise to fight the Americans. Some 44 years old when Cochise died in 1874, he was held in high esteem as a war leader with strong spiritual powers. His determination to protect his people resulted from the murder of his mother, wife and 3 children by Mexican troops in 1849.
When the American government ordered the relocation of the Apache's to the hostile and barren San Carlos reservation in 1877 half the Chirichua Apache's refused and followed Geronimo and the Nednhi Apache leader Juh into the mountains of North Mexico. By 1886 Geronimo, 17 surviving warriors and their families, were being pursued by 5,000 American troops, thousands of militia, 500 Apache scouts and 3,000 Mexican volunteers.
Geronimo surrendered to General Nelson A. Miles on the 3rd September 1886 on the understanding that after 2 years as POW's they would be released and allowed to live on the reservation. Instead they and serveral hundred of their people from the reservation were shipped to Fort Marion in Florida, where over a 100 died in its humid dungeons. Additionally their children were taken from them and sent to the Carlisle Indian school, where at least 30 homesick Apache children subsequently died.
Eventually transfered to the Mount Veron Barracks and then again to Fort Still, Oklahoma (where a third of his band choose to settle on their eventual release) Geronimo died in 1909, a POW in a foreign land.