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Geronimo and the war on Indigenous people

The Apache leader and medicine man was one of the last Native American resistance fighters to surrender.

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History Illustrated: Geronimo and the war on Indigenous people
By Danylo Hawaleshka
Published On 5 Sep 2023

History Illustrated is a weekly series of insightful perspectives that puts news events and current affairs into historical context using graphics generated with artificial intelligence.

History Illustrated: Geronimo and the war on Indigenous people
The exact number of Indigenous people killed as a result of European colonisation of the Americas, from 1492 onwards, will never be known, but one historian says it could be as high as 100 million.
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History Illustrated: Geronimo and the war on Indigenous people
Whatever the number, says author David Stannard, Indigenous people in the Americas “endured an unending firestorm of violence” at the hands of Europeans and white Americans.
History Illustrated: Geronimo and the war on Indigenous people
The barbarity continued for 400 years until one of the last Native American resistance fighters, the legendary Geronimo, surrendered on September 4, 1886.
History Illustrated: Geronimo and the war on Indigenous people
Geronimo’s surrender would end armed resistance in what is now Arizona and New Mexico. Many thought the day would never come.
History Illustrated: Geronimo and the war on Indigenous people
As a medicine man and leader of the Apache, Geronimo would spend 25 years avoiding capture, at one point hunted by 5,000 US soldiers.
History Illustrated: Geronimo and the war on Indigenous people
He was a damaged man, forever changed by his time in Mexico when, in 1858, soldiers there killed his first wife, mother and three children in a raid near the town of Janos.
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History Illustrated: Geronimo and the war on Indigenous people
He vowed revenge, and exacted it many times over. It was this man — pained, vengeful, proud — whom US soldiers came up against time and again.
History Illustrated: Geronimo and the war on Indigenous people
During the Apache wars, Geronimo would surrender several times, but always escaped, until one day he was vastly outnumbered and forced to surrender one last time.
History Illustrated: Geronimo and the war on Indigenous people
The story of Indigenous people in the Americas is about mass murder, dispossession, loss of sovereignty and forced assimilation. It was a war on a way of life, the ramifications of which can still be felt today.