GERONIMO’S FINAL SURRENDER
On a late summer evening in 1886 U.S. Army officers and soldiers, a handful of civilians, several Chiricahua Apache warriors, their wives and their hereditary chief all gathered at the western mouth of Skeleton Canyon in Arizona Territory. There they anxiously awaited the arrival of one man, Brig. Gen. Nelson Appleton Miles.
It was September 2, and the free-roaming Chiricahuas had arrived at this prearranged location under military escort with the intent of finally and formally surrendering to General Miles. Leading the band were Chief Naiche and Geronimo, the latter of whom was particularly well known to citizens of southern Arizona and New Mexico territories for his reputation as a cold-blooded killer.
In late March these same Apaches had surrendered to Brig. Gen. George Crook at Cañon de los Embudos, some 25 miles south of Douglas, Ariz., in the far northern recesses of the Sierra Madre of Sonora, Mexico. Unfortunately, an unscrupulous government beef contractor named Charles Tribolet, who made a living on the side following the Army and peddling whiskey and mescal to soldiers and Indians alike, had sold 15 gallons of whiskey to the Chiricahuas. Hoping to prolong the Apache wars for his own financial benefit, Tribolet then lied to the besotted Indians, convincing them the Army actually planned to hang them once they crossed the border into the United States. Perpetually on guard for any treachery, the alarmed Apaches reneged on their surrender and resumed raiding and killing in Mexico. The fiasco proved humiliating to Crook, who asked to
