A Daughter of Geronimo

ONE EVENING IN THE Season of Large Leaves (July), I sat with my father, Geronimo, at the edge of his house’s breezeway in his village on the Fort Sill prisoner of war reservation. I worked on a piece of beadwork as we watched the sun disappear in a golden glow behind the gentle swings and sways of the prairie’s horizon. Father, a diyen (shaman) of great supernatural power, was quiet and still, studying everything from the mountains on the horizon to the horses and mules nipping at each other in the corral. We were content listening to the calls of the googés (whippoorwills) and the insects and peepers in the brush by Cache Creek. As I strung and sewed the beads in place, I thought about how and when I should tell Father that Fred Godeley had asked me to marry him and that I wanted this fine man. I knew Father would surely approve.

Boards creaked in the breezeway behind us. I looked over my shoulder and smiled to see Ramona, my uncle Daklugie’s wife, in the setting sun’s glow. More than an aunt, Ramona was my best friend and advisor.

My father said, “Ho, Ramona. I see you. Come sit with us and enjoy listening to the night.”

“Ho, Grandfather. I can’t stay long. Daklugie wants to sleep, and the children still play around the house. I have good news for you.”

“Hi yi! I always like good news. Tell me!”

“During your last trip, Eva’s womanhood came. Now, we must do her womanhood ceremony, and I’ve heard you say that you planned to have a big feast with much singing and dancing to celebrate it. Have my ears heard you correctly?”

He turned and looked at me as I sat watching the falling darkness unable to repress a hint of a smile. I saw the flicker of a frown cross his face before he laughed and said, “Yes, Ramona, you have good ears, and, Daughter, I’m very glad for you. At long last, you’re a woman. We’ll have a great feast with all our friends to dance and sing with us. Ramona, since her mother has left us for the Happy Land, will you serve as Eva’s attendant? How long before we can hold the womanhood ceremony? What do you need me to do? It must be one the People remember.”

Ramona laughed and held up her hands to stop his questions. “Yes, Grandfather, my sister Emily and I will be her attendants and guides. We’ve already talked about when we should hold the ceremony. Eva’s mother had started working on her ceremony gown before she left us, and we worked more on it while you were away at Great Father Roosevelt’s parade and the 101 Ranch. There’s much to prepare. I think, if you approve, the ceremony and festivities could begin on the second full moon from now.”

Father looked at me and smiled. I remembered our days at Mount Vernon in Alabama and how he used to pull me bouncing and giggling around the camp in a little red express wagon and let me buy anything I wanted in the trader’s store filled with delicious smells of cured meat, cheese, fresh bread, sweet candy canes and chocolates, red and black blankets, and tools of all kinds. No one could have been a better father. He blessed me often now for all the hard work I had done helping my mother, Zi-yeh, before she had ridden the ghost pony, and he told me every day what a help I was to him.

Father said, “We’ll have the best of socials and dances to celebrate this great time.” He spread his arms wide. “Invite all the Apache. We have much work to do. Buy what you need, and I’ll pay.”

Smiling, I said, “Thank you, Father. You make me happy that I’m your daughter.”

Ramona said, “Enjuh! (Good!) This ceremony, feast, and social dancing will make a good time for all, Grandfather.”

THE NEXT DAY, FATHER spoke with Naiche, long time chief of the Chokonen Chiricahua, about the festivities. Near Naiche’s village, they picked out a level place on the south side of Medicine Bluff Creek where the grass could be cut close in a big circle. Naiche agreed to lead the singing. Father would lead the dancing with the di-yens who conducted the ceremony.

Planning and organizing picked up speed like a runaway wagon. Father told the other eleven village chiefs to tell their People they were invited. Soon, anticipation and excitement for the four days of ceremony, feasting, and dancing hummed through the village. Women from every Apache village planned to help with cooking for the feasts. The ceremony would begin the night of the first full moon in the time the White Eyes called 13 September 1905. Father also invited his good friend, the great Comanche chief, Quanah Parker, and all our other Comanche and Kiowa friends. He even asked the White Eye, Barrett, who later that fall would write Father’s life story as he told it and my uncle Daklugie interpreted it in the White Eye tongue.

Ramona’s sister, Emily, was near my age and had married a few months before we began planning my social. Father decided to have family photographs made before the ceremony so we could all remember when his youngest daughter became a woman. George Wratten, our official interpreter, who ran the supply store for the Chiricahua, arranged for a photographer in Oklahoma City to come to Fort Sill. I was very happy with the thought that one day I could show my children a picture of their grandfather and me, taken before I’d married. The photograph Father wanted with Ramona, Emily, and me was not made because Ramona had a sick child and could not leave her. Father had the picture made as he sat in a chair with Emily and me standing beside him. We looked and felt like princesses standing beside a king on his throne.

I had a fine womanhood ceremony with Ramona and Emily guiding me in what I should do and how I should act during the celebration. Great signs of Power from Ussen, our Apache creator god, passed from me to the People. For four nights, the four masked Crown Dancers painted in green and yellow and two clowns in white paint danced in the blazing yellow and orange firelight before the People danced and had a fine feast. I was very happy.

On the fourth night, after the ceremony finished, I was considered a marriageable woman. As the moon rose, we all joined hands around a big fire in the center of the field and danced in a circle with the four masked dancers circling the fire. Then there were dances of a circle within a circle, and as the fire died down, the men made their circle into wheel spokes that ran out from the fire to the outer circle of women. Sometimes the spokes moved with the circle, sometimes against it, sometimes the same speed, sometimes slower, depending on the songs that were sung.

As the moon reached the top of its arc and began falling in the southwest, baskets of food were laid in a line out from the ceremonial place, and we all ate while the masked dancers completed their dances. When the dance began again, the old ones left the dance to the young people to begin the lovers’ dance. The drums stopped, and what the White Eyes called the flageolet music started. Apaches use no such word as flageolet. It’s just a flute the young men learn to play to court their women. It has many voices and can be made to sound soft and slow or played very hard and fast. This night several were played together in good harmony, and there were also two Apache fiddles to add their voices. Our fiddle is made from a piece of dry yucca stalk. A string of horsetail hair is stretched over it and passed across a specially shaped sound hole. The instrument is played with a horsetail hair bow. As the fiddles and flutes played, they made a dreamy sound that caressed the hearts of us all as the young men made a circle around the fire and the girls made an outer circle. One after another, the girls danced to the inner circle and picked a young man to dance with as they formed the spokes of a wheel, doing two steps forward and one back while the couples held hands and looked at each other.

Since the dance was in honor of my new womanhood, I was the first to dance to the circle of young men waiting in the flickering orange and yellow light. With my heart pounding, I danced around their circle four times, as custom required, and then stopped at Fred and tapped him on his shoulder. When he turned to me, his smile was brighter than the morning sun on the high mountains. He was taller than most young men his age, and he had big hands and a strong face with high cheek bones. We had known each other since we were children, and as I watched him grow to manhood, so did my desire to be his woman. One day, we “happened” to be walking together to the mission school when he blurted out that he had often wanted to ride past our house in hopes of seeing me. He said he didn’t ride by my house because his family was poor and could not afford a good bride gift for my father. Hearing this, I felt joy I had never known. I told Fred not to act like the others who wanted to court me. They thought they might impress Father if they rode by our house in their church clothes and craned their necks looking for me from their fine ponies to show off their families’ wealth. I knew Father would respect a man who wanted to work hard to support our family rather than a boy who looked for attention. Now, dancing with Fred, I was telling the People and Father who I wanted for my man.

As the sun rose, the dancing stopped, and there was a final meal as the young men gave presents to the girls they had danced with and a few announced they were ready to marry. I stood with Fred, my head bowed, smiling and knowing that soon he would ask Father for me and offer him the best bride gift he could. The gift he gave me for dancing with him was a blue shawl covered in woven white flowers. It was beautiful and warm, and I was very proud of it. I had no doubt that Fred Godeley would make the best of husbands.

Fred and I decided to wait two or three more years until we finished training school at Chilocco before marrying. Two seasons after my womanhood ceremony Father married again in the Season of the Ghost Face (January). I helped him and his new wife, Sousche, at his house after I finished my day at the mission school. Fred had not yet spoken with my father and was worried Father would want more for an appropriate bride gift than he and his family could afford. I told him my father knew he was a good man. The bride gift need not be grand.

In the Season of Little Eagles (March), I walked home from the mission school late one afternoon along burbling Medicine Creek. Meadow larks sounded their calls of joy in the deep prairie grass fast turning green, and the sun painted distant clouds in soul-filling colors. As I approached our village, I saw Father sitting on the edge of his house breezeway wrapped in his blanket, staring into the distant cloud colors over the land of his birth. I knew he must be wishing, as he had told me many times, that he had not stopped fighting the White Eyes. I also knew he wished he had some good White Eye whiskey to warm his insides.

I came to the breezeway and looked around but saw no sign of my stepmother or even lanterns lighted inside the house. This was strange.

“Father, where is Sousche?”

“Gone. I sent her home. She has no place with us anymore.”

I felt my face make funny wrinkles, part frown, part smile, as I sat down beside Father to watch the colors fading and changing on the far horizon.

“Why did you send her away?”

“She was lazy. You did all the work. She wouldn’t even keep me warm when the nights were cold.”

“I didn’t mind doing all the work if Sousche satisfied you. She seemed to give you comfort, but I’m glad you sent her away. I’ll still do all the work, and I’m happy to look after you.”

In the dimming light, Father reached in his vest and pulled out his tobaho pouch. He made a cigarette, smoked to the four directions, and then handed it to me. It had been only three seasons past my womanhood ceremony. He surprised me. He had never smoked with me before. I was still very young to be smoking over serious business, but I took the cigarette, smoked to the four directions, and felt it burn my nose and throat, but I was determined not to cough as I handed the tobaho back to him. He smoked the last bit of tobaho then crushed the dying coal with his strong, calloused fingers.

He said, “I think you chose your man at your womanhood dance. Most women do. We should have talked before then, but I’ve had many things pulling my mind in other directions.”

“I understand, Father. Yes, I know who I want, and he wants me. He’s a very good man. I’ve watched him since we were children. We’ll be happy together. Soon he comes to you with a bride gift offer. I want you to accept it.”

Stars came to the soft blackness above us, and in the low glow on the horizon, we could see the steam come from our mouths as we talked. He said nothing for a while as we listened to the night birds and rustle of mice in the grass. He looked everywhere into the dark—toward the prairie, into the night sky, toward Cache Creek—everywhere except toward me.

“Father?”

He made a face and then turned toward me. “Your young man must not offer me a bride gift. I won’t accept it. You can’t marry.”

I breathed hard, trying to pull air into my body that for a moment lost its life rhythms. It felt as if my heart had stopped, and then my eyes filled with quiet tears. It took a while for me to regain my heart’s balance as I swallowed the big ball of thorns in my throat. I croaked, “But, why? Father, I don’t deserve to be treated like this. I’ve worked hard and helped you all I could. Why are you doing this?”

“I know you aren’t happy I do this, but it’s to save your life. Listen. I want to tell you a story. My sister Ishton married the great warrior, Juh, who went to the Happy Land five harvests before your time. Before Daklugie was born, Ishton strained four days to deliver him and could not. As a di-yen, I did all I could for her, but I thought she would die. I went up on a mountain and prayed for her. Ussen heard me and said she and the baby would live and that I would die a natural death.”

Dogs barked a few houses away, and we heard the clink of harness chains as men brought their teams from newly planted fields to the barn.

“Other women in our family have died or nearly died having children. Their suffering has been great. That is what happens to the women in our family. My Power from Ussen tells me that if you try to have a child, both you and the child will die. You must not take a husband. Hear me and obey me. Do you understand?”

I sat there a long time, stunned, saying nothing, thinking, I’ve had no visions, nothing to tell me anything like this. In the normal course of my life, I expect to marry and have children to carry on my father’s line. Now, his power says I can’t marry. How can he tell me this?

Brushing aside the water in my eyes and knowing I must always be respectful to my father, I said, “I hear you, Father. I’ll make us something to eat.” I pushed myself up on trembling legs and went into the house. Soon, with the clank and rattle of the iron doors on the cook stove and grease popping under slices of meat with onions and potatoes, its good smell filling the place where I cooked, I swallowed down my tears and said to myself, One sun I will do as I please, Father!

Father insisted that I continue my schoolwork rather than stay at our house to serve him. “After all,” he said, “You must learn as many tricks from the White Eyes as you can.” He also knew that I wanted to tell Fred of his decision and that I wanted to do it in a good way.

A few days later, Fred and I went walking with other students our age on the mission grounds. We meandered across the mowed fields, quiet in each other’s company as the sun fell halfway on its arc into the prairie and while meadowlarks scrambled to their nests in the high grass. I couldn’t wait any longer to tell him what Father had said.

“Father has spoken with me about marriage. He saw us dancing at my womanhood celebration. He knows I want you for a husband. I even told him so.”

Fred nodded. “Enjuh. I’m ready to leave school now, but I know you want to learn more. What did your father say?”

I puffed my cheeks and blew a sigh from my lips. “Father said I could never marry, that women in our family have great trouble and suffering having babies, and if I had a child, we would both ride the ghost pony. He won’t let me go to the Happy Land that way.”

Fred’s face became a mask as if he had been struck dumb. He stared at me slowly shaking his head. “No! This can’t be. Does he really believe this?”

“Yes, it’s hard for him, but he won’t let me marry. He’s my father. I must obey him.”

“I won’t give you up. I won’t leave you.”

“Then you must wait for me. Remember the White Eye religion story that tells how the great shepherd, Jacob, worked seven years for the girl, Rachel, and then had to work seven more because her father deceived him? I don’t think you’ll have to wait that long for me. Father is very old. All his old friends and wives have ridden the ghost pony. Soon he will, too. Then I’ll make my own choices.”

“I don’t care if he lives another fifty years. I’ll wait until you’re free.”

“You’re a good man, Fred Godeley. I want no other.” I didn’t care who saw us. I hugged him and buried my face in his shirt.

In the following year, Father found another woman, a good one this time, who did well looking after him. As our custom says is proper, he moved in with her. I stayed in school so I could be near Fred and continue to learn all I could from the White Eyes.

My father was surprised to learn he had a son named Robert from his divorced Mescalero wife, Ih-tedda. Robert left Mescalero for the Indian Boarding School at Chilocco, met Father, who said he was definitely his son, and spent the summer at Fort Sill with him. Robert and I became good friends. And when he returned to Chilocco, Fred and I went with him.

One day near the end of the Season of the Ghost Face that year, Robert and I received a letter from Fort Sill that said our father was very sick and that we must come quickly to see him before he rode the ghost pony. We were on the next train, but we were too late. The funeral procession was already formed and waiting for us to arrive before the long ride to the Apache prisoner of war burial place. Robert and I wept bitter tears that we had not seen Father once more before he rode the ghost pony, but I couldn’t help thinking, Now I will marry who I please.

After the funeral, Ramona told me that Father’s dying wish was that Daklugie and she take me into their home. She said Daklugie had promised Father they would treat me as their own daughter. I was glad to have a home with Ramona and Daklugie and their young daughters. I returned to Chilocco, finished the term, and Fred and I made plans to marry soon after school was done.

After I returned to Fort Sill, I sat one evening with Ramona and Daklugie in their house breezeway watching their girls run and play tag. They asked about my school life and told me stories of their lives at the Carlisle school where, even though they had been promised to each other by their fathers from the time they were little children, they were always struggling to find a chance to even speak with each other, much less walk together with other students, as Fred and I often did.

After a pause, Ramona said, “When does the new term at Chilocco begin? We’re looking forward to you being with us a while.”

“I’m not going back to school. I’ve had enough of learning White Eye ways. Fred and I are getting married in two months.”

Daklugie and Ramona turned their heads to stare at me. Even the peepers and insects hushed their chorus. I was ready for hot words to fly, but without raising his voice, Daklugie said, “You know how your father felt about your marrying anyone. I told him I couldn’t stop you, but he said he had trained you to obey. I ask you not to do this. I know I can’t control you like my own daughter, not in this place and time. It’s your choice. You know what great power your father had. He could see the future. You take a great risk in marrying against his wishes.”

Ramona leaned over and took my hand in hers. “Listen to Daklugie. He speaks true. Even my father, Chihuahua, who rode with your father in the old days and sometimes disagreed with him, said he had great Power and was right about things he saw in the future.”

I squeezed Ramona’s hand and looked into the solemn face of Daklugie. “I know you say these things because you care about me. But I must live my life the way I want. I want to marry Fred Godeley and have his children. I’m strong. I’m built for having children, and I’ll do it. We’ll have a Christian wedding. Will you come?”

Ramona slowly nodded and so did Daklugie.

Fred and I married. We were happy living in my father’s house, and soon we expected our first child.

Evaline was born in the month the White Eyes call June. It wasn’t an easy delivery, but it was nothing that would kill me. Evaline was a small baby but normal in every other way.

In less than a month, I could tell Evaline was sick. She cried often and wouldn’t take my breast. Ramona thought she might have a White Eye disease because she didn’t respond to the usual remedies my people used for sick babies. We went to the White Eye di-yen at the Apache hospital and asked that he help us. He listened to her breathing with tubes in his ears and said her breathing wasn’t normal, but he didn’t understand why. He gave us bottles of medicine to try and told us when to use them. He recommended putting her in a bed near the stove where she could breathe steam with medicine in it. Neither Fred nor I slept much in those dark days.

A month later, I awoke early one morning after sleeping in a rocker near Evaline. She wasn’t fretting like she usually did most of the night. She was cold and unmoving in her cradle––gone to the Happy Place. I felt as if I had been shot in the heart with one of my father’s long, barbed-tipped arrows. I covered her and sat back in the rocker and prayed that Evaline’s journey to the Happy Place would be a fast one.

Fred awoke and came to us. He lifted the blanket and saw that she was gone. I stood trembling with grief, and we held each other for a long time.

He whispered, “We’ll have more children,” as he stroked my hair and rubbed by back.

I nodded. “Yes, we will.”

A year later a priest stood by a pine box ready to be lowered into a dark hole next to Geronimo’s grave. On the opposite side was the marker for Eva’s mother Zi-yeh. On the other side of Eva’s grave was Evaline’s, its fill not fully settled. Fred stood nearby, head bowed, shoulders slumped, as the priest began the eulogy. Daklugie stood with Ramona and stared at the mold-streaked wooden marker at the head of Geronimo’s grave. His thoughts fell through his mind like an eagle diving for a rabbit twisting and turning to get away. As usual, Uncle, you were right about the future. But don’t we have to live our lives by choice, not by the warnings or commands of others? You tried to warn and control Eva so she might live a long time. You also taught her to think for herself. This she did, and she died. It’s the paradox and price we all pay for life.

EPILOGUE: This story is based on true events and historical personalities at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, between 1905 and 1911.

W. MICHAEL FARMER combines fifteen-plus years of research into nineteenth-century Apache history and culture with Southwest-living experience to fill his stories with a genuine sense of time and place. A retired PhD physicist, his scientific research has included measurement of atmospheric aerosols with laser-based instruments. He has published a two-volume reference book on atmospheric effects on remote sensing as well as fiction in anthologies and award-winning essays. His novels have won numerous awards, including three Will Rogers Gold and five Silver Medallions, New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards for Literary, Adventure, Historical Fiction, a Non-Fiction New Mexico Book of the Year, and a Spur Finalist Award for Best First Novel. His book series includes The Life and Times of Yellow Boy, Mescalero Apache and Legends of the Desert. His nonfiction books include Apacheria, True Stories of Apache Culture 1860-1920 and Geronimo, Prisoner of Lies. His most recent novel is The Odyssey of Geronimo, which took home the Will Rogers Silver Medallion earlier this year in the ultra-competitive Western Fiction category.