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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.

History Illustrated: Geronimo and the war on Indigenous people

By Danylo Hawaleshka

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.