On 'Now I Surrender'

The Chiricahua Apache are often imagined as exemplars of recalcitrance. This is thanks in large part to the band led by Geronimo in one of the last campaigns of armed Indigenous resistance against the US’s westward expansion. As the Army subdued the final theaters of the Indian Wars, Geronimo refused to be confined to a reservation, organizing a series of breakouts that only ended in 1886, after thousands of US and Mexican troops pursued him and his remaining followers—just a few dozen men, women, and children—into the Sierra Madre south of the border.