He was an Indian, yes, more specifically a shaman of the so-called Western Apaches or Chiricahuas . His real name was Goyahkla («he who yawns «) and was born in Arizona in 1829, although little is known about him until 1858, the year in which a tragic event marked him irreversibly. Along with a group of Chiricahuas and their families, Goyahkla and his family leave the town for the Mexican military settlements near Sonora to trade peacefully with the settlers settled there. During the men's absence, a group of Mexican soldiers makes a bloody incursion into the Apache camp, murdering as many women, children and old people as they find. In the massacre, Goyahkla lost his mother, his wife and his three children, so it is not surprising that that same day he swore revenge, or that he began to hear the spirits asking him not to let such an atrocity go unpunished.
And he does that. Goyahkla becomes a legend after countless impossible escapes, attacks and sabotage perpetrated against the Mexican army and the Mexican settlers of northern Arizona, whom he terrorizes whenever he can. There are many times that he is wounded, almost as many as the brigades in charge of hunting him, leaving him for dead, but he always survives, always recovers to escape again from whoever wants to kick him out of his land. It is at this time that he begins to be known by the nickname of Jerónimo , perhaps due to the cries of the Mexicans invoking his patron saint, San Jerónimo , while fleeing from the Indian's attacks.
Despite his status as a legend and military leader, Goyahkla/Jerónimo did not become chief of the Apaches. He was, yes, a respected shaman to whom powers of divination, clairvoyance and interpretation of the signs of Nature were attributed. He himself went so far as to affirm that there was no bullet capable of killing him, so it is possible that both Apaches and Mexicans came to doubt his condition as a simple mortal. In 1876 the United States government, trying to solve the problems caused by the Indians, decided to civilize the Apaches by moving them from one reservation to another between Arizona and New Mexico. As expected, Jerónimo (let's call him by his nickname) is not docile to the politics of the US army and stars in another decade of escapes and chases worthy of the best action movie. Again and again he gets caught and again and again he escapes right under the noses of the soldiers, becoming a real headache for the almighty United States Army. Up to 5,000 American soldiers and 3,000 Mexicans come after him, and the newspapers make him the most fearsome and detestable villain in the nation.
During one of these chases, Jerónimo and his men manage to ambush the US Army patrol that is chasing them. Several of the warriors closest to him die in the fray, shot down by Lieutenant Marion P. Maus , who misses the shot when shooting at Jerónimo but manages to temporarily blind him due to the dust raised by the bullet when it hit a rock. The "immortal" Indian manages to save himself again, to the despair of Maus and his men. However, days later, his General receives a letter signed by Jerónimo himself in which he praises Maus's courage and courage and recommends his decoration.
After several surrenders and new escapes, in 1886 he surrenders along with 450 Apaches (men, women and children), and all are transferred to a reservation in Florida, where they become farmers by force. A year later, they are transferred to Alabama, where nearly a quarter of them die of tuberculosis. Later, they are relocated to the Fort Sill reservation in Oklahoma, where Jerónimo converts to Christianity, dictates his autobiography, and arrives at the White House with his horse to ask President Roosevelt to return his people to Arizona. They never return to their land. The immortal Indian ends his days in Oklahoma at the age of 80, after falling off his horse and spending the night in a ditch in the open.
Collaboration with Marta Currás .
Sources:Indians, Biography