When Chiricahua Apache religious and military leader Geronimo and his band surrendered for the final time to the U.S. government in September 1886, they became prisoners of war and were sentenced to manual labor at an Army camp in Florida.
About 350 people were originally sent by train to Fort Marion. They died in large numbers and within a year were moved to Mount Vernon Barracks in Alabama where they lived for seven years.
General Nelson Miles, 4th U.S. Cavalry and Commander of the Department of New Mexico and Arizona, testified to the Committee on Indian Affairs that he had received an order to hold the group at Fort Bowie, Arizona, but received it too late and the group was already on their way to Florida through Texas.
“As far as their confinement in Florida is concerned,” Gen. Miles told the committee, “I had nothing whatever to do with it. I have, however, always believed that it was a mistake to send them there, because they were accustomed to the high altitude of the mountains.”
The general also said, as reported in the March 10, 1890, edition of the Washington, D.C. “Evening Sun” that he was against Geronimo and his band being relocated to Fort Sill.
“If they are sent to Fort Sill there is nothing to prevent them getting into the mountains of New Mexico,” he told the committee. “I think it would be a threatening element to place them in the Indian country.” Gen. Miles recommended they be placed in North Carolina “at 2,200 feet above the level of the sea … and free from malaria.”
However, after eight years of imprisonment and exile at military bases in Florida and Alabama, the surviving group (296 men, women and children making up about 70 families) was moved to Fort Sill in 1894, after Congress passed a special provision allowing the federal government to relocate the Chiricahua prisoners to Oklahoma. They were the last tribe to be relocated to Indian Territory and arrived with few clothes and personal belongings.
Capt. Hugh L. Scott, who was reportedly concerned for their welfare, located the Chiricahua Apache families in 12 small villages scattered around the military reservation. The tribe lived in brush wikiups during the first winter until spring, when the men built houses and broke ground for gardens.
As prisoners they did seasonal work under military supervision, such as cutting and baling prairie hay for sale, raising and selling melons and vegetables and caring for cattle purchased for them. The tribe was the first to raise kaffir corn for forage in Southwest Oklahoma.
Living conditions were more favorable for the Chiricahua Apache at Fort Sill than in Florida or Alabama, and they were told that Fort Sill would become their permanent home. After the allotment of the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Reservation land was complete, however, a consensus of local non-Indian politicians, business leaders and Army officials wanted the Apache removed from the military reservation. They wanted Fort Sill to grow near Lawton and the proposed Field Artillery School of Fire was already being talked about.
Leaders believed that allotment of land to the tribe would interfere with the plans of development the military had for the area. A Lawton citizen’s committee also expressed opposition to the allotment of prisoners at Fort Sill. Lawtonians expressed no ill feelings toward the tribe but believed that allotment on the military reserve would weaken Fort Sill and possibly lead to decommission of the post. Lawton citizens considered the survival of the military installation and the economic survival of their city as the most important issue. In addition, many of the older Indians still pressed for release and return to their native homeland.
Finally, through an act of Congress in 1913 (four years after Geronimo’s death from pneumonia), the tribe was released as prisoners of war and given a choice of remaining in the Fort Sill area or moving to the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico. A total of 181 people moved to New Mexico and 81 (about 20 families) remained in Oklahoma and were given allotments. The land was purchased with money from the Kiowa and Comanche with the sale of the Apache cattle herd.
The new town on the Rock Island Railroad line in the territory was given the name Apache. Some members of the tribe were relocated there on small allotments of farmland and others on land around Fletcher. The Oklahoma Chiricahua became increasingly known as the Fort Sill Apache and in October 1976 a tribal constitution was adopted, and a majority of voters officially chose the name for their tribe.
The Fort Sill Apache Tribe is comprised of the descendants of the Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apaches, who lived in southwestern New Mexico, southeastern Arizona and northern Mexico.
Sources for this article include fortsillapache-nsn.gov/history-traditional-culture/history; “That Geronimo Surrender: What General Miles Told the Committee on Indian Affairs” published in the Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), March 10, 1890, page 7; “A Daring Exploit: An Officer’s Dangerous Call Upon Chief Geronimo” published in “The Abbeville Press and Banner” (Abbeville, S.C.), Feb. 3, 1897, page 3; stgovpub_16196.pdf, pages 69-70; digitalprairie.ok.gov; history.com/geronimo; “Geronimo” by Raymond Wilson for okhistory.org; Library of Congress, loc.gov; apps.lib.umich.edu/geronimo; “The United States Congress and the Release of the Apache Prisoners near Fort Sill” by John Anthony Turcheneske, Jr., Chronicle of Oklahoma, Vol. 54 No. 2, pages 199 – 226.