My name’s George Smith.  Well, it was Schmidt, because my old man came from Germany.  When I was in grade school the teacher told my brother and me it was un-American to have a foreign name, so we changed it to Smith, and I don’t reckon any man will fight us about it.  I was a kid then.  If I’d known better, I’d have changed it to Hontubby or Debo.  Those are sure enough American names.  The folks called Indians were here way before us.  European immigrants haven’t treated them well, stole their land, and spread disease they couldn’t resist.  Measles will make a healthy German kid kind of sick, but they’ll kill an Indian kid most every time. 

I know one old Indian they probably couldn’t have killed.  Course Indians don’t call themselves “Indians.”  Each group has their own name, like the ones we call Navajo call themselves Dine – means the people.  Every group has a word for themselves, and it most always means the people.  The Apaches don’t call themselves Apaches.  Others call them that – it’s a Zuni word that means “enemy,” and I guess it’s been well earned at one time or another.  Apaches call themselves Naisha-dena or N’de, either way it means the people.  The various bands have names, but people go from one band to another, depending on circumstances.  My old friend, Goyathlay, was a Bidanku, but that band was pretty well done for when his grandpa Mahko died.  He went with a group where he married a girl, the Nde’nai.  I first visited him in a jail cell at Ft. Sill, but from there they sent him away to some awful, steamy place in Alabama.  Many of his friends died there.  These were desert fellas, and they didn’t hold up well in the swamps.  When he came back to Ft. Sill after a couple of years, his life changed a lot.  The government put him on a patch of farm land near Ft. Sill and told him to stay there.We would sit on his front porch and talk if I had time to stop after taking cattle to the railhead.

They tried to make him into a farmer, but that old warrior could never become a farmer.  He made his wife and kids do the farm work.  It was important to him that his people survive and prosper in the white man’s world.  He was very smart.  He couldn’t have avoided the whole US Army for so long if he hadn’t been smart.  He knew how to dress up in proper white man clothes and be a statesman in Washington.  He let them call him a name he hated for two reasons.  It was better for his cause not to make them angry by trying to force them to learn to say Goyathlay.  More important, even though he hated the name because the Mexicans that killed his family gave it to him, he was well aware that the name Geronimo had power in the minds of white men.

My old man didn’t teach me much – just that if I didn’t work hard enough and move fast enough, I’d get a clout up side the head.  Cowboying taught me respect and responsibility for others.  But Goyathlay taught me that all people are pretty much the same, and only need to be treated decent in order to treat others decent.  He told me about Usen, the creator.  He prayed to Usen, and it sounds pretty much like the one my folks pray to and call God.  Goyathlay taught me that a Chiricauhau warrior does not eat until all women and children have eaten.  It is his job to keep the young, the old, all in his care fed and safe.  Goyathlay taught me to value freedom.  He hated being penned up, at San Carlos, and in Alabama, and at Ft. Sill.  He said he was born free on the prairie where the wind blows and there are no closed up places. 

Sometimes when we talked on the porch and it was in summer, his daughters would bring us a watermelon to share.  That was one of the things they grew on that farm.  One winter night in 1909 Goyathlay was coming home in his cups and fell down in that watermelon patch.  He laid there all night, and caught the pneumonia.  That pneumonia did what the US Army couldn’t do.  It killed Goyathlay.  I will miss him.  I will bring tobacco to honor him.  I will remember his stories to honor him.  I will pray to Usen that at least his spirit roams free in the Chiricauhua Mountains.