Suddenly it looks as though there is a slight but real chance of snow next week. Even if the forecast holds, it likely won’t amount to much — a few flurries, a dusting here and there; nothing more — but if it arrives, we will welcome it with gratitude.
When your expectations have had to adjust themselves so rapidly and so thoroughly, you do learn to be thankful for the smallest things.
It’s a lesson that was forced upon our ancestors by colonial invasion, this adaptive response to a true existential threat whose rippling effects remain in force today. Now, we face another existential threat brought upon us by those very same forces of colonial violence, but this time, it has the potential to destroy the invaders as well as the invaded, and the entire Earth upon which we all depend.
We must learn from the example those ancestors set for us, and one lesson in particular stands out now: The knowledge that we will not live to see the new world that we must create does not absolve us of the obligation to work daily to ensure its creation. We have responsibilities to the generations that succeed us, and sometimes that requires sacrifices that we should not, but do, have to make to ensure their safety and well-being. We have an obligation, too, the Mother Earth herself, entirely apart from the personal benefits we derive from ensuring that she lives in good health and harmony.
The lessons of the ancestors extend to those outside our own nations and communities. The subject of this week’s Friday Feature is from a nation and people to which neither Wings nor I belong (nor, in fact, did the artist who created the piece). But his experience is instructive on many levels, and they are lessons we need to take to heart now. From its description in the Other Artists: Wall Art gallery here on the site:
Goyaŧé (“One Who Yawns”) is perhaps the archetypal Indian warrior, a man of both great military acumen and great spiritual power and wholly devoted to his people. The rest of the world knows him as “Geronimo,” and his name has become cross-cultural shorthand for courage and heart. Here, he looks out quizzically from the frame, perhaps ready to yawn once more at yet another in the long string of deceptions and lies for which he ultimately gave his life, far from his people’s sacred lands.The texture and depth are astounding; each line in his aging, weathered face tells a story and evokes this famed warrior’s bravery and leadership. By the late Pemwah (Isleta Pueblo). The visible image is 14.5″ high by 22.25″ wide; the entire piece, including frame, is 22.25″ high by 30.25″ wide (dimensions approximate).
Pastel on Japanese kaba paper; rugged barn-wood frame
$525 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
It’s a pastel rendering of Goyaŧé, more popularly known to the outside world as “Geronimo,” the same name of the patron saint that Spanish colonial invaders “bestowed” upon Wings’s own community. I’ve altered the spelling for accuracy’s sake, to include the diacritical marks that demonstrate its proper pronunciation. When I first wrote the description, I had no access to such features, but I did also write a brief history of the man and his legacy, here:
Born a Bedonkohe Apache of the Net’na and Ndnhi bands of the Chiricahua, he reportedly entered the world in 1829, in the Gila River area of what is now known as New Mexico. He was not, initially, trained as, much less regarded by his people as, a “chief”; that status was hereditary, and he was born to a different family. Instead, he was trained for the role of medicine man, one he continued to fill even as his status changed and morphed into a hybrid of political leader (mislabeled by Europeans as “chief”), military strategist (warrior), and spiritual elder (medicine man).
He was regarded by his people — and by not a few of other area Indian nations, as well as colonial invaders – as having great supernatural power: It was said that he could walk without leaving footprints, and that he was invulnerable to bullets, claims no doubt encouraged, and no doubt believed by the soldiers and settlers against whom he led so many successful raids. It was said that he could see the future, and like prophets of many cultures, stories abound that he foresaw the possibility of what would be done to his people and to him personally, which would only have encouraged his resolve to fight in their defense. It was also said that he could hold back the dawn: that he could protect his people under cover of darkness by preventing the sun from rising. While I have yet to find any actual reports of night standing still, it was undoubtedly useful as a tool of wartime propaganda.
During Goyathlay’s years as a young man, he, like Indians of tribal nations all over the Southwest, traveled well-established trade routes far and wide, including those south into what is now called Mexico. When he was 29, he returned from one such trade mission in Mexico to find his wife, his three young children, and his mother slaughtered by Spanish troops. It was a pivotal moment that split young Goyathlay’s path permanently into two: No longer solely a medicine man, it was the catalyst that sparked the warrior’s fire in his soul, and burned white-hot. His new-found and wholly understandable hatred for the invaders knew no bounds, and he resolved to defend the rest of his people while destroying as much of the colonialist and occupying forces as possible.
They were, of course, made to pay, and pay dearly, for having the temerity to defend their sacred and ancestral lands, their people, and their way of life. Both the Spanish in Mexico and the U.S. government did their best to exterminate all of the Chiricahua. By 1876, execution of the country’s Indian Policy had extended to the far reaches of New Mexico, and the Chiricahua were forcibly removed to the neighboring Arizona Territory, on lands inhabited by the San Carlos Apache (now confined to a delimited reservation). Unwilling to be forced into internment, Goyathlay and a small band of his people evaded the U.S. Army and went to Mexico. They were captured and interned at San Carlos anyway, and there they stayed, in a manner of speaking, until 1881, when an Apache prophet there was assassinated. Goyathlay escaped on three separate occasions, and not once was he captured by soldiers: He simply surrendered for his people. At that point, Goyathlay and his fellow warriors stole out of the reservation to an encampment in the mountains where they plotted strategy and continued harrying raids within and without Mexico.
Oh, and about that name: It was during this period that he became known by his modern appellation. But how did Goyathlay get transformed into “Geronimo?”
Goyathlay and his warriors were famous among both Spanish (Mexican) and U.S. soldiers for their courage, daring, and strategic aggression. Word of his exploits traveled fast and far, as did word of his purported supernatural powers. As an enemy, he was respected, but also feared outright. During clashes in Mexico, where he and his warriors raided and harried the Mexican forces mercilessly, word of his arrival — or even of the possibility that he might be in the area — instilled such fear into the soldiers’ hearts that they invoked the name of their patron saint, Jerome — in Spanish, Geronimo (pronounced Hay-ROE-nee-moe, but with short, sharp vowels, unlike those found in English). It became a cry of terror, so the story goes, and it stuck: The Spanish evermore thought of him as Geronimo; the U.S. soldiers picked up the name, but, as was their wont, predictably mispronounced it Jer-AH-nih-moe; and Goyathlay himself no doubt both laughed and yawned at the thought that he was capable of striking such terror into the hearts of the invaders that they would accidentally reward him with the name of their patron saint. Today, it’s appropriated for everything from military actions to charging cries in children’s games.
In 1882, the Army caught up with him, and he agreed to return to the reservation with his warriors. It didn’t last long; the government arrested another Apache leader and imprisoned him, and Goyathlay gathered his warriors and escaped once more. Another three years of battles and raids ensued, until he finally agreed to a conditional surrender in September of 1886 , subject to certain conditions about where he and his people would be placed. This was considered the last real “Indian action” of the U.S. Indian Wars, and Goyathlay and his warriors are credited with being the last and longest holdouts against an encroaching colonialist government executing a genocidal policy. On September 4th of that year, General Nelson Miles took him and his people into custody. The government promptly breached the agreement, as always, and Goyathlay and the 16 warriors, dozen women, and half-dozen children were rounded up with the remaining Chiricahua. The 450 or so of his people who had survived the recent military onslaught were shipped to Florida, to Fort Marion and Marion Pickens, where they were interned in concentration camps in a harsh and unfamiliar climate, given unhealthy food, forced to live in unsanitary conditions, and exposed to disease. They were transferred to Alabama’s Mount Vernon military installation, and fully a quarter of them did not survive internment there, dying of tuberculosis and other disease to which they had had no previous exposure, and therefore, no immunity. Those who did manage to survive the Southern sojourn, including Goyathlay himself, were eventually forcibly transferred to Oklahoma’s Fort Sill, where they lived out their remaining years. Goyathlay spent nearly three decades — twenty-seven years — as a prisoner of war. When he walked on, it was on the soil of Fort Sill, far from his own lands; he remains interred there, still separated from the soil where his spirit no doubt longs to rest.
Goyathlay is credited with a number of famous quotes, but for me, one stands out, both for its accuracy and for its poignancy:
I was born on the prairies where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures.
This fierce warrior, this powerful medicine man, was forced to spend his final decades in enclosures. The scars no doubt ran deep. And yet, his love for and defense of his people never wavered, and today, he is revered for that strength of character. And today, his spirit, in whatever form it takes, is no doubt smiling, secure in the knowledge that many of his own lineal descendants and the people as a whole are back in their ancestral lands, at Mescalero, in southern New Mexico. And perhaps, likewise secure in the knowledge that, in the long view, he won the war after all, once again he yawns.
Yes, it’s a long passage — most of the original post, actually, but since I wrote it, I have no issue with reproducing it here — but one of the threads that runs through the whole of it is the example this great man set, however unintentionally, for the rest of us. There certainly came a time when he knew he would not live long enough to see the better world for which he had spent much of his life fighting on behalf of his people. It didn’t stop him from continuing the work. He was a man wise in ways the colonial world will never understand, a mix of cool illuminating wisdom and all the flames of the spirit driving his strategy and acts.
We know now that we will not live long enough to see this world healed, never mind the lands returned as prophecy dictates and justice requires. The damage is too great, the harm too deeply institutionalized to undo it in such a [comparatively] short period of time. But we have our part to play in ensuring that future generations do live to see it.
Those are the flames in our spirits, and they keep us committed to the task at hand.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
