Was Geronimo a real Apache chief?
Donald Anderson
Phoenix, Arizona
Author Morris Edward Opler, who interviewed Apache elders in the 1930s, believed Geronimo wasn’t a chief in the Apache sense of the term. Geronimo accepted Naiche, a son of Cochise, as the tribal commander-in-chief.
Geronimo was an Apache shaman. He believed the soldier’s bullets could never kill him, and they never did. He did have some followers, but most of them were kin—others didn’t view him as a leader bec
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