Geronimo – it was the name given to the operation that killed bin Laden, much to the Native Indians despair, but who was Geronimo the man? I had a look on your behalf, and it turns out he was a double hard Apache warrior and a proper legend. His Indian name was Mescalero-Chirichaha: Goyaałé or “one who yawns”, and he was born in 1829.
Geronimo was born into one of the smaller tribes in the region, the Bedonkohe, numbering just 8000 or so. He was a natural hunter as a child and legend has it that he ate the heart of his first kill. Which is a pretty heavy metal thing to do I think you’ll agree. Violence was a normal, everyday part of his life, Mexicans would invade, as would rival tribes, and by the time he was 17 he had already lead successful raids on rivals. The Mexicans were the main beef though, there was a bounty up for grabs of as much as $25 for the scalp of an Apache child. That’s an incentive for horrific violence right there.
By March 1958 Geronimo had been married a couple of years and had three kids. His existence was about to be shattered to the core: 400 Mexican troops attacked his camp whilst the men folk were trading in town. The men returned after dark to find what the Mexicans had done to their people.
His aging mother, his young wife and all three of his young children had been slaughtered. After finding their bodies he burned all of their possessions and wandered into the wilderness to grieve. Whilst he was on this wander he heard a voice telling him that no bullet could ever hurt him. From then on he was a Mexican mauling machine.
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