by Ralph Moody
a Landmark book published by Random House, c. 1958.
Republished by Sterling in 2006.
This book about Native American, Geronimo, was written by Ralph Moody, author of the well-known Little Britches series which are being republished by Purple House Press. He also wrote several of the North Star series books, some horse books and another Landmark, Kit Carson and the Wild Frontier. Most of his books were centered on life in the old west, so it’s no surprise that he was commissioned to write the story of Geronimo. Interesting to note that Moody was 10 years old when Geronimo died!
The book starts out with a historical overview of the events of the West in the times before Geronimo’s birth, explaining some background to the term “apache,” which became the name for Geronimo’s tribe. Coronado came into the Southwest after the Spanish had conquered the Aztecs, searching for the rich seven cities of Cibola about 1540 into Arizona/New Mexico. Gradually more and more Mexicans moved north; Native Americans there fought back by raiding rather than open warfare. Apache sounded like the word for enemy so that’s what this Native Americans tribe was then called.
Geronimo was born in 1829 and died in 1909. His name at birth was Gokliya. His father was chief of his tribe and trained his son very early for all things to become a chief. He gained skills of hunting, their legends, the medicine man’s skills, and how to read the stars. His skills made him both admired and hated as he grew. His father died when he was young but his father’s instruction never left him.
A white man named Johnson tricked the Apache and massacred 50 of them. Now the Apache feared and hated the white man.
I feel the book shows
clearly the power of a father AND mother’s influence. After his father’s death,
his mother set him on a road of being a warrior, not trusting the Mexicans or
white man ever again, ready to kill, and this was to shape the rest of his life.
His mother, wife, and children were killed by Mexicans when he was a young man,
and he became hell-bent on revenge for his family’s death.
Eventually, even the Apaches turned against him and refused to allow him to lead their people, as much as Geronimo had always craved that. He had never gained the respect of his people. They helped to capture him. The book doesn’t go into a lot of the rest of his life until his death.
It’s interesting to think of the events of American history that touched his life in some way. He lived through the Mexican War, the time of westward expansion, the Cochise War, the Apache Wars, the California gold rush, the Civil War and its aftermath, the American Industrial Revolution, and into the 20th century. All of these events shaped his life.
As I read the book, I noticed that Moody was careful to tell of Native Americans who were good and honest as well as those who chose to follow Geronimo’s murderous treachery. Moody also tells of white men who could be trusted to be fair in the treatment of Native Americans and those who were unfair, as well as the American government’s often unjust treatment of them. The book was written in 1958, when most books presented them as illiterate, base savages, so Moody was ahead of his time in that way. He does refer to them as Indians, which was typical of the time period in which he wrote. I don’t find that offensive and understand they were called that at that time. Even he called himself an Indian in his autobiography, published in 1906.
Biographer Marco Margaretoff wrote “Even now, people visit his gravestone, adorned with a soaring eagle, and imagine the courage it must have taken to defy this new American empire as it was roaring into power.”
I highly recommend this book for middle school
readers as a nice accompaniment to your studies of Native Americans and/or the
19th century western expansion of the United States.
(Sandy Hall. All rights reserved 2023)
