After years evading capture across the Sonoran desert and Sierra Madre mountains, Geronimo led the last band of Chiricahua Apache holdouts to formally surrender to U.S. forces. The surrender effectively closed the long chapter of armed Native American resistance in the continental United States. Geronimo and his followers were sent into exile as prisoners of war, first to Florida and eventually to Oklahoma, where he died in 1909, still a captive.
Geronimo had surrendered before, in 1884 and again earlier in 1886, only to flee the reservation each time when he felt threatened or betrayed by broken promises. By the time he met General Nelson Miles at Skeleton Canyon near the Arizona-New Mexico border, he commanded barely three dozen warriors, women, and children, exhausted from years of pursuit by thousands of U.S. and Mexican troops.
Miles promised Geronimo that his people would eventually be reunited with their families in Arizona. That promise was never kept. Instead, the Apache prisoners were shipped by train to Fort Marion in Florida, then later to Alabama, and finally to Fort Sill in Oklahoma, where many died of disease in the unfamiliar climate.
Geronimo himself became an unlikely celebrity in his later years, appearing at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair and riding in Theodore Roosevelt's 1905 inaugural parade, selling photographs and autographs to curious crowds. He never saw his Arizona homeland again, dying at Fort Sill after falling from his horse, reportedly still bitter about the surrender he had made at Skeleton Canyon.
Key people: Geronimo, Nelson Miles