American Series: Episode 4

I've finally been able to watch this series. I didn't realize till just the other day that the segments were online as well on "pbs.org". Anyway, I saw the segment on Geronimo and it was pretty compelling, very harrowing experience with roller-coaster like chases from Calvary after several captures and escapes. You can really see how he became a legenday American mythical figure- one of the really true iconic stories of America's past. Geronimo strove continually for Indian independence from the whites, never want to accept defeat. He eventually was chased so relentlessly that he eventually did surrender; but on his deathbed he said that he wished he never had surrendered; I thought that showed how much spirit and fight he possessed as a warrior. I thought the piece really helped the viewer get a sense of what the Apache, more specifically the Chiricahuas, were like as a people and how their livelihood was under attack from the ever-encroaching white European settlers and the U.S. military and government. After the Mexican-American War in 1848, the United States continually pushed into Apache soil and into the North American Southwest. The Apache had to fend off conflicts from both the Mexicans and the white Americans from the east. There were the 49er's and miners who travelled through their land to get to California during the Gold Rush, who were comprised mostly of lawless twenty-somethings who did some extremely horrible things towards the Indians- selling Indian girls into slavery, poisoning their food, tearing fetuses out of pregnant women. They eventually pushed Geronimo's father-in-law, Cochise, too far when they sent a boiled skull of a venerated Indian chief as a trophy back home east. Soon, all the Apaches to agreed they would no longer be friends with the white man anymore. I found the events that transpired in Geronimo's life captivating and fascinating- his finding the love of his life (Alope) and having three children, only to have them unexpectedly killed by a raid of Mexican soldiers. Geronimo was a man who underwent great pain and tragedy.