Comanche County Oklahoma
Native American
Data
The American Indian tribe known today as the Fort Sill Apache was moved to
Oklahoma in 1894 after continuing nearly a decade of
imprisonment and exile at
U.S. Army installations in
Florida and Alabama. Today's Fort Sill Apache are
actually
the survivors and descendants of the Chiricahua Apache tribe, whose
original territory covered much of what is now the
American Southwest in eastern
Arizona and western New
Mexico along the United States border with Mexico. The
U.S. Congress passed a special provision enabling the
federal government to
relocate the Chiricahua prisoners of
war to southwestern Oklahoma, making this
the last
American Indian group to be relocated to Indian Territory. Upon
their arrival at Fort Sill the Apache prisoners of war
were told that the fort
would become their permanent home,
and the military reservation was enlarged for
that
purpose. Following the allotment of surrounding Indian lands, local
non-Indian politicians, business leaders, and U.S. Army
officials agitated for
the continued presence of the
military near Lawton. By 1910 these individuals
began the
final orchestration to remove the prisoners of war from the military
reservation. The Chiricahua were pressured to leave Fort
Sill as a condition for
their freedom, but many held out
for return to their homeland or allotment at
Fort Sill.
Eventually, leaders of the Mescalero Apache Reservation (in New
Mexico), urged by government agents, invited the
Chiricahua to relocate to their
reservation (a move that
strengthened their own efforts to preserve their
reservation lands from non-Indian encroachment).
Despite the efforts of
government and military officials,
about one-third of the tribe continued to
demand that they
be allowed the Fort Sill lands they had been promised. A
compromise solution between the Indian Bureau and the War
Department led to the
settling of those Fort Sill Apache
who declined joining the Mescaleros on unused
(dead)
allotments from the old Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Reservation lands near Fort
Sill. On April 2, 1913, in an event recalled by the
Fort Sill Apache as
"the Parting," 180 Apache prisoners of
war were relocated from Fort Sill to
Mescalero, New
Mexico. The remaining prisoners of war, numbering about
eighty-one individuals in about twenty families, were
eventually released and
resettled on small allotments
scattered around Apache and Fletcher, Oklahoma, by
the end
of 1914. Now known as the "Fort Sill Apaches," the tribe was
dumped into the impoverished rural economy of southwestern
Oklahoma and
struggled to survive alongside their Indian
and Euroamerican neighbors. In the
decades leading to
World War II all of the Fort Sill Apache gave up farming and
went into general labor, trades, or work at Fort Sill. Of
necessity, younger
people did not have their own farms or
had inherited partial shares of the
parents' allotments,
from which it was to difficult to make a living. They had
to find employment wherever they could. For some of the
older people it became
more reasonable for them to simply
lease their lands to local farmers. World War
II led many
to seek higher-paying jobs in Oklahoma City and beyond. The tribe,
seeking reparations and justice, remained informally
organized and led,
rejecting the opportunity to organize
under the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act of
1937. Bureau of
Indian Affairs sponsored organization of a tribal government
only came in the aftermath of a multimillion dollar land
and resource claim
settlement from the Indian Claims
Commission in 1973 and an additional court
judgement in
1979. The Fort Sill Apache Tribe adopted a Bureau of Indian Affairs
constitution in 1976. The history of the Fort Sill
Apache Tribe in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries is
marked by a high level of accommodation
with the larger
non-Apache as well as non-Indian cultural situation of
southwestern Oklahoma. This has also meant significant
loss of cultural identity
because of the loss of a viable
land base, a native spoken language, and other
aspects of
Chiricahua Apache culture. The Oklahoma Fort Sill Apache continued to
maintain family and kinship connections to their relatives
and friends who had
moved to the Mescalero Apache
Reservation. Well-known and capable leaders of the
Fort
Sill Apache Tribe during the twentieth century include Benedict Jozhe, Jr.,
Mildred I. Cleghorn (two of the last Chiricahua Apaches
born under "prisoner of
war" status), and the late Ruey
Darrow. At the end of the twentieth
century the Fort
Sill Apache maintained a tribal headquarters north of Apache,
Oklahoma. That acreage formed the first part of what tribe
members hoped to be
the establishment of a larger
land-based presence. Efforts in the 1990s to
develop a
more viable economic and political base met with varying levels of
success. By 2000 the tribe operated a successful casino
facility in Lawton,
Oklahoma. There were 517 registered
members of the Fort Sill Apache
Tribe.
TRIBE SAYS
ITS READY TO COME BACK TO NEW MEXICO 04/10/99 After being kicked out of the
state as prisoners of war, the Chiricahua Apache tribe is now ready to return to
New Mexico following nearly a century of exile in Oklahoma. The tribe hopes that
gaming will pave the road back to their ancestral roaming grounds in
southeastern New Mexico. It is planning to build a casino 20 miles east of
Deming where it recently acquired some land. Many in the tribe _ now known as
the Fort Sill Apaches _ were born and raised in rural southern Oklahoma just
north of Lawton and Fort Sill. They were held as prisoners of war by the United
States from 1886 to 1913 and later forced to relocate to Oklahoma. "The people
of Arizona and New Mexico said they didn't want them there," said Ruey Darrow,
chairwoman of the Fort Sill Apache tribe. Tribal members in Oklahoma are not
able to make a living off the land because they can't afford farm equipment, the
73-year-old tribal elder said. Darrow said some members can't even afford to
bury their relatives. She hopes the new casino _ which would be located on land
that was once used as a camp area by Apaches _ would help improve the tribe's
financial situation. "They need an economic base to come back to New Mexico,"
said C.K. Stribling, a Deming area rancher and advisor to the tribe
Traditional doll maker, school teacher, and Fort Sill Apache tribal
leader, Mildred Imoch (En-Ohn or Lay-a-Bet) was born a prisoner of war at Fort
Sill, Oklahoma on December 11, 1910. Her grandfather had followed Geronimo into
battle, and her grandparents and parents were imprisoned with the Chiricahua
Apache in Florida, Alabama, and at Fort Sill. Her family was one of only
seventy-five that chose to remain at Fort Sill instead of relocating to the
Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico in 1913. Mildred Cleghorn attended school in
Apache, Oklahoma, at Haskell Institute in Kansas, and at Oklahoma State
University, where she received a degree in home economics in 1941. After
finishing her formal education, she spent several years as a home extension
agent in Kansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico and then sixteen years as a home
economics teacher, first at Fort Sill Indian School at Lawton and later at
Riverside Indian School at Anadarko. Later she taught kindergarten at Apache
Public School in Apache. She was married to William G. Cleghorn, whom she had
met in Kansas, and their union produced a daughter, Peggy. In 1976 Mildren
Cleghorn became chairperson of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe, newly organized as a
self-governing entity. Her leadership in that government revolved around
preserving traditional history and culture. She retired from the post at age
eighty-five in 1995. Cleghorn's many awards and recognitions included a human
relations fellowship at Fisk University in 1955, the Ellis Island Award in 1987,
and the Indian of the Year Award in 1989. She also served as an officer in the
North American Indian Women's Association, as secretary of the Southwest
Oklahoma Intertribal Association, and as treasurer of the American Indian
Council of the Reformed Church of America. Above all, Mildred Cleghorn was a
cultural leader. She spent a lifetime creating dolls authentically clothed to
represent forty of the tribes she had encountered in her teaching career. Her
work was exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Her life
ended in an automobile accident near Apache on April 15, 1997.
Geronimo was born of the Bedonkohe Apache tribe
in No-doyohn Canon, Arizona, June,
1829, near present day Clifton, Arizona. The fourth in a family of four boys and four
girls, he was called Goyathlay (One Who Yawns.) In 1846, when he was seventeen,
he was admitted to the Council of the Warriors, which allowed him to
marry. Soon, he received permission; married a woman named Alope, and the
couple had three children. In the mid 1850s, the tribe, who was at peace with
the Mexican towns and neighboring Indian tribes, traveled into Old
Mexico where they could trade. Camping outside a Mexican town they called
Kas-ki-yeh, they stayed for several days. Leaving a few warriors to guard the
camp, the rest of the men went into town to trade. When they were returning from
town, they were met by several women and children who told them that Mexican
troops had attacked their camp. They returned to camp to find
their guard warriors killed, and their
horses, supplies and arms, gone. Even worse, many of the women and children
had been killed as well. Of those that lay dead were Goyathlay’s wife,
mother, and three children and as a result, he hated all Mexicans for the rest
of his life. It was the slaughter of his family that turned him
from a peaceful Indian into a bold warrior. Soon, he joined a fierce
band of Apaches known as Chiricahuas and with them, took part in numerous raids
in northern Mexico and across the border into U.S. territory which are now known
as the states of New Mexico and Arizona. It
was those Mexican adversaries that gave him the nickname of "Geronimo", the Spanish version of the name "Jerome".
In ever increasing
numbers, Geronimo
fought against both Mexicans and white settlers as they began to colonize
much of the Apache homelands. However, by the early
1870s, Lieutenant Colonel George F. Crook, commander of the Department of Arizona, had succeeded in establishing relative
peace in the territory. The management of his successors, however, was
disastrous. In 1876 the U.S. government
attempted to move the Chiricahua from
their traditional home to the San Carlos Reservation, a barren wasteland in
east-central Arizona, described as "Hell's
Forty Acres." Deprived of traditional tribal rights, short on rations and
homesick, they revolted. Spurred by Geronimo, hundreds of Apaches left the
reservation and fled to Mexico, soon resuming their war against the
whites. Geronimo and his followers
began ten years of intermittent raids against white settlements, alternating
with periods of peaceful farming on the San Carlos reservation. In 1882,
General George Crook was recalled to
Arizona to conduct a campaign against the
Apaches. Geronimo surrendered in January 1884, but,
spurred by rumors of impending trials and hangings, took flight from the San
Carlos Reservation on May 17, 1885,
accompanied by 35 warriors, and 109 other men, women and children.
During this final
campaign, at least 5,000 white soldiers and 500 Indian auxiliaries were employed at various
times in the capture of Geronimo's small
band. Five months and 1,645 miles later, Geronimo was tracked to his camp in Mexico's
Sonora Mountains. The soldiers gathered the group and began the trek to
Fort Bowie, Arizona. However, near the border, Geronimo, fearing that they would
be murdered once they crossed into U.S. territory, bolted with Chief Naiche, 11
warriors, and a few women and boys, who were able to escape back into the Sierra
Madra. As a result, Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles replaced Crook as
commander on April 2, 1886. At a conference on September 3, 1886, at
Skeleton Canyon in Arizona, General Miles induced Geronimo to surrender once
again, promising him that, after an indefinite exile in Florida, he and his
followers would be permitted to return to Arizona. The promise was never
kept. Geronimo and his fellow prisoners were shipped by box-car to Florida for
imprisonment and put to hard labor. It was May 1887 before he saw his
family. Several years later, in 1894, he was moved to Fort Sill in Oklahoma
Territory where he attempted to “fit in.” He farmed and joined the Dutch
Reformed Church, which expelled him because of his inability to resist
gambling. As years passed, stories of Geronimo's warrior ferocity made him
into a legend that fascinated non-Indians and Indians alike. As a result, he
appeared at numerous fairs, selling souvenirs and photographs of himself. In
1905 he was quite the sensation when he appeared in President Theodore
Roosevelt's inaugural parade. Geronimo dictated his memoirs, published in 1906
as Geronimo's Story of His Life. Never having seen his homeland of Arizona
again, Geronimo died of pneumonia on February 17, 1909 and was buried in the
Apache cemetery at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
Return to the Main
Index
Page
©2009
Genealogy
Trails