RIMROCK — Jerry “Geronimo” Martin brought the words of the legendary Apache warrior Geronimo to life at the Sycamore Community Park Wednesday as he stood in the middle of a camp-fire style circle of about 50 people seated in lawn chairs and on plastic buckets.
And those words even rang louder today as the Yavapai-Apache Nation is actively working to bring its displaced members back to its ancestral homeland in the Verde Valley by acquiring more land and building homes.
Martin, who said he is the great-great-grandson of Geronimo, told his stories in a deep voice and traditional clothing and explained how Geronimo came to the decision to surrender in 1886.
Geronimo and his group of Chiricahua Apache resisters evaded the U.S. Army for decades and didn’t want to live on the San Carlos Reservation, Martin said
The elder women who were in Geronimo’s resistance group told him, “We’re tired, we’re being pursued like animals, we’re hungry because provisions are becoming too hard to possess, we’re getting old, and we’ve become so few of us,” Martin explained to the people seated in lawns seats and plastic buckets.
“If we can save our tribe by coming home, we need to go home,” Martin said to the Rimrock Community Gathering Group members who were dead-still and didn’t make a sound during his storytelling.
The group gathers every Wednesday for different speakers, yoga, music, meditation, chanting, prayer, singing, energy, medicine, geology, archeology, exercises, herbs and health and wellness and is open to everyone.
The elder women told Geronimo that, “If we don’t have our children, no one will ever know we ever existed.” So Geronimo surrendered in Skeleton Canyon in Arizona.
During his surrender to Lt. Charles Gatewood, the warrior reportedly said, “Once I moved about like the wind. Now I surrender to you and that is all,” the warrior told Lt. Charles Gatewood during his surrender.
“The people are coming back together,” Martin said. “We knew that would happen when we got the sign. The sign of the White Buffalo. And that has already happened.”
In 1875, 1,400 Yavapai-Apache were driven from their land in the Verde Valley by the U.S. government.
“We’re going to continue to grow,” Chairwoman Tanya Lewis said Nov. 4 during the historic land exchange with the U.S. Forest Service. “This is an opportunity for generations to come as we’re taught to prepare for those who are not here.” Lewis said the Nation will continue to acquire land, to build back on their historical homeland.
