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Geronimo's Story of His Life (Annotated): The Autobiography of the Apache War Chief, with the Photographs of the 1906 First Edition
This edition includes original content found in no other A new introduction placing the book, its narrator, and its remarkable 1905 creation in historical contextA publisher's note on sources and editorial methodA complete new professional typesetting of the full 1906 text. This is a real book, not a photocopied scanEvery photograph of the 1906 first edition, reproduced from its original platesS. M. Barrett's complete original annotations, kept as true footnotes where he placed themThe government that held him did not want this book to exist.
In 1905 Geronimo was the most famous prisoner of war in America, nineteen years into a captivity that would end only with his death. When S. M. Barrett, a school superintendent at Lawton, Oklahoma, asked to record the old warrior's life story, the Army refused. Barrett wrote to Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt overruled the War Department, and Geronimo began to dictate, on his own terms, through an interpreter he trusted. He would not be questioned. He would not be interrupted. He told his story exactly as he chose to tell it.
The result is the only autobiography of Geronimo, and one of the most extraordinary primary sources in American the origin stories of the Apaches, boyhood on the Gila River, the massacre of his family at Kas-ki-yeh, decades of raid and reprisal across the border country, the final surrender at Skeleton Canyon in 1886, and the long exile that followed, including his own dry account of being exhibited at the St. Louis World's Fair. The War Department's objections to the book are printed inside it, and Barrett's footnotes argue with his narrator down the page. He asked, at the end, to go home to Arizona. The request was refused.
This Owasco Valley Classics edition is a complete new typesetting of the 1906 first edition, made with care in the Finger Lakes region of New York. Nothing has been abridged or modernized, the original photographs are restored from the first edition plates, and the annotations remain exactly where Barrett put them.
For readers of western history, Native American history, and firsthand accounts of the American frontier.
In 1905 Geronimo was the most famous prisoner of war in America, nineteen years into a captivity that would end only with his death. When S. M. Barrett, a school superintendent at Lawton, Oklahoma, asked to record the old warrior's life story, the Army refused. Barrett wrote to Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt overruled the War Department, and Geronimo began to dictate, on his own terms, through an interpreter he trusted. He would not be questioned. He would not be interrupted. He told his story exactly as he chose to tell it.
The result is the only autobiography of Geronimo, and one of the most extraordinary primary sources in American the origin stories of the Apaches, boyhood on the Gila River, the massacre of his family at Kas-ki-yeh, decades of raid and reprisal across the border country, the final surrender at Skeleton Canyon in 1886, and the long exile that followed, including his own dry account of being exhibited at the St. Louis World's Fair. The War Department's objections to the book are printed inside it, and Barrett's footnotes argue with his narrator down the page. He asked, at the end, to go home to Arizona. The request was refused.
This Owasco Valley Classics edition is a complete new typesetting of the 1906 first edition, made with care in the Finger Lakes region of New York. Nothing has been abridged or modernized, the original photographs are restored from the first edition plates, and the annotations remain exactly where Barrett put them.
For readers of western history, Native American history, and firsthand accounts of the American frontier.
140 pages, Paperback
Published August 6, 2026
About the author
Geronimo
60 books17 followers(Mescalero-Chiricahua: Goyaałé [kòjàːɬɛ́] "the one who yawns") was a prominent leader and medicine man from the Bedonkohe band of the Chiricahua Apache tribe. From 1850 to 1886 Geronimo joined with members of three other Chiricahua Apache bands—the Tchihende, the Tsokanende and the Nednhi—to carry out numerous raids as well as resistance to US and Mexican military campaigns in the northern Mexico states of Chihuahua and Sonora, and in the southwestern American territories of New Mexico and Arizona. Geronimo's raids and related combat actions were a part of the prolonged period of the Apache–United States conflict, which started with American settlement in Apache lands following the end of the war with Mexico in 1848.
While well known, Geronimo was not a chief among the Chiricahua or the Bedonkohe band. At any one time, about 30 to 50 Apaches would be following him. However, since he was a superb leader in raiding and warfare he frequently led large numbers of men and women beyond his own following.
During Geronimo's final period of conflict from 1876 to 1886 he "surrendered" three times and accepted life on the Apache reservations in Arizona. Reservation life was confining to the free-moving Apache people, and they resented restrictions on their customary way of life.
In 1886, after an intense pursuit in Northern Mexico by U.S. forces that followed Geronimo's third 1885 reservation "breakout", Geronimo surrendered for the last time to Lt. Charles Bare Gatewood, an Apache-speaking West Point graduate who had earned Geronimo's respect a few years before. Geronimo was later transferred to General Nelson Miles at Skeleton Canyon, just north of the Mexican/American boundary. Miles treated Geronimo as a prisoner of war and acted promptly to remove Geronimo first to Fort Bowie, then to the railroad at Bowie Station, Arizona where he and 27 other Apaches were sent off to join the rest of the Chiricahua tribe which had been previously exiled to Florida.
In his old age, Geronimo became a celebrity. He appeared at fairs, including the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, where he reportedly rode a ferris wheel and sold souvenirs and photographs of himself. However, he was not allowed to return to the land of his birth. He died at the Fort Sill hospital in 1909. He was still a prisoner of war. He is buried at the Fort Sill Indian Agency Cemetery surrounded by the graves of relatives and other Apache prisoners of war.
While well known, Geronimo was not a chief among the Chiricahua or the Bedonkohe band. At any one time, about 30 to 50 Apaches would be following him. However, since he was a superb leader in raiding and warfare he frequently led large numbers of men and women beyond his own following.
During Geronimo's final period of conflict from 1876 to 1886 he "surrendered" three times and accepted life on the Apache reservations in Arizona. Reservation life was confining to the free-moving Apache people, and they resented restrictions on their customary way of life.
In 1886, after an intense pursuit in Northern Mexico by U.S. forces that followed Geronimo's third 1885 reservation "breakout", Geronimo surrendered for the last time to Lt. Charles Bare Gatewood, an Apache-speaking West Point graduate who had earned Geronimo's respect a few years before. Geronimo was later transferred to General Nelson Miles at Skeleton Canyon, just north of the Mexican/American boundary. Miles treated Geronimo as a prisoner of war and acted promptly to remove Geronimo first to Fort Bowie, then to the railroad at Bowie Station, Arizona where he and 27 other Apaches were sent off to join the rest of the Chiricahua tribe which had been previously exiled to Florida.
In his old age, Geronimo became a celebrity. He appeared at fairs, including the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, where he reportedly rode a ferris wheel and sold souvenirs and photographs of himself. However, he was not allowed to return to the land of his birth. He died at the Fort Sill hospital in 1909. He was still a prisoner of war. He is buried at the Fort Sill Indian Agency Cemetery surrounded by the graves of relatives and other Apache prisoners of war.
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