“They put you in prison to kill you as they did Mangas Colorado,” said Na-tanh; “but their hearts turned to water, so that they were afraid.”
“They will never get Geronimo in prison again,” said the old war chief. “I am getting old; and I should like to have peace, but rather would I take the war trail for the rest of my life than be again chained in the prison of the pindah-lickoyee.
“We do not want to fight any more. We came in as Nan-tan-des-la-par-en [[1]] asked us to. We planted crops, but the rain will not come. Usen is angry with us; and The Great White Chief cannot feed us because his Agent steals the beef that is meant for us, and lets us starve. He will not let us hunt for food if we live at San Carlos.”
| [1] | “Captain-with-the-brown-clothes”—Major-General George Crook, U. S. A. |
“Who is this white-eyed thief that he may say where an Apache warrior may make his kunh-gan-hay or where he shall hunt?” demanded Shoz-Dijiji. “The Black Bear makes his camp where he will, hunts where he will!”
“Those are the big words of a young man, my son,” said Geronimo. “It is fine to make big talk; but when we would do these things the soldiers come and kill us; every white-eyed man who meets our hunters upon the trails shoots at them. To them we are as coyotes. Not content with stealing the land that Usen gave to our forefathers, not content with slaughtering the game that Usen put here to feed us, they lie to us, they cheat us, they hunt us down like wild beasts.”
“And yet you, Geronimo, War Chief of the Apaches, hesitate to take the war trail against them!” Shoz-Dijiji reproached him. “It is not because you are afraid. No man may say that Geronimo is afraid. Then why is it?”
“The son of Geronimo speaks true words,” replied the old chief. “Go-yat-thlay, [[2]] the son of Tah-clish-un, is not afraid to take the war trail against the pindah-lickoyee even though he knows that it is hopeless to fight against their soldiers, who are as many as the needles upon the cedars, because Go-yat-thlay is not afraid to die; but he does not like to see the warriors and the women and the children slain needlessly, and so he waits and hopes—hopes that the pindah-lickoyee will some day keep the words of the treaties they have made with the Shis-Inday—the treaties that they have always been the first to break.