Small Towns Vie for Bragging Rights as Birthplace of Geronimo

Clifton, AZ - In a town, known for its crusty miners and cowboys, a famous Indian is getting a lot of attention these days.

Scores of kids walk the narrow streets wearing T-shirts emblazoned with an angry-looking man kneeling in his buckskins and clutching a carbine. His image graces postcards in most of the stores. There are plans to turn the town's oldest building into a museum honoring him.

That's because after a review of books and various documents, Clifton is convinced that it is the birthplace of the legendary Apache leader Geronimo.

Town manager, Mark Fooks takes that a step further. Fooks says he feels that Geronimo's soul is being kept out of heaven as long as he's not buried here and remains interred in Oklahoma.

"You know, the Apaches bury their umbillical cords at the site of their births," Fooks said, adding that in Geronimo's case, it must have been in one of the canyons of the nearby San Francisco or Gila rivers or perhaps within the town limits of what's now Clifton.

"To enter heaven," Fooks said, "you have to be buried back where you were born."

To people living in Silver City, New Mexico, that means bringing the body back to the Gila National Forest in the west-central part of that state near their area, which also claims to be Geronimo's birthplace.

"I don't want to take the wind out of Clifton's sails, but they really need to have original documents to prove something like this, and they don't have them," said Dale Giese, a history professor at Western New Mexico University in Silver City who has studied the Apaches extensively.

Luis Perez, a historian who has been trying to get funding the past five years to erect a monument to Geronimo and other Apache leaders in Silver City, says he would bet his last dollar that Geronimo was a New Mexican.

"When you go up in that country, it just looks like perfect Apache country. You can feel his presence," Perez said.

This isn't the first time that historians, and even members of Geronimo's own family, have offered conflicting accounts about his birthplace.

No-doyon canyon

The legendary Apache warrior was born in the mid-1820's in a place that members of his tribe called at the time No-doyon canyon. The canyon was described as being near the headwaters of the Gila River.

When he was old, Geronimo told many people that he was born in Arizona. But the headwaters of the Gila are in an area north of Silver City near prehistoric ruins known as the Gila Cliff Dwellings.

Asa Daklugie, a cousin of Geronimo who interviewed him near the end of his life at Fort Sill, Okla., placed the Apache leader's birthplace near the cliff dwellings at a place where there is a three-way fork in the river.

But another cousin of Geronimo, Jason Betzinez, who wrote the book I Fought With Geronimo, said the fabled Apache lived with his parents "in the vicinity of their birthplace, the site of the present town Clifton."

Angie Debo, who wrote the book Geronimo: The Man, His Time, His Place, concluded that he was born "near the upper Gila in the mountains crossed by the present state boundary, probably on the Arizona side near the present Clifton."

But on a map in her book, Debo noted a birthplace for Geronimo in both the Clifton area and near the cliff dwellings.

Author Dan Thrapp of Tuscon, who has written numerous books about the Apaches, says he can understand that approach.

"I've used 'in the vicinity of Clifton' at various times," Thrapp said. "Those people moved around all the time and didn't know where they were by the white man's definition of streams."

Giese, the Western New Mexico University professor, said he feels "very comfortable" with his area's claim of Geronimo's birthplace.

"All the documents say the headwaters of the Gila, and that's only in one place, up beyond the cliff dwellings," Giese said.

"It just makes a lot of sense. There were a lot of Apaches in this area and in the Pinos Altos (mountains) at the time interfering with the movement of copper south to Mexico. Mangus Colorados (Geronimo's contemporary) was captured in the Pinos Altos and was brought to a fort near what is now the Silver City airport, where he was executed."

Clifton, however, doesn't have time for any of that New Mexico stuff. Fooks said the town is busy seeking funds to refurbish a 120-year-old structure, which was made from blocks of black mining slag, and make it into a Geronimo museum.

Ironically, it was the building in which the town's first miners sought refuge from Apache attacks.

"Obviously, we are trying to build Geronimo up as a tourist attraction," Fooks said.