surrender a third time. For the loss of 13 Indi-
ans, white deaths amounted to 95, with a sim-
ilar number of Mexicans. Geronimo’s 35 sur-
vivors were then rounded up and sent off to
Fort Pickens, Florida. They arrived there in
chains on the express orders of President
Grover Cleveland.
Geronimo finally adapted to captivity; he
took up farming and became a Christian con-
vert. In 1894, the government accepted an
offer from the Comanche and Kiowa tribes,
traditional enemies of the Apaches, to allow
the survivors to resettle on their land. The
aged shaman then became something of a na-
tional celebrity, selling autographed pictures
of himself, dictating his memoirs, and attend-
ing the inauguration of President Theodore
Roosevelt in 1905. Nonetheless, he remained
a prisoner for the last 27 years of his life and
was never again allowed to visit his ancestral
homeland in Arizona. Geronimo died at Fort
Sill, Oklahoma, on February 17, 1909, a potent
symbol of one man’s determination to live
free.Bibliography
Alshire, Peter. The Fox and the Whirlwind: General
George Crook and Geronimo: A Paired Biography.
New York: Wiley, 2001; Barrett, S. M., ed. Geronimo:
His Own Story.New York: Dutton, 1970; Debo, Angie.
Geronimo: The Man, His Time, His Place.Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1976; Kraft, Louis. Gate-
wood and Geronimo.Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press, 2000; Roberts, David. Once They Moved
Like the Wind: Cochise, Geronimo, and the Apache
Wars.New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993; Sonnich-
sen, C. L., ed. Geronimo and the End of the Apache
Wars.Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990;
Utley, Robert M. “Geronimo.” MHQ4, no. 2 (1992):
42–51; Weems, John E. Death Song: The Last of the In-
dian Wars.Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976; Worces-
ter, Donald E. The Apaches: Eagles of the Southwest.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979.GIAP, VONGUYEN
Giap, Vo Nguyen
(August 25, 1911–)
Vietnamese General
T
he short-statured, steely-eyed Giap was
the preeminent military strategist be-
hind Vietnam’s 30-year struggle for na-
tional unification. By deftly combining conven-
tional and guerrilla warfare, along with blatant
indifference to heavy losses, he bested both
France and the United States in two lengthy
wars. Giap remains one of the great military
minds of the twentieth century, as well as a po-
tent symbol of Vietnamese nationalism.
Vo Nguyen Giap was born in An Xu Village,
Quang Binh Province, Vietnam, then known
as French Indochina. His family sacrificed so
that he could be well-educated, and he at-
tended a private school. There Giap was ex-
posed to strident anticolonial sentiments and
became politically active as a teenager. In
1930, he channeled his nationalist sentiments
into action by joining the Vietnamese Commu-
nist Party, established by Ho Chi Minh, and
found himself arrested for revolutionary agi-
tation. Like many Vietnamese of his genera-
tion, he viewed France as an oppressor and
grew determined to oust them by any means
possible. Following his release from prison,
Giap attended the University of Hanoi, taking
degrees in law, and became a history teacher.
He was especially fond of military history and
closely studied the campaigns and persona of
Napoleon, after whom, many claimed, he
modeled himself. In 1939, Giap fled to south-
ern China once French officials outlawed the