The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    we are stardust's picture

    His Code Name Was Geronimo

    By we are stardust on Wed, 05/04/2011 - 10:14pm |

    They stole his name, Geronimo, a bad thing to do.  Geronimo, the legendary warrior and leader of the Chiricahua Apache tribe, whose name was cavalierly besmirched  and used as the code name for Osama bin Laden in the operation that was meant to, and did, exterminate him.

    I suppose in a way it is ironically fitting in this land whose Original Sin was the genocide of millions of Native Americans, the First Americans, over decades of murders loosely justified by the arrogant belief of Anglo-Saxon Manifest Destiny.

    Geronimo’s band was the last holdout against the United States military in present-day Arizona and New Mexico.

    It’s thought that his skull and bones were stolen by the Yale society of the same name. after his death..

    They called him Geronimo, but they killed him more like Crazy Horse.

    I hope to follow with a poem.  I was glad to see when searching for his history that the tribe is demanding an apology from Barack Obama.

                                        

     

    Comments

    Thanks for putting this up,Stardust. It reminds me of one of my favorite shirts that has a photo of a younger Geronimo with three warriors beside him. They are holding their rifles and staring piercingly into the camera. Over the photo are the words- HOMELAND SECURITY Fighting terrorism since 1492!

    We "dug ourselves a pit of disgrace" with our treatment of Native Americans and it seems we are now hellbent on doing the same with our constant wars all over this planet- it' getting pretty hard to take.

     


    by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 05/04/2011 - 11:49pm

    Welcome, anonymous; here's Bruce.  I bawl every time I hear it.  He's playing about 30 miles from us at the end of the month; sure wish I could go.  What a grand man.  And that fiddle goes right through my heart; pierces it the way it's intended to. 


    by we are stardust on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 12:13am

    Minor point, stardust, re how Geronimo died: it was of natural causes, years after he surrendered. You're thinking of Sitting Bull, no? Your point about the military appropriating his name as well as his lands still stands.

    Cockburn's great, but nothing matches Buffy's raw power on Now That the Buffalo's Gone. The line "Now that even the graves have been robbed" refers to Geronimo, I've always believed.


    by acanuck on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 2:59am

    I think this is saying Bin Laden was killed more like Crazy Horse as opposed to Geronimo.


    by kgb999 on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 3:32am

    Finally got it, kgb. You're right. Apologies, stardust.


    by acanuck on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 3:47am

    De rien, canuck.  ;o)   Crazy Horse was stabbed to death while he was being led into the stockades: another broken promise; death may have been preferable to him in the end, imo.


    by we are stardust on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 8:46am

    I'd powered down for the night, then remembered: that line about graves being robbed is from My Country 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying, not Now That the Buffalo's Gone. Angriest song ever written. The lyrics, if you can take them:

    http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/m/mycountrytisofthy.shtml


    by acanuck on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 3:45am

    Yes, welcome Anonymous. Thanks for stopping by.


    by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 12:52am

    Is there a problem with my husband wanting to remain Anonymous?  I didn't even get it was he until I said, "Hey; someone else has a T-shirt like yours!" after I'd responded.


    by we are stardust on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 8:58am

    Nah, Genghis is just trying to make you feel welcome. ... And also feel very closely watched. It's comforting to have our own local Big Brother.

    ;0P


    by Obey on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 9:22am

    I try to remain anonymous at home, but my wife keeps poking me in the shoulder, saying, "Forget about dag for a minute and listen to me!"


    by Donal on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 9:35am

    [red faced]

    Sorry, it was a weird exchange for an Anonymous, so I checked. My apologies to you and your husband.


    by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 9:49am

    De rien to you, too, Genghis.  All this bin Laden stuff has had me on edge (well, maybe past the edge, really) myself, and I was a bit jumpy on accountta that other stuff that happened a couple days ago on Oleeb's diary.  Kinda felt 'watched', and I kinda felt...weird about it.

    Thanks for the apology; Hubby tries not to comment much; but this one was big to him as an Official Dilettante Indian Lover, as Tony Hillerman might accuse him.  ;o)


    by we are stardust on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 10:16am

    I refrained from comment on the other diary because I didn't want to stir the pot, but I was also very disturbed to see a sysop take advantage of their access to site statistics and the back-end databases to attack a user in the comments. That was pretty gross. So I'll add my dismay here, I felt kind of "weird" about it too.


    by kgb999 on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 1:28pm

    Thanks for sayin', kgb.  I was just so buffaloed, and felt wrongly accused, and was grateful that Obus Primus thought of the terminology the way I always had.  Man; there is just maybe too much free-floating anxiety in the air these days.

    The day before I was a crank pitbull heel-biter myself, but did finally realize what a cow I was being, and apologized.  (mix metaphors enough there, Dusty?)   ;o)


    by we are stardust on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 2:07pm

    Ack, such comfort!  And security!  If I had a spare tenner, I'd wager he won't comment again, and he didn't he didn't even have to hear the Billy Idol yet!


    by we are stardust on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 10:19am

    Agree wholeheartedly.  This certainly is some of the most trenchant criticism of the decision to politically assassinate Osama bin Laden that I have come across in the blogosphere.

    I'm hoping that the First Americans file a lawsuit against the vile murderer Obama for this sullying of their legacy, and are successful in their claim.


    by brewmn on Wed, 05/04/2011 - 11:59pm

    Me too, brew; and thanks.  It pushed me past some limit, and I spent the day trying to write my first poem with it as the anchor.  Hope you enjoy the Cockburn tue I put up; it's astoundingly poignant.

    "Will there never be an end to the Indian Wars?"  We are still waging them, just further around the globe, I think.  The last Chief Joseph quote was spoken by John Trudell, Santee Lakota musician/poet.  The man takes pain and pours it into his poetry; some of it hard to take.  You might be interested; some things are up on youtube.


    by we are stardust on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 12:19am

    It's not in any way a major consideration to me, but I have to say - just taking it as its own thing - that I notice it now, as the years have gone on, the use and abuse of names in our military actions. And it takes absolutely no effort to use different names. Really.

    Look. In 1755, we expelled the Acadians from Nova Scotia. We split up families, killed and drowned thousands of them. And really, our reasons weren't that great. But we IMMEDIATELY began using their names for stuff - like universities. Acadia University, for instance. A little elementary school we named after Evangeline. If you know the story, it's one of the saddest ever told, and we took it for our English kids? the name of a French woman who lost her love, her family, to us??? I just can't see any kind of class in this.

    More than anything, to me, it just shows how goddamn careless we are, how little we care about these other people. I know they're just names but we probably wouldn't go naming our military operations after dead Jews, you know?

    And in particular, didn't we hunt down Geronimo and kill him? And isn't the guy a bit of a hero to some/many? And why the hell would we want to do that, when we're trying NOT to give angry Muslims any hooks to hang onto, in the way of heroic angles and such. Calling him Geronimo doesn't help.

    Bottomline, the fucker's dead. But we should have called him Spiro Agnew. Yeah. Let's use Vice-Presidential names. Those bastards have never been good for much, they'd probably like a little follow-on PR. 


    by quinn esq on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 1:17am

    Speaking of Acadians and misappropriation, quinn, do you remember GM Canada's Acadian, the rebadged, slightly redesigned Chevette or Chevelle of the 1960s into the '80s? Around when it was introduced, they had this catchy ad campaign with a catchy tune that began, "What's an Acadian?" followed by, if I recall correctly, a bunch of supposedly humorous guesses.

    None of them, of course, being that an Acadian was a person uprooted from all his lands, neighbors and possessions, and deported over 1,000 miles, just because of his language and religion. Some anglo copywriter, probably based in Toronto, thought it was a cute idea. Thought it would sell cars. It made me understand why francophones voted for separatists.


    by acanuck on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 3:13am

    Geronimo had actually finally surrendered to Gen. Miles in Arizona.  Deported to Florida for years, then spent some time doing the Stare at the Indians parades and fairs like Sitting Bull.  One night he was thrown from his horse and lay out all night and died.  Ignominius.  There were those of his people who were unhappy that he took so many lives in his mission to remain unconquered.  But on the other hand, Red Cloud came in, and it did not go well for his people.So...

    But Geronimo rode in Teddy R's inaugural parade, which is the gist of this light tune by Michael Murphy:


    by we are stardust on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 8:29am

    Here's the Longfellow.  They, of course, still honor her story in Louisiana, dem fine Cajuns do. ;o)


    by we are stardust on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 8:31am

    I suppose code name Black Eagle was right out.


    by Donal on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 8:11am

    Yeah.  Funny, but the only Obama poster we still have is in the stairwell.  It's: First Americans for Obama.  He'd come to Window Rock, too, the capital of the Navajo nation.  My husband helped register voters at Towaoc, the Ute Mountain Ute capital a few times before the election.  They were all wow-ed to be courted.  Of course the massive theft of the Indian Trust Account was settled for pennies on the dollar last year, but....


    by we are stardust on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 10:23am

    Admittedly, my reaction when hearing the codename for OBL was, "They absolutely had to use 'Geronimo'?  They couldn't have gone the 'Darth Vader' route instead?"  Or some other benign name like 'Rosebud'  'Tiny Tim'  'John Doe'?  I immediately knew there would be a fuss, and perhaps rightfully so, but I'm not going to spend any time being affronted by this call.  What's done is done.  Again.  Sigh.

    The objections being raised are a good thing, I suppose, in that perhaps this raises the awareness a notch or two that one persons' bad guy is another persons' good guy.  It's not that much of a heavy lift to have consideration for 'the other' but I doubt I'll see an end to it during my lifetime.  It's sorta like trying to make a dent in a marshmallow by throwing cotton balls with all your might.


    by wabby on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 11:31am

    Let's hear it for keepin' on throwin' them cottonballs, Flowerchild.  Never know when critical mass might come.  I only ran into the code name reading at Asia Times; hadn't seen it anywhere else.  Harshed my mellow, I'll say that.


    by we are stardust on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 12:40pm

    What's Done is Done

    Again and again         
    sweet pictures are invented
     in that soft part of waking
    You feel it real
     but removed you watch it from above
     Hard things are at work in the world
     but soft images flow in your mind
     as a good night ends
     with a dream invitation to wake up

    to a different dream
     the show pauses with an teaser
    to come back for more
     Your feelings are pixels
    your shadow a manifestation of impulses
     they are electrical
    you are the complicated worm
      watching a show
    based on real events
    fables of fishmen
     on flying horses
    spreading the heat
     of the cold, cold, blade
     sharp knives shear real veins
     it wasn't the first First Cav in
    Operation Killagook Valley
     and Geronimo will die
     a million more times
    denied the honor
    of resting in peace


    by A Guy Called LULU on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 11:57am

    Did you write it, Lulu?  I really like it.  I could use some of your talent, it seems.  I'm trying to write my first poem longer than one haiku and a crap song or two, and it's more likely to be Crap than Not.

    They should fucking well give the bones back to the Apache tribe, shouldn't they?  Prescott and his buddies still live on...and on...and dishonor Geronimo and his heirs.

    'Fishmen on flying horses' is grand, and I was fooled that after 'electrical' came 'complicated worm'.  It made me laugh out loud.  ;o)

    You might like this Nanci Griffith.


    by we are stardust on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 12:37pm

    Thanks. Yeah, I wrote it and it demonstrates why I use an alias. I started scribbling last night after what you wrote here got me thinking [A disjointed and sometimes painful undertaking I usually avoid] and hacked away a bit more this morning. Reading the comments here, when I came to flower's above I read it and thought, what the hell, I'll post it. I added the title suggested by her comment and the first line and threw it out. Everything I write isn't dark but the other stuff really sounds sappy so I only occasionally let loose the cynical stuff. I do like the song, like so many that you link to the thoughts we are all sharing. Yeah, thanks again.

    by A Guy Called LULU on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 1:10pm

    Got me laughin' again!  You are such a deliberate thinker; and wait until you're ready to say what you mean to say.  I admire that; I'm made of fire and air, and too often compose more quickly than I should.  I'm fine-tuning this poem; I can see how it's even more true that you could tinker forever with verse than other writing.  I'll mirror your bravery and post it when it's done...enough.  ;o)


    by we are stardust on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 2:13pm

    I liked the poem, too, LULU.  Those 'what the hell, I'll post it' posts...always true and good.


    by wabby on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 2:30pm


    by cmaukonen on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 4:15pm

    ;o)  Whenever I run into Native Americans who speak with drawls I'm taken aback.  I think, "That's not right!"


    by we are stardust on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 5:19pm

    Oh....they are supposed to speak like Tonto (Jay Siverheals) Wink


    by cmaukonen on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 6:35pm

    Well, I know my daughter does.  ;o) 

    Reminds me of a funny thing, though.  When the birth mother of our adopted son went in to labor, she had the midwifery clinic call, we threw some stuff in the car, and jammed to El Paso, met the little pup when he was 13 hours old.  [snip]

    The next day we went back to the clinic, a nice laid-back place in a big old house...they checked him out, la la la, and one midwife turned and said, "I hope you all know Spanish (many clients came across from Juarez to bith their babbies)."  "Why?" we asked.  "So you can communicate with him, of course." 

    Zounds.  Er...  ;o)

    Gotta read the long one later; RL is calling.


    by we are stardust on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 7:20pm

    GOVERNMENT AGENT: My fellow Redskins! Speaking for the Great White Father in Washington and all the American People, let me say we respect you savages for your Native Ability to instantly Adapt and Survive in whatever Godforsaken wilderness we move you to. Out there. Sign here!
    RAILROADER: They did it!
    {All the cowboys whoop and holler. The train and brass band leave. The Indian gets up on his pony.}
    INDIAN: No reason to complain. It's not so bad out there. We still have our People and our Ceremonies and the Sun, Moon and Stars, and the Sand and the Black Stuff Coming Out Of The Ground...
    GOVERNMENT AGENT: Black stuff coming out of the ground?
    TRAILBLAZER: Civilization, ho-oooooooooooo!
    {A passle of Okies, dogs, model T's and dust storms passes by, leaving the Indian alone. The wind blows.}
    INDIAN: It's nice out here in the desert. No rain, no crops, no White Brother.
    {A Greyhound tour bus pulls up and the passengers file out.}
    BUS DRIVER: All out for Fort Stinkin' Desert! Last Indian Reservation for two thousand miles. You got fifteen minutes, folks! Get 'em while you can!
    {Several shots ring out.}
    BUS DRIVER: Get the Senator back in the bus!
    {The Senator fires off more shots at the Indian as he is led away.}
    SENATOR: Godfrey Daniel! Pesky Redskins! Which way's Goshen?
    TOURIST: Howdy there, Colorful Replica Of America's Past! When is the exciting - in - its - primitive - splendor Snake Dance going to take place?
    INDIAN: It's usually in August, but with all our children off in Indian School there's no one left to do the ceremonies.
    EDDIE: Hiya, Pop! I'm home!
    INDIAN: Hello, Soaring Eagle! It's good to have your back from school!
    EDDIE: Aw, come on! Call me Eddie! I'm an American now!
    INDIAN: What have they been teaching you?
    EDDIE: Just what we need for a better life! French horn, Italian, water polo...
    GOVERNMENT AGENT: Yes, at the Custer Memorial Indian School, Eddie's one of our Prize students. We're giving him away next week.
    INDIAN: Oh, my White Brother!
    FREAK: Hey, man! Don't let him bring you down, now. There's a lot of young people in this country, just like myself, who really know where the Indian's at. And don't worry.
    Soon we're all gonna be out here on the Reservation, livin' like Indians, 'n' dressin' like Indians and doing all the simple, Beautiful Things that you Indians do. Hey - got any peyote?
    RICH TOURIST: Say, how much is that necklace you're wearing?
    LADY TOURIST: Does anybody here know how to do the War Dance?
    TOURIST WITH CAMERA: Hold it! Smile.
    RICH TOURIST: Isn't it amazing how they survive on this stinking desert?
    LAUGHING TOURIST: Ya got any scalps?
    TOURIST WITH CAMERA: Lemme get a shot of you and yer squaw!
    RICH TOURIST: Let's see the War Dance!
    LADY TOURIST: Let's see the Dance!
    TOURISTS: Let's see the Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance!
    {The Indian dances in a circle as more shots ring out.}
    BUS DRIVER: OK! OK, folks! Fun's over! Back in the bus!
    MOTHER: Where's little Billy Joe?
    FATHER: He's in that run-down outhouse over there, Mamma!
    INDIAN: That's our Sun Altar.
    GOVERNMENT AGENT: Well, Indian - just goes to show you there's an obvious need to conserve our Priceless National Heritage. The Government is turning your home into a National Monument!
    {The marching band gets off the buss, playing "America The Beautiful," followed by the Senator, who speaks:}
    SENATOR: It behooves me, 'pon this Historic Occasion, to dedicate the Stinkin' Desert National Historical Monument and Cobalt Testing Range!
    TRAILBLAZER: Civilization, ho-ooooooo!
    {As the Indian watches, the cobalt bomb goes off. The sound dies away after a time, and the smoke clears, revealing the two Indians on horseback.}
    INDIAN: Well, it's about time, there's been no corn growing for the last few generations. The buffalo's gone. There's no(one) left to live in harmony.
    SECOND INDIAN: I wonder where we went wrong?
    INDIAN: Let's just keep to the Life Plan. Remember what The Great Spirit said. "Follow the Peaceful Way." The True White Brother is bound to come.
    {An assistant movie director runs on, yelling through a megaphone.}
    ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: All right, Indians! Get ready!
    {A second assistant director follows, with a clap-stick.}
    SECOND ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: Winning Of The West. "The Massacre." Take four!
    {He claps the clap-stick to start a "take."}
    INDIANS: Well, let's go...
    {He joins a dozen other war-painted Indians who ride up beside him, and then they all gallop away into the sunset, whooping.}


    by cmaukonen on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 6:53pm