Geronimo: An American Legend is a 1993 historical Western film starring Wes Studi, Jason Patric, Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, and Matt Damon in an early role. The film, which was directed by Walter Hill, is based on a screenplay by John Milius. It is a fictionalized account of the Apache Wars and how First Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood convinced Apache leader Geronimo to surrender in 1886.
Plot The film loosely follows the events leading up to the surrender of Geronimo in 1886. A respected healer, Geronimo and his fellow Apache reluctantly agree to settle on a reservation established by the American government in accordance with the Indian Removal Act. The tribe does its best to assimilate, but many Apache struggle to abandon their traditional way of life while the government fails to honor its promise to keep American settlers from encroaching on tribal lands.
Geronimo finally commits himself to armed resistance when soldiers of the United States Cavalry accompanied by Indian fighter Al Sieber slaughter a band of Apache after discovering them practicing their "heathen" faith in secret. Geronimo forms a ragtag militia, who humiliate the army by evading capture time and time again while carrying out well-planned guerilla attacks. Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood, a West Point graduate, is charged with capturing Geronimo with the assistance of Sieber and Britton Davis, an ambitious but inexperienced cavalryman.
Gatewood is torn between his grudging respect for Geronimo and his duty to his country. His superior, Brigadier General George Crook, has nothing but admiration for Geronimo and contempt for the self-serving actions of his government. Geronimo eventually surrenders to Crook but later escapes, this time persuading more than half the reservation to join him. Crook later resigns in disgrace and is replaced by Nelson A. Miles. The new commander orders that the remaining Apache be punished as a message to Geronimo's followers. He also decides that Gatewood and his fellow officers should be removed from the field and replaced with men loyal to him.
General Miles, realizing that in spite of his tactics he too is not any closer to capturing Geronimo, approaches Gatewood with an offer: use his relationship with Geronimo to find the warrior and convince him to surrender. He orders Gatewood to offer Geronimo a sentence of two years' imprisonment in Florida with the offer of fresh land in Arizona and two mules for every warrior who surrenders. Gatewood retorts to Miles that they both know the government has no intention of honoring this agreement. Miles offers Gatewood 100 men to take into the field, but the younger officer counters with a request for one Apache scout and three men of his choosing.
Gatewood, Sieber, Davis and the Apache Chato set off to find Geronimo but instead discover a village of slaughtered Yaqui. Gatewood tasks Sieber and Chato with finding the scalp hunters responsible. They stop at a saloon where the hunters are dealing with a Comanchero interested in buying the scalps. When the hunters try to take Chato's scalp as well, Gatewood arrives and attempts to intervene and offers them money to return to Texas. The hunters mock Gatewood as a coward and an Indian lover and a shoot-out ensues. Sieber is shot and mortally wounded, his last words pointing to his surprise at dying in the act of trying to save an Apache.
Gatewood, Davis and Chato carry on the hunt for Geronimo and finally reach his camp. Geronimo asks Gatewood if the young officer will break his word like those who came before him. Gatewood decides to be honest and tells Geronimo what Miles will do to the surviving Apache should he continue fighting. Faced with the grave reality, Geronimo makes peace with Gatewood and surrenders along with his men to General Miles. Miles then arranges for Gatewood, whom he considers to be insubordinate and an embarrassment to the army, to spend the rest of his career in a dull, dead-end post commanding a garrison in rural Wyoming.
The final ignominy befalls Chato and the other Apache scouts, who are disarmed at gunpoint and thrown into prison. Davis, angered by what he regards as a betrayal of everything he believed in, confronts Miles. The general dismisses him, remarking that Davis is a foolish idealist and even questioning his integrity by implying that anyone who takes the word of a "savage" over a white man is not a true American. Davis decides to resign rather than continue to serve under Miles. Chato approaches Geronimo and tells him he was right to fight the white man. Geronimo counsels his remaining renegades not to fall out with one another as there are so few of them remaining. He warns them of what lies ahead. Geronimo lives on for another twenty-two years, never allowed to return home and forced to endure the humiliation of being displayed as a living trophy of American conquest while the Apache are left to fall into poverty and dependence on the government for their survival.
Cast Wes Studi as Geronimo Jason Patric as 1st Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood Robert Duvall as Chief of Scouts Al Sieber Gene Hackman as Brigadier General George Crook Matt Damon as 2nd Lieutenant Britton Davis Pato Hoffmann as The Dreamer Rodney A. Grant as Mangas Kevin Tighe as Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles Steve Reevis as Chato Carlos Palomino as Sergeant Turkey Mark Boone Junior as Afraid Miner Victor Aaron as Ulzana Stuart Proud Eagle Grant as Sergeant Dutchy Scott Wilson as Redondo Stephen McHattie as Schoonover John Finn as Captain Hentig Lee de Broux as City Marshal Joe Hawkins Rino Thunder as Old Nana
Production Development Carolco Walter Hill had a development deal at Carolco. They approached him wanting to make a Western that focused on an Indian and Hill was enthusiastic. He initially considering doing a movie on Crazy Horse "but for various reasons I thought it was a little too difficult.""Interview with Walter Hill Chapter 8", Directors Guild of America accessed 12 June 2014 Eventually Geronimo was selected. "I've been reading the history of the West for my entire life", Hill says, "and I felt the Geronimo story had never really been told." John Milius was hired to write a draft. He was working on it in 1989. Larry Gross wrote a diary on the filming of Geronimo. He recalls reading Milius' script in 1988 when Hill was working on Johnny Handsome. "I like Geronimo just as he was, a human predator", said Milius.
"Geronimo was a man who saw the history of his people wiped out", added Milius. "I love the Apaches and Geronimo was the ultimate Apache. But Geronimo was more than an Apache he was the essence of a misfit rebel and he would never give up. He was a troublemaker and I understand that. Even among his own people he was a trouble maker." Hill said the title of the film should have been The Geronimo War. "The conception was you make the film from the last time he came in and broke off and was sent away", he said. "The last time he broke off the reservations. This had been a recurring pattern. I thought that would be more accurate." "We had a really good script, but I couldn't make any headway with it", said Hill later. In 1992 the movie was transferred from Carolco to Columbia.
Columbia The film was greenlit by Columbia's head of production Mark Canton, whose brother Neil would be the film's producer. It was taken at the time when westerns were experiencing a revival in popularity in the wake of the success of Dances with Wolves, The Last of the Mohicans and Unforgiven. "All of these Westerns are riding the backs of those", said Hill (other Westerns which would come out around this time included Tombstone, Wyatt Earp, The Quick and the Dead, Bad Girls, Maverick and Lightning Jack). However, the production at Columbia required script changes. According to Hill, Milius' screenplay was more inclusive of Geronimo's early years and Milius was reluctant to revise it so he had it rewritten by himself and Larry Gross, who worked on the project from six to eight months in 1992.
"This movie certainly presents a heroic view of Geronimo", said Hill. "At the same time, it suggests that the times were complicated ... The audience doesn't go to a movie for a history lesson; it wants entertainment. At the same time, they don't want something that trashes history; so it's a delicate line." "Movies tend to develop a life of their own", added Hill. "We had to deal with Geronimo a lot better than what our original intention was. The more we found out, the more interesting the story became."
Among the changes were removing a sequence (based on historical fact) where Geromino surrendered to General George Crook in Mexico in March 1886, pledging to return under escort to Arizona, where he would be disarmed and sent to exile in Florida; two nights later Geronimo got drunk and took off into the mountains again, going on a five-month rampage until he surrendered once more. Milius said he thought the script was changed because "We don't want to see our heroes getting drunk and running off. We want to see them as wonderful freedom fighters." "History is fascinating, but history is not a good dramatist", said Hill.
The film's narrator, Second Lt. Britton Davis, was a real officer who participated in these events. In 1929, he published a memoir of the time, called The Truth About Geronimo. The narration uses many quotations from Davis that featured in his memoir, like his description of the endless search for Geronimo's camp: "At times it seemed we were chasing a spirit more than a man." However it did not include Davis's personal assessment of Geronimo: "This Indian was a thoroughly vicious, intractable and treacherous man. His only redeeming traits were courage and determination. His word, no matter how earnestly pledged, was worthless." "It's like Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid", said Hill. "These characters are real, but certainly we're allowing legend to serve the truth. If I was doing this as a PBS documentary, I would do it a lot differently." For instance, the script used the Turkey Creek massacre as the reason for Geronimo going off the reservation when it happened five years earlier. "No, it's not accurate", admitted Hill. "Is it authentic? Yes, it is."
"I don't think I ever had a movie where I was so concerned about trying to be fair", said Hill. "Usually you're just trying to be dramatic and you've got good guys and bad guys. In this movie, you try to valorize both sides. At the same time you have to be rigorous enough to say that both sides did terrible things; they did heroic things, they did terrible things. To suggest that there were only terrible things is wrong and to suggest that it was only heroic was wrong, too. At the same time you're trying to make it a theatrical two-hour movie." Hill thought the cavalry officers "were the most sympathetic to the Indians of the Southwest. They knew them and understood that what was happening was a tragedy. They understood that the imposition of the reserve system was going to have tragic consequences. Yet, they were the ones being asked to carry out this policy. They were the ones being asked to fight, so there was this kind of conflict between feelings and duty."
Casting Hill says when he started pushing the script there was pressure to cast a white actor in the lead. He said: "The first thing I heard was, 'Why can't we have X or Y Caucasian put on makeup and play Geronimo? If you do that, we'll make the movie.' I said, 'You can't do that.' They wouldn't think of having a Caucasian actor play a black leader. The implications are just staggering ... That kind of casting became unthinkable after Dances With Wolves. When the script got active again last fall, there was no question that we would have an Indian actor in the lead."