More than 5,000 troops were under General Miles’ command at that time, including elements of the 4th, 6th and 10th Cavalry. He gave the principal pursuit mission to the 4thbecause it was headquartered at Fort Huachuca, the base of operations for the campaign. The Army had permission to go to Mexico in pursuit. Captain Henry Lawton, commanding officer of “B” Troop, 4th Cavalry, was an experienced soldier who knew the ways of the Apaches. His tactics were to wear them down by constant pursuit. Stationed at the fort at that time were many men who would later become well known in the army: Colonel W.
B. Royall, commanding officer of the fort and the 4th Cavalry, who was responsible for the logistical support of the Geronimo campaign; Leonard Wood, who went along on the expedition as contract surgeon; Lieutenant Colonel G. H. Forsyht; CaptainC. A. P. Hatfield; Captain J. H. Dorst; and First Lieutenant Powhatan H.
Clarke, who was immortalized by the artist, Remington, for saving a black trooper during the campaign. With the fort as advance base for the pursuit forces, the heliograph communications network, which General Miles had established in Arizona and New Mexico, was used effectively for logistical purposes. However, the Indians and the Army were conducting their chase in Mexico where the system did not extend. So the most the heliograph could do in the campaign was relay messages brought by fast riders from the border. April 1, 1886 was the date that Captain Lawton led his troopers with two pack trains and30 Indian Scouts through the Huachuca Mountains to Nogales, Mexico, to pick upGeronimo’s trail.
Though various units would join the pursuit later and separate to follow trails left by the Indians back and forth across the border, there were few times that Army troops and members of Geronimo’s band would come face to face. Four Months later, Captain Lawton and Leonard Wood were sent back to Fort Huachuca, worn down by the rough country and grueling campaign. More than 3,000 miles were covered by the Indians and the Army during the chase, which took a month longer than General Miles had planned. The men had walked and ridden through some of the most inaccessible desert land in North America, in heat sometimes above 110 degrees.
After Geronimo’s surrender, “B” Troop of the 4th Cavalry was given the mission of escorting the Apache’s to Florida. The chase of Geronimo caught the interest of the Nation and the World. In 1887 PresidentGrover Cleveland approved the transfer of “B” Troop, 4th Cavalry to Fort Myer, VA, near Washington, D. C.
There, with Captain Lawton still commanding, the troop formed an honor guard and were reviewed by dignitaries, both foreign and national. Captain Lawton, who had won the Medal of Honor with the 30th Indiana Infantry in the Civil War, also fought in Cuba in 1898, and was killed in action in the Philippines in 1899as a Major General. Leonard Wood kept a complete account of the Geronimo campaign and later when he was assigned to Cuba, put to good use his experiences in the pursuit. In 1895 in Cuba he served under General Samuel Whitside, who had founded Fort Huachuca in March 1877 as Captain of “B” Company, 6th Cavalry. Leonard Wood later rose to the rank of General and became Chief of Staff of the U.
S. Army. Elements of the 4th were stationed at Fort Huachuca from 1884 to 1890. During World War II the 4th was reorganized and redesignated the 4th Cavalry, Mechanized. After numerous reassignments and changes, it became the 4th Cavalry, Armored.
An Apache war chief, Geronimo, and a small band of warriors broke out of a concentration camp. He fought a guerrilla campaign against hundreds of United States cavalry and held out for months by raiding from the mountains which had been the Apache range until the white men came. While the cavalry followed rumors and false trails from canyon to mesa, newspapers in the east quickly made the defiant Apache a folk legend, demonizing him and at the same time making him a symbol of the vanishing frontier. It was only with the help of other Apache scouts that the cavalry at last cornered Geronimo and negotiated his surrender. Geronimo, who had left the army concentration camps twice before, returned to the fences and lived until he was old by learning to sign his name in English and selling his autographs at ‘wild west shows.
Suffering from tuberculosis and pneumonia, Geronimo died pathetically on a winter night, alone, after
