Geronimo, an Apache chieftain. Geronimo came into notice before the Civil War as the daring and clever leader of a band of Apaches in Arizona and New Mexico. In 1886 Geronimo and his followers were penned up in the mountains by General Crook and were forced to surrender, but they escaped while on their way to a reservation and took up resumed their raiding. Finally General Miles trailed Geronimo and his braves from canyon to canyon and, between starving and fighting, forced them to give up. A number of the prominent Apaches were sent to Fort Pickens. Later Geronimo was removed and held a prisoner at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where he died in 1909.
In Geronimo, Warhol's duplication of outline transforms a 19th century photo of the Apache chief. In the original, Geronimo sits with a rifle resting on his bare knee. Warhol cropped the photo, concentrating on the face and transforming the Indian's angry scowl into what seems more like the verge of tears. The aging Geronimo, who had seen his wife, mother, and children killed by Mexicans, was held at hard labor and never permitted to return to his home state of Arizona. The government finally consented, however, to his selling photographs of himself, like the one used by Warhol.