Though the view out my window is of the Virginia Piedmont, I’m remembering the sweeping plains and pointed peaks of the Basin and Ridge. At a windswept clearing on Historic Route 80 is a monument to Geronimo’s 1886 surrender, which effectively ended the Indian wars. It did not end the hostilities, however. The massacre at Wounded Knee, for example, took place in December, 1890.

After numerous chases and escapes Geronimo and his band of Apaches formally surrendered to General Nelson Miles on a bluff near this lonely spot. Geronimo ended his days imprisoned at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, after appealing unsuccessfully to President Theodore Roosevelt to “cut the ropes and make me free.”

Geronimo died of pneumonia, the old man’s friend, in 1909. On his deathbed, he confessed to his nephew: “I should never have surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive.”