“Brave Men to Brave Men”

This chapter reframes US-Indigenous wars by using masculinities as the principal interpretative tool. Utilizing notions that men define their gender identities in relation to each other as fragile and unstable performances that need constant reaffirming, it zooms in on one specific case: the Geronimo campaign and events leading up to it. It argues that as the Chiricahua Apaches and the white soldiers of the US Army sought to best each other in combat, they channeled and attempted to express culturally appropriate honor notions for making claims to masculinity. They were also forced to reappraise and recalibrate the meanings of those designs when confronted with shame and of being unable to perform. Their efforts to save face culminated in the famous surrender of Geronimo and his following in September 1886 as “brave men to brave men.”