Chiricahua Apaches will make film about forefathers

SANTA FE, N.M. — Descendants of imprisoned Chiricahua Apaches, who were the last American Indians to lay down their arms in the late 1800s, are telling their forefathers’ story on film for the first time.

Crews ultimately composed mostly of Apaches will shoot the documentary called “Wild Justice,” featuring interviews with the few living ex-prisoners and prisoners’ relatives.

Some of it will be filmed aboard a train along routes that began 28 years of confinement for the Apaches in Florida, Alabama and Oklahoma.

“To tell the story correctly, we’ll travel that route again with the Apaches on board,” said producer Daniel Ostroff, a veteran of the film industry. “We’re going to take the children of the prisoners to tell us what happened along the way.”

The Indians, led by Geronimo and others, had surrendered to U.S. forces voluntarily, expecting to serve two years for leaving the reservation. But the imprisonment lasted longer. Roughly 300 Chiricahuas died during the imprisonment.

“They had sort of like dungeons,” said Fred Kaydahzinne, a descendant of the Apache leader Cochise. “The kids were separated from their parents and sent to [Carlisle Indian School in] Pennsylvania.... Some never saw their parents again. Many of our people got sick and they died -- horrible, horrible conditions.”

Those imprisoned had been the last Indians in North America to lay down their arms.

“We want to tell the world what happened to us ... the whole story,” Kaydahzinne said. “We were at one time a great nation that went down to only a few hundred.”

Ostroff, who recently helped produce the Apache-assisted film, “The Missing,” was asked to get involved in the project by the Chiricahua descendants, who now live on the Mescalero Apache reservation of New Mexico and near Fort Sill, Okla.

Plans are for the documentary to be released next year.

The documentary is the Apaches’ first chance to tell their story on film. Kaydahzinne said earlier films about Geronimo were inaccurate.

There will be no script, no rehearsal, no reenactment, no actors -- just Apaches telling their story, Ostroff said. And Apaches will help at every level of production. He said he would train Apaches as technicians during the first part of the project so that, eventually, crews would be mostly Apache.

“It’s their story, and who can tell it better?” Ostroff said. “They have an oral history tradition. I’ve yet to meet an Apache with a memory problem.”