The accounts I can find put his birthplace hundreds of miles to the north, and his name really wasn't Geronimo. It seems to me this might be someone else. The Apache warrior we know as Geronimo was believed by his people to have supernatural powers - invulnerability to bullets, healing, knowing events from far away - as he himself believed, and credited to an Apache deity "Ussen".wikipedia wrote:Some anthropologists believe that the Apache and the Navajo were pushed south and west into what is now New Mexico and Arizona by pressure from other Great Plains Indians, such as the Comanche and Kiowa.
Here's an account of his early life and lineage, from Angie Debo's "Geronimo: The Man, His Time, His Place."
To his birthplace Geronimo gave the Apache name of No-doyon Canyon and located it near the headwaters of the Gila River in what is now southeastern Arizona, then a part of Mexico. At other times he stated simply that he was born in Arizona. But by modern nomenclature the Gila does not head in Arizona, for of the branches that unite near the present-day town of Clifton to form the main stream, one now carries the name into New Mexico.
Daklugie accordingly moved the location upstream to the three forks of the river near the present Cliff Dwellings National Monument in southwestern New Mexico. Geronimo could not have been mistaken about the site. Apaches regarded their birthplace with special attachment. The child was always told of the location, and whenever in its roving the family happened by, he was rolled on the ground there to the four directions. But Geronimo or his editor could have been mistaken about the state. Even that seems improbable, however, for the Apaches soon became aware of such political subdivisions in dodging military forces. One can only say that Geronimo was born in the early 1820's near the upper Gila in the mountains crossed by the present state boundary, probably on the Arizona side near the present Clifton.
His father was Taklishim ("The Gray One"), the sone of Chief Mahko of the Bedonkohe Apache tribe. His mother, although a full-blood Apache, had the Spanish name Juana. Possibly she had been captured and enslaved by the Spanish. For centuries there had been a pattern of Apache raids on Spanish settlements and Spanish capture and enslavement and occasional escape of Apache women and children. As an adult, Geronimo spoke Spanish, which he might have acquired from his mother or which he might have picked up from his contacts with the Mexicans.
Geronimo never saw his grandfather, Mahko, who died when Taklishim was a young warrior. The chief had two wives, and after his death the principal one, whose name is not now remembered, continued to exert a strong influence within the tribe. She was the mother of five of his six children who grew to adulthood. One of these was Taklishim and another was a daughter whose daughter, Nah-thle-ta, became the mother of Jason Betzinez. Mahko's other wife had one daughter, the mother of a notable woman named Ishton, the mother of Asa Daklugie.
The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Mahko were taught to revere his memory. Geronimo grew up listening to his father's tales of the chief's great size, strength, and sagacity, and of his wars with the Mexicans, at that time under Spanish rule. Betzinez described another aspect of Mahko's life. He was peace loving and generous, raising much corn and owning many horses, which he traded with the Mexicans, and storing corn and dried beef and venison in caves, which he shared with the needy of his tribe. Probably both characterizations are true. The Bedonkohes were relatively undisturbed in their mountain fastness during Mahko's lifetime, and at such periods trading relations might be established with the Mexicans, but there were traditions of old wars and raids.
