Photo of skull and bones resting on top of a pillow.
Photograph by Harold Terry Clark, Yale University Class of 1903 and member of Skull and Bones.
Image credit: Yale University Manuscripts and Archives Digital Images Database
While living I want to live well. I know I have to die sometime, but even if the heavens were to fall on me, I want to do what is right. I think I am a good man, but in the papers all over the world they say I am a bad man; but it is a bad thing to say so about me. I never do wrong without a cause. Every day I am thinking, how am I to talk to you to make you believe what I say; and, I think, too, that you are thinking of what you are to say to me. There is one God looking down on us all. We are all children of the one God. God is listening to me. The sun, the darkness, the winds, are all listening to what we now say.
— Geronimo (Chiricahua: Goyaałé, “one who yawns”; transliterated Goyathlay, Goyahkla), as interpreted by Concepcion and transcribed by Captain Bourke, to Brigadier-General George Crook during a conference establishing his temporary surrender (Cañon de los Embudos, Mexico: March 25, 1886). Available in Senate Document Number 88, 51st Congress, First Session. Cited in Congressional Serial Set, Issue 2686, (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1890), p. 78. Cited in part by Terri Jean in 365 Days of Walking the Red Road: The Native American path to leading a spiritual life every day, (Avon, Massachusetts: Adams Media Corporation, 2003), p. 155. Quotation for May 20th.
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