Brian Huberman documentary filmmaker

Brian Huberman and Jerry Eagan were guests on the Voices of the West radio show last year. Eagan, Apache-country expert and historian, has been a guest on the show several times and has, in recent years, helped BH access the landscape he is so fascinated to explore in one of his latest film projects: Geronimo Country.

Brian in "Geronimo Country," led by his guide Jerry Eagan (shown in the distance)

Listen to the podcast to hear them paint a vivid picture of the physical landscape of this American wilderness, past and present, and explain some of the historical and political events that make this such a fascinating and dangerous place in America today.

Brian also discusses a bit about his personal background, his interest in the Western film genre and why this quest has him so determined to visit Skeleton Canyon, the site where Geronimo surrendered for a final time.

Other highlights: tactics Apaches used to throw Calvary members off their trail, Brian’s favorite Western film score composers and how Jerry, a Vietnam Vet living in Oregon, came to be an expert guide in the wilderness of New Mexico.

Twenty miles south of Douglas, AZ in old Mexico is located the Canon de los Embudos (Canyon of Funnels) where Geronimo and General Crook discussed Apache surrender terms in 1886. There was no surrender at this point however, the event is important because of the photographs of Camillus Fly.

Fly had a studio in Tombstone next to the now infamous OK Corral and was invited by the US army to accompany Crook on his mission to take Geronimo prisoner. A number of photographs of the “last hold-out” band of Chiricahua Apache were taken and included men, women and children. They are an extraordinary series of photographs that remain the only photographs of armed, hostile American Indians in a state of war with the United States.

The canyon is a mythic site and is as dangerous today as it was in 1886. The Apache threat has gone but the darker forces ofdrug cartels and their killers have replaced it. Since beginning the Geronimo project, I have unsuccessfully encouraged my guide, Jerry Eagan, to arrange a visit to Canon de los Embudos. The drug gangsters with their corrupt police and military associates have made this simple excursion an impossibility it would seem. I am not yet convinced that a filming trip twenty miles into Mexico can’t be done. Jerry Eagan who survived fire-fights in Vietnam won’t be persuaded to venture into “Indian Country,” as enemy territory was sometimes referred to in ‘nam.

Bodies without heads, legs, arms… The other day I received an email from Jerry containing graphic images of a drug cartel warning. Human beings shot execution style, their bodies neatly chainsawed with the body parts arranged in tidy heaps of bloody flesh. Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men comes to mind. Tommy Lee Jones’ character seems to deny the bloody past and is stunned by the horrors of the present whereas Barry Corbin’s Ellis recognizes how little things have changed and that the country has always been a violent place.

Violence is the defining principle of Geronimo’s Country. Will I transgress the dividing line between savagery and civilization? Of course I will!

St. Louis, MO is a dreary city, where I recently attended an arts conference at Washington University. Met some interesting people; but most important was the opportunity to see the park where the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition was held.

At the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis, Missouri, a view of the Natural History Fossil Exhibit with the model of a whale and skeletons of several dinosaurs | Smithsonian Intstitute

To help celebrate America’s status as a civilized nation, several “primitive” peoples were represented at the fair, including that monument of savagery, the Chiricahua Apache medicine man and chief: Geronimo.

Geronimo was still a prisoner of war and was given special dispensation by President Teddy Roosevelt to attend the fair where he was to sell photographs of himself. A captive of the United States since 1886, Geronimo had become a successful capitalist and hoped to make a profit from his photo sales. Unhappy with the financial deal offered him by the exposition organizers, Geronimo refused to participate in the events. On this occasion, savagery revealed itself to be stronger than the forces of civilization.

The photograph below was taken of Geronimo during the exposition. His expression reflects his undefeated state of mind. The following year he rode in Teddy Roosevelt’s inaugural parade in Washington D.C. and in 1909 he “crossed the river” for the last time.

Geronimo with arrows