The administration hasn't explained why the operation targeting Bin Laden used the name of one of the nation's best-known Native Americans, saying the selection process of names for such missions is confidential. But the use of Geronimo's name speaks to the powerful, if unexamined, hold that the nation's 'Indian wars' continue to have on our popular consciousness.
Geronimo, whose real name was Guyaale, 'the Yawner,' was" a member of the Chiricahua Apache, a group that ranged across New Mexico, Arizona and northern Mexico from the 1820s to the 1880s. His relations with the U.S. were not always hostile.
