BADASSES

 

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Badass

1. A belligerent or mean person; a person with an unpleasantly extreme appearance, attitudes, or behavior.

2. A person considered impressive due to courage, skill, and/or toughness.

- Wiktionary

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GERONIMO

Gerónimo ('the one who yawns') (1829 – 1909) was a military leader and medicine man from the Bedonkohe band of the Ndendahe Apache people.

From 1850 to 1886, Geronimo joined with members of three other Central Apache bands – the Tchihende, the Tsokanende (called Chiricahua by Americans) and the Nednhi – to carry out numerous raids, as well as fight against Mexican and U.S. military campaigns in the northern Mexico states of Chihuahua and Sonora and in the southwestern American territories of New Mexico and Arizona.

Geronimo's raids and related combat actions were a part of the prolonged period of the Apache–United States conflict, which started with the Americans continuing to take land, including Apache lands, following the end of the war with Mexico in 1848. Reservation life was confining to the free-moving Apache people and they resented restrictions on their customary way of life.

Geronimo led breakouts from the reservations in attempts to return his people to their previous nomadic lifestyle. During Geronimo's final period of conflict from 1876 to 1909, he surrendered three times and eventually accepted life on the Apache reservations.

While well-known, Geronimo was not a chief of the Bedonkohe band of the Central Apache but a shaman. However, since he was a superb leader in raiding and warfare, he frequently led large numbers of 30 to 50 Apache men.

In 1886, after an intense pursuit in northern Mexico by American forces that followed Geronimo's third 1885 reservation breakout, Geronimo surrendered for the last time to Lt. Charles Bare Gatewood.

Geronimo and 27 other Apaches were later sent to join the rest of the Chiricahua tribe, which had been previously exiled to Florida.

While holding him as a prisoner, the United States capitalised on Geronimo's fame among non-Indians by displaying him at various fairs and exhibitions. In 1898, for example, Geronimo was exhibited at the Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha, Nebraska; seven years later, the Indian Office provided Geronimo for use in a parade at the second inauguration of President Theodore Roosevelt.

He died at the Fort Sill hospital in 1909, as a prisoner of war, and was buried at the Fort Sill Indian Agency Cemetery, among the graves of relatives and other Apache prisoners of war.

From right to left, Apache leader Geronimo, Yanozha (Geronimo's brother-in-law), Chappo (Geronimo's son by his second wife), and Fun (Yanozha's half brother) in 1886.

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JIMMY GOVERNOR

Jimmy Governor after his capture

Jack Underwood, prison photo 1890

Jimmy Governor (c. 1875 – 1901) was an Indigenous Australian who was proclaimed an outlaw after committing a series of murders in 1900. His actions initiated a cycle of violence in which nine people were killed (either by Governor or his accomplices). Governor and his brother Joe were on the run from police for fourteen weeks before Jimmy was captured and Joe was killed by authorities.

In July 1900, Governor and his accomplice Jack Underwood murdered four members of the Mawbey family and a schoolteacher at Breelong in what was then the Colony of New South Wales. Underwood was captured soon afterwards, but the Governor brothers took to the bush. During the period they were at large, ranging over a large area of north-central New South Wales, the brothers committed further murders and multiple robberies.

After committing numerous robberies as far north as Narrabri, and in the Quirindi district, they moved into the rugged headwater country of the Manning and Hastings rivers, pursued by Queensland black trackers, bloodhounds and hundreds of police and civilians. Exulting in outwitting their pursuers, the Governors blatantly broadcast their whereabouts and wrote derisive notes to the police. On 8 October the government offered a reward of £1000 each for their capture.

After several close escapes Jimmy was shot in the mouth by Herbert Byers, a hunter, on 13 October; in a weakened condition he was captured by a party of settlers at Bobin, near Wingham, on 27 October.

Four days after his brother's capture, Joe was shot and killed north of Singleton.

Governor was tried for murder and hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol in January 1901.

Governor's life and crimes formed the basis for Thomas Keneally's 1972 novel The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, which explored themes of Aboriginal dispossession and racism. Fred Schepisi's 1978 movie of the same name was an adaptation of Keneally's novel.

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