Course. Unlike other U.S. territories, Indian Territory had no organized government, so Army posts like Fort Reno, Fort Supply and Fort Sill found themselves the most significant federal and legal presence in a wide territory. They provided protection to Indians and civilians alike, sometimes dealt as mediators between the Indians and the Indian agents, and protected the various Indian tribes against intrusion by the Sooners. At one point in the 1880s, the post was nearly deserted when gold was rumored to have been found in the nearby Wichita Mountains and officers and soldiers alike rushed to stake claims. Geronimo In 1894, Geronimo and 341 other Chiricahua Apache prisoners of war were brought to Fort Sill, where they lived in villages scattered around the post. After a couple of years, Geronimo was granted permission to travel with Pawnee Bill's Wild West Show and he joined the Indian contingent at several annual World Expositions and Indian Expositions in the 1890s and early 1900s. Geronimo and other Indians leaders rode in the inaugural parade of president Theodore Roosevelt and met the president himself during that trip. Geronimo and the other Apache prisoners had free range of Fort Sill. He was a member of Fort Sill's Native Scouts, but he did make at least one documented attempt to escape from the fort, though not in the dramatic fashion of jumping off the steep Medicine Bluffs on his horse in a hail of bullets as popularized in the 1939 movie, Geronimo (which was the inspiration for parachutists of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment to yell his name when they jumped out of aircraft). Once, after visiting the off-post home of chief Quanah Parker, Geronimo decided to escape to his homeland in Arizona late one night rather than return to Fort Sill. He was captured the next day. He died of pneumonia in 1909 and is buried at Fort Sill. The rest of the Apaches remained on Fort Sill until 1913. The Chiricahua had been promised the lands surrounding the fort by the US government; however, local non-Indians resisted their settlement. In 1914 two-thirds of the tribe moved onto the Mescalero Apache Reservation and the remaining third settled on allotments around Fletcher and Apache, Oklahoma. They became what is known today as the Fort Sill Apache Tribe.<ref>[http://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=AP003 Clifford P. Coppersmith, "Apache, Fort Sill," Oklahoma Historical Society's Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History & Culture Accessed 1 Feb 2009]</ref>