Rare pencil signature, "Geronimo,” on the reverse of an off-white 3.75 x 2.25 business card belonging to the Oklahoma City law firm Pruiett, Cardwell & Sniggs, with another adding in pencil below, "How old / written by him at Ft. Sill Feb 27/08." In very good to fine condition, with light soiling and edge wear.
Oklahoman defense attorney Moman Pruiett (1872-1945) was a talented but controversial 'criminal lawyer' perhaps as well known for his hard drinking ways and streaks of sudden violence as he was for his fiery oratory and claim of successfully acquitting 303 of the 343 murder cases in which he had defended. In his autobiographical work Me and My Big Mouth, noted Oklahoma journalist Walter Harrison proclaimed Pruiett 'the greatest master of backwoods psychology, actor, hypocrite, fakir, lawyer, showman, and publicity expert the courts of Oklahoma ever will look upon.'
In 1894, Geronimo and 341 other Chiricahua Apache prisoners of war were brought to Fort Sill where they lived in 12 villages scattered around the post. Though they were prisoners of war, Geronimo and the other Apache prisoners had free range of Fort Sill, and a few years later, Geronimo was permitted to join the Indian contingent at several annual World Expositions and Indian Expositions in the 1890s and early 1900s.
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