The Other Indians.

Who were the actors that played Alchessy, Santanta, and Geronimo. Those actors have never properly credited. Does anyone know the name of those actors???

Thanks!!!

prc you sure are persistent but I don't think you will get an answer because these "actors" were not actors they were Navajo Indians and their names have been lost in the mists of time.
I have studied Ford (especially his Westerns) for years and have never read who it was that actually played the parts of the three you mention. What I can do is give you some info to the background of the Navajos that he used in the westerns he made in Monument Valley which is where they lived.

A guy called Goulding who ran a store in the valley and traded with the Navajo supposedly introduced Ford, by initially showing him photographs, to Monument Valley which became his favourite film location. He used it first during the filming of parts of Stagecoach and got Goulding to recruit the Navajo as Apache horsemen, extras and site labourers. Ford later claimed that the actor portraying Geronimo in this film was half Navajo, half Apache and descended from Geronimo himself but Ford especially in later life was known to spin some pretty tall stories, so take that with a pinch of salt when you also take in consideration that the Apache and Navajo were sworn enemies.

It was nine years before he returned to Monument Valley to use the Navajo again in Fort Apache. By now the Navajo had adopted Ford and called him Natani Nez which meant Tall Leader. There were two special Navajo's that Ford always insisted on using and were always first on the pay-roll, one was a medicine man named Billy Yellow his interpreter and also used as a stunt rider and another shamen called Hosteen Tso who Ford called Fat who could apparently produce whatever weather the director needed for a particular scene. Ford swore by him!
The Navajo in Monument Valley came to rely on Ford filming in the valley and Ford in return was very fair with them. You will notice in all the cavalry trilogy films; Stagecoach and The Searchers that when a whiteman fires his rifle at least seven Indians fall off their horses. They got paid extra for horse-falls. However the dangerous stunts were always carried out by Ford's great stuntman Yakima Canutt.
So in conclusion the Indians in all of Fords films were primarily Navajos and were not actors therefore they were never credited with one exception and that was John Big Tree real name Issac Johnny John who played the memorable role of Pony That Walks in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. The others who were credited were non-Indian actors portraying Indians such as Henry Brandon a German in The Searchers; a Mexican playing Cochise in Fort Apache; Woody Strode an African American in Two Rode Together; Gilbert Roland; Ricardo Montalban and Sal Mineo in Cheyenne Autumn but all the extras in these films were real Navajo Indians.

Almost perfect casting, as the Navajo and Apache tribes are very closely related, speak almost identical Athabaskan languages, and have had a love/hate relationship for almost 250 years. They got along well during the 1840s-60s, when Mangas Coloradas, a towering figure among the Mimbreno Apaches, married one of his daughters to a leading Navajo chief. BTW, another of Mangas' daughters married Cochise, depicted in "Fort Apache".

Of course, PERFECT casting would have been to use real Apaches, but Ford was friends with the Navajo. He used them in films at least as early as "Stagecoach". I have never seen any of Ford's earlier works, or his silent era films, so I don't know when he started using the Navajo.

"It ain't dying I'm talking about, it's living!!!"
Augustus McCrae

I don't know.

Historically, Satanta was a Kiowa chief whose people lived on the plains.

Alchise was a chief of the White Mountain Apaches, the first Western Apaches to make peace with the Americans as early as 1869. Hundreds of White mountain Apaches served as Indian scouts in the 1870s and 1880s. There is a story that Geronimo once planned to invite 200 Apache scouts, mostly White Mountain Apache, to a dance and treacherously massacre them. That would have been both the army's worst disaster int he Apache wars and the worst disaster for the Apaches in the Apache wars. Alchise often was a sergeant or first sergeant of scouts. Alchise was awarded the Medal of Honor in the 1870s.

So perhaps the writers deliberately named Satanta and Alchise to show that Thursday was facing not just Cochise's people but also allies that Cochise had asked for help (and who he could not have called on in real life) to show how outnumbered Thursday was. The situation would have been really dire if Satanta's Kiowas and Alchise's warriors was on the side of hostile Apaches.