A full blood Apache who, like other Indians born in a wild state and given proper opportunities, achieved a notable success in the white man's world. He was known as Wasajah (Beckoning) to his people.
At the age of five, Wasajah was seized with a dozen other children including two sisters, when the Pima Indians raided the camp of his band in Arizona in the fall of 1871. The captives were taken to the Pima rancheria on the Gila River, and a week later Wasajah was sold to Charles Gentile, a prospector, for $30, or the price of a horse.
Gentile took the boy to Chicago. He gave him the name of Carlos Montezuma - Carlos, as the Spanish of his own name, and Montezuma from the so called Casa de Montezuma, a historic ruin on the Gila River erroneously believed to have been built by the Aztec. Carlos was placed in the Chicago public schools and later the University of Illinois, and finally graduated from the Chicago Medical School.
He served as physician at the Western Shoshone Agency in Nevada, the Colville Agency in Washington, and the Carlisle Indian School. Later he practiced medicine in Chicago and taught the College of Physicians and Surgeons and in the Postgraduate Medical School in Chicago. During his career he sought to arouse interest in his people through his writings. He died January 31, 1923.