Hagman beat me to posting a link to that useful article.

A few years ago, I included 'Geronimo's Cadillac' in a themed concert titled 'Songs of Separation'. Here is my intro:

Land is the foundation of the lives of indigenous peoples, the source of spiritual, cultural and social identity. Geronimo was the last native American leader to surrender to the American military and spent the final 20 years of his life as a prisoner of war. The Theodore Roosevelt administration refused his pleas to be permitted to return to his homelands. Instead, this great warrior was posed in a cadillac and displayed as a tamed Indian, a civilised person. Michael Murphy was inspired to write 'Geronimo’s Cadillac' after seeing the photograph. He commented that the 2 images – Geronimo and the cadillac – struck him as every irony he could think of about American culture in 2 words.

'Geronimo's Cadillac' was the title track of Murphy's first album, released in 1972. Glen A. Baker, the owner of the Australian Raven Records label, reissued the album as a CD in 2004. In 2003, Baker conducted a conversational interview with Murphy who shared his recollections. Extracts from the interview were included in the booklet accompanying the reissue CD.

Baker: Certainly I found it arresting. It was what drew me to your music. It just grabbed you from the opening. Can you tell me about the song?

Murphy: I think first of all there was an emotional reaction to that song. It was a pro-Native American rights song but there was nothing really violent in there. Even so, there were several pop music stations that would not play it. It got banned in Houston and in Boston, they were in to banning things. There was so much sympathy with Indians who were trying to get their rights at the time. The black civil rights movement had its anthems in 'We shall overcome' and a couple of Bob Dylan's things like 'Blowin' in the wind' but there was nothing for the Indian community. Several years later Wounded Knee happened and I think it was because I was on the cutting edge with a song that was about something that was on a whole lot of people's minds that the song was taken up by so many others.

An attorney friend of mine named Dewey Thomas worked for the Lakota Indians up at Pine Ridge before they even started calling themselves Lakota Indians again, and he was the one who introduced me to medicine men like Dull Knife and to Aaron DeSersa, who was an activist on the reservation, the Black Elk family - all these people became my friends. Look at the cover of 'Blue Sky Night Thunder' and you can see how much it had influenced me by then. But 'Geronimo's Cadillac' sort of opened up the door and once I put that song out it started all the things that affect my life to this day.

On the back cover of CD booklet, Baker printed an excerpt from a piece that Murphy wrote in 1972 about his life. It reads in part:

... Working for Screen Gems and churning them [songs] out for recording artists who go to Vegas and television. Working for the Palomino Club and Isadore's Club. Boozing with the beehive babies (I don't mean maybe) and returning to the Rubiayat to find Omar had gone. To the Troubadour and hang out with who was that man in the cowboy hat and sunglasses with his manager. Who got into the cadillac that brewed the barley that fed the cat that ate the soul that got lost in the house that Jackie and Aristotle built? Working for freedom now. Working for waking up and hoping to work for Geronimo because I think I know how he felt when he said 'I saw many interesting things and learned much of the white people. They are a very kind and peaceful people'. Let me ride with you, Geronimo in prison, on a horse or in a cadillac, you fought them.

Murphy's recording

My favourite cover rendition

--Stewie.