Stevens was publicized as the grandson of famed Apache warrior
Geronimo, but this was pure invention. His father was a white Arizona sheriff named George Stevens, and his mother was a Mexican woman named Eloisa Michalana. The story about Stevens being Apache may have started because his father's first wife, Francesca, was the daughter of a chief of the White Mountain Apache tribe (Geronimo was a member of another Apache tribe, the Chiricahua). She died in 1882, 11 years before Charles was born. His father's second wife--Charles' mother--had no Apache blood at all.