The heirs of the legendary Apache chief Geronimo have filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the Yale secret society known as Skull & Bones.
The allegation is that Bonesmen -- including Prescott Bush, grandfather of George W. Bush -- dug up Geronimo's remains at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and took them back to New Haven, Connecticut. The suit -- which was filed on the 100th anniversary of Geronimo's death from pneumonia -- demands the return of the remains and cites the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to back up its demands.
“I believe strongly from my heart that his spirit was never released,” Geronimo’s great-grandson Harlyn Geronimo said in the press conference on Tuesday. “Presently, he’s still imprisoned. The only way to put this into closure is to relieve the remains and his spirit so that he can be taken back to his homeland, on the Gila Mountains, at the head of the Gila River.”
The problem, however, is that Skull & Bones has apparently never publicly admitted or denied that it is in possession of any remains of Geronimo.
The way the story goes -- assuming it's true -- Prescott Bush and other Bonesmen were stationed at Fort Sill during World War I. It was at that time that they became grave robbers.
While there is no hard evidence that such a despicable act was committed, there is enough reason to suspect that it did, indeed, happen. Enough to justify a lawsuit:
A former senior editor of the Yale Alumni Magazine has now discovered the only known contemporary evidence: a reference in private correspondence from one senior Bonesman to another. The letter was written on June 7, 1918, by Winter Mead '19 to F. Trubee Davison '18. It announces that the remains dug up at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, by a group that included Charles C. Haffner Jr. '19 (a new member, or "Knight"), have been deposited in the society's headquarters (the "Tomb"): "The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club & the K -- t [Knight] Haffner, is now safe inside the T -- [Tomb] together with his well worn femurs[,] bit & saddle horn."
Mead was not at Fort Sill, so his letter is not proof. And if the Bonesmen did rob a grave, there's reason to think it may have been the wrong one. But the letter shows that the story was no after-the-fact rumor. Senior Bonesmen at the time believed it. "It adds to the seriousness of the belief [that the theft took place], certainly," says Judith Schiff, the chief research archivist at Sterling Memorial Library, who has written extensively on Yale history. "It has a very strong likelihood of being true, since it was written so close to the time." Members of a secret society, she points out, were required to be honest with each other about its affairs.
But it is also highly possible that while Prescott Bush and his merry band of grave robbers did, indeed, desecrate a grave -- they may have stolen the wrong bones.
Some researchers have concluded that the Bonesmen could not have even found Geronimo's grave in 1918. David H. Miller, a history professor at Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma, cites historical accounts that the grave was unmarked and overgrown until a Fort Sill librarian persuaded local Apaches to identify the site for him in the 1920s. "My assumption is that they did dig up somebody at Fort Sill," says Miller. "It could have been an Indian, but it probably wasn't Geronimo."
In other words, a Bush was so incompetent that he couldn't even rob the correct grave. Now that's real easy to believe.
There is further evidence to believe that Skull & Bones is in possession of remains from a desecrated grave. The Yale Alumni magazine article discusses an effort by an Apache leader, Ned Anderson, in 1986 to have Geronimo's remains removed from Fort Sill to Apache land in Arizona.
That's when he got an anonymous letter describing the theft along with a photo of a skull reported to be Geronimo's in a display case.
Anderson arranged a meeting with Bones alumni Jonathan Bush '53, a son of Prescott Bush; and Endicott Peabody Davison '45, a son of Trubee Davison. At the meeting, Anderson has told several journalists, the Bones representatives produced a display case like the one in the photo. But they told Anderson that the skull inside it was that of a ten-year-old boy. They offered the skull to Anderson, but he declined, as he believed it was not the same one in the photo.
The lawsuit includes President Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates as defendants because the alleged theft occurred at a military base.
Regardless whether the remains belong to Geronimo or a 10-year-old boy, if Skull & Bones is in possession of them they must be returned immediately. The theft must be condemned. The society must apologize, pay significant punitive damages and pay all the costs of reburial.
BTW -- I found one previous diary on this lawsuit but it is so weak that it does not do this subject the justice it deserves.