Could anyone craft a more apt symbolism for the Bush dynasty than elite, wealthy playboy descendants of Indian killers despoiling the grave of a Native American hero and stealing his bones for their clubhouse rituals? I hope Geronimo's restless spirit haunts their bloodless little hearts until the end of their days.
Maybe future fraternities will dig up Prescott Bush's bones and craft a way-cool bong out of his femur.
Yale University historian has uncovered a 1918 letter that seems to lend validity to the lore that Yale University's ultra-secret Skull and Bones society swiped the skull of American Indian leader Geronimo.
The letter, written by one member of Skull and Bones to another, purports that the skull and some of the Indian leader's remains were spirited from his burial plot in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to a stone tomb in New Haven that serves as the club's headquarters.
According to Skull and Bones legend, members -- including President Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush -- dug up Geronimo's grave when a group of Army volunteers from Yale were stationed at the fort during World War I. Geronimo died in 1909.
"The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club... is now safe inside the (Tomb) together with his well worn femurs, bit & saddle horn," according to the letter, written by Winter Mead.
But Mead was not at Fort Sill and researcher Marc Wortman, who found the letter last fall, said Monday he is skeptical the bones are actually those of the famed Indian fighter.
"What I think we could probably say is they removed some skull and bones and other materials from a grave at Fort Sill," he said. "Historically, it may be impossible to prove it's Geronimo's. They believe it's from Geronimo."
Harlyn Geronimo, the great grandson of Geronimo, said he has been looking for a lawyer to sue the U.S. Army, which runs Fort Sill. Discovery of the letter could help, he said.
"It's keeping it alive and now it makes me really want to confront the issue with my attorneys," said Geronimo, of Mescalero, New Mexico. "If we get the remains back... and find that, for instance, that bones are missing, you know who to blame."
A portion of the letter and an accompanying story were posted Monday on the Yale Alumni Magazine's Web site.
Only 15 Yale seniors are asked to join Skull and Bones each year. Alumni include Sen. John Kerry, President William Howard Taft, numerous members of Congress, media leaders, Wall Street financiers, the scions of wealthy families and agents in the CIA.
Members swear an oath of secrecy about the group and its strange rituals, which are said to include an initiation rite in which would-be members kiss a skull.
FORT SILL, Okla. - A Chiricahua Apache on the run for most of his life, gained fame for baffling American troops and refusing the reservation life.
"His followers viewed him as the last great defender of the Native American way of life," according to biography.com. Eventually he and his followers yielded to the army. They were placed in prisons in Florida and Alabama and finally at Fort Sill.
Though he tried to get permission for his people to return to his home in Arizona, nothing happened. He died in 1909 soon after a fall from his horse and after suffering alone overnight in the cold before he was found.
"I should never have surrendered," Geronimo, still a prisoner of war, said on his deathbed. "I should have fought until I was the last man alive," states biography.com.
Stories of his fortitude live on. One bizarre story involves the robbing of his tomb located at Fort Sill's Prisoner of War Cemetery. A secret order of Yale University students, Skull and Bones, supposedly possess Geronimo's skull.
The order, though not affiliated with the university, has a long history and has included many notable members.
John Kerry, Presidents William Taft, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush were members of this secret society began in 1832 and created by William H. Russell.
Club members socialize and discuss political and cultural issues in an establishment with an ominous name.
"Since 1856, they've assembled in a brown sandstone mausoleum known as the Tomb -- a crypt-like, windowless structure that non-members are forbidden to enter. Skeletons, skulls, and other ghoulish objects d'art adorn the interior walls, along with portraits of distinguished members," states a 2013 The Atlantic article.
One of those skulls is reported to be Geronimo's. When efforts were being made to move the body to Apache land in Arizona, a member of the society sent a letter to Ned Anderson who was in charge of the mission. The writer claimed that Geronimo's skull was encased in glass and on display at the Tomb. A photograph with the description was included.
A 1918 Skull and Bones logbook details the robbery of the grave by six Bonesmen. The skull, a leg bone, and Geronimo's horse bridle were taken in the robbery. Prescott Bush, George H. W. Bush's father is named in the account as one of the society diggers.
Attempts by Anderson to recover the grave contents by contacting the FBI and Bush family members failed.
Harlyn Geronimo, Geronimo's great grandson, and 20 descendants in 2009 sued to have the remains returned.
“If remains are not properly buried, the spirit is just wandering, wandering, until a proper burial has been performed,” said Harlyn Geronimo at a Washington press conference.
In 2010 the case was dismissed.
Alleged grave robbers, clockwise from top left: Prescott Bush ’17, Charles C. Haffner ’19, Henry Neil Mallon ’17, and Ellery James ’17. Haffner, who is credited with the theft of Geronimo’s skull in the recently discovered letter, went on to become a general in World War II and then chair of the printing company R. R. Donnelly & Sons. A purported Skull and Bones account of the theft, leaked in the 1980s, identifies the other three by name. Bush became a Connecticut businessman, a U.S. senator, and the father and grandfather of two U.S. presidents. Mallon became chair of the oilfield service company Dresser Industries and the first employer of George H. W. Bush ’48. James was a banker with Brown Brothers Harriman until his untimely death in 1932 (from Yale Alumni Magazine).
I was fascinated by this account: President Bush’s brother offering the Apaches a skull their father was said to have stolen! Demanding the Apaches be sworn to silence presumably to protect the Bush family as well as Bones. But looking further into the episode I found an even more extraordinary detail about that face-to-skull meeting: the Skull of the Unknown Child. It appeared in an earlier account of the Geronimo controversy that first ran in 1988 in the Arizona Republic . In it, Republic reporter Paul Brinkley-Rogers reveals another fact about the document the Bush/Bones delegation asked the Apaches to sign: “Anderson called the document ‘very insulting to Indians.’ [He] also said he was confused and annoyed because the document said that Skull and Bones members had submitted the skull to ‘an expert in New Haven’ who determined that the remains were those of a child and therefore ‘cannot possibly be those of Geronimo.'”
Chilling! Now we not only have the mystery of the skull of Geronimo, we have the mystery of the skull of a child. What was George Bush’s brother doing with a dead child’s skull in his hands? (A message left at Jonathan Bush’s number in Connecticut was not returned.)
Grave robbery, privileged class in early twentieth-century America.”