I’m getting mixed signals on a story about the great Native American leader Geronimo. According to various references, his bones were stolen from his grave in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where he was a prisoner until his death. Some accounts claim they now reside in the famous Tomb at Yale’s Skull and Bones Society. One version of the story has the president’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, being the man who took them. Any definitive answer on this? –Ben Fenwick, Oklahoma City
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The legendary Apache warrior Geronimo died a captive of the U.S. Army at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1909 and was buried there in an Apache cemetery. As far as anybody knew that’s where the body stayed until the 1980s, when Ned Anderson, a leader of the San Carlos Apache, began agitating to have Geronimo’s remains returned to his native Arizona. In the wake of the publicity Anderson’s group got an unexpected letter. The writer, claiming to be a member of Skull and Bones, said Geronimo’s bones had been stolen by several S&B alumni during a late-night grave robbery in 1918, apparently while the men were serving as army officers at Fort Sill. The bones supposedly had been on private display at the Tomb ever since. The letter writer subsequently delivered a photo showing a display case with a skull in it and a picture of Geronimo nearby, plus a copy of a purported internal S&B history telling of the 1918 raid. (“Crooks”–exploits in which members steal treasures from nonmembers, or “barbarians”–are a hallowed S&B tradition.) According to the history, one of the thieves was Prescott Bush, father of U.S. president number 41 and grandfather of number 43.
But here’s the thing: There’s no good reason to believe Geronimo’s remains ever left Oklahoma, and plenty of reasons to think they didn’t. One obvious problem is the description of the theft in the S&B history: “The ring of pick on stone and thud of earth on earth alone disturbs the peace of the prairie. An axe pried open the iron door of the tomb, and Pat [short for ‘patriarch,’ the honorific used among S&B alums] Bush entered and started to dig. . . . At the exact bottom of the small round hole, Pat James dug deep and pried out the trophy itself. . . . We quickly closed the grave, shut the door and sped home.”
