Did Prescott Bush steal wrong skull?

Marc Wortman reviews a popular legend about Geronimo. He tackles the burning question: "Did a group from Skull and Bones break into Geronimo’s tomb and ship his skull back to the society’s clubhouse at Yale?" Below he offers a possible answer.

The Skull—and the Bones

By Marc WortmanTowana Spivey, the museum curator, was adamant: “The facts on the ground here just don’t line up with the story being told.” I’ve been involved in the Geronimo story, more or less accidentally, for a number of years, and agree with Spivey. That’s not to say that I don’t accept the story about Prescott Bush—in fact, I do. The circumstantial evidence suggests that Bush and his friends did indeed mount a grave-robbing operation, and that they came away with something. But with what? The historical rec­ord is clear that in 1918, when the “most spectacular ‘crook’” took place, Geronimo’s body was not lying in the kind of vault described in the Skull and Bones logbook. It had been buried in an unmarked grave, precisely to deter would-be grave robbers. The pres­ent monument was not built until 1930. There’s no iron door on it, like the one the Bones history describes. Assuming that Prescott Bush and his friends did smash open a burial vault, there are only two possible candidates at Fort Sill.

One of them straddles the grave of a Kiowa chief named Kicking Bird. It sits in a cemetery just a few hundred yards from the barracks where the Bonesmen were quartered. Spivey believes this was the grave they struck. I have my doubts. It’s so close to a main road that it’s hard to believe they wouldn’t have been observed.

The other site is three or four miles away—it’s the small Otipoby Comanche Cemetery, on a rise overlooking the prairie. A burial vault lies at its center. A modern stone marker next to it bears the words “Mark ‘Thomas’ Perconnic / Comanche Tribe / Son of Perconnic.” There’s evidence of past tampering: bricks now seal what once must have been a doorway. I suspect that the young men from Yale ended up here, having assumed that this very prominent grave must hold “the worthy Geronimo the Terrible.” If they took anything away, it was not Geronimo’s head. It was Tom’s.Kicking Bird was the name of Graham Greene's character in Dances with Wolves, of course.

Below:  "Two burial vaults that the tomb raiders may have mistaken for Geronimo's. Left, the crypt of Kiowa chief Kicking Bird, in the Post Cemetery at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Right, the tomb of Mark 'Thomas' Perconnic, in the Otipoby Comanche Cemetery, three or four miles away." (Marc Wortman)



Who is Harlyn Geronmio?

Another interesting aspect of the story is the role of Harlyn Geronimo. I've mentioned him before when the subject of Geronimo's bones came up. But now his story seems more suspect than it did before:Harlyn Geronimo, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, was born Harlyn Via. Now 63 years old, he is a sometime actor and a self-proclaimed Apache medicine man who lives in Mescalero. Harlyn is also a sculptor and has said that he would like the new Geronimo grave site to be marked by a monumental sculpture of his own creation. About 15 Years ago, Harlyn and his brother Joseph legally changed their surname to Geronimo. According to at least one credible Geronimo biographer, their grandmother was Geronimo’s daughter from a brief marriage during the period of his exile in Alabama. Released by the army, the mother went to Mescalero with the baby and soon remarried.

Whatever the nature of Harlyn’s kinship, he has certainly exploited the name. As Harlyn Geronimo, he has acted on television and been featured in documentaries. He has traveled to France and Germany, where fascination with America’s cowboys-and-Indians history is high. A book he co-authored, Sur les pas de Geronimo ( In the Footsteps of Geronimo ), was published in France in 2008. For his televised interviews and appearances at public events and festivals, (sometimes) on horseback he wears the type of feathered headdress used by the Plains Indians, not by the Apaches. When in Paris, you have to give the Parisians what they’re expecting. I have encountered Harlyn only once—in a shared television appearance in the aftermath of my discovery of the Winter Mead letter. His anger seemed genuine. I attempted to reach Harlyn many times over the course of several months, to ask him about the Ramsey Clark lawsuit, but he seemed always to be traveling in Europe, and unreachable. I finally contacted his brother Joseph, in Mescalero. Joseph was not interested in pursuing a conversation. What he in fact said was “I ain’t giving anything away for a handful of beads. Mail me a check, and if it’s enough and don’t bounce, I’ll talk.”

For more on the subject, see:

Geronimo vs. Geronimo Over Geronimo
Apaches don't want Geronimo moved
Geronimo sues Skull and Bones