THE MYSTERY OF GERONIMO’S SKULL
I was reading this Wired article about the American military using video games to train soldiers, when I came across the follow paragraph, at the top of page 4:
JFETS occupies a wing of the battle lab at I-See-O Hall, named for a Native American scout who helped the Army discourage local insurgents from raiding Texas border settlements in the 1890s. The skull of Geronimo, Fort Sill’s most illustrious prisoner of war, no longer occupies his tomb on the base; the Apache warrior’s cranium was reportedly exhumed one night in 1918 by a group of Army officers and smuggled to Yale, where it resides in the vault of the Skull and Bones society. The young officer who wielded the shovel, according to university historian Alexandra Robbins, was the President’s grandfather, Prescott Bush.
I suddenly felt as if my reality had branched off into some aberrant, Illuminatus-like parallel universe. Geronimo’s skull? Skull and Bones society?? Prescott Bush??? And what does all this have to do with war simulators? You can’t just unload an anecodete like that for no reason and then walk away like it ain’t no thang. Wired magazine was clearly trying to communicate something; I had to look deeper.
Like Fox Mulder, I desperately needed to uncover the Truth, which, I am led to believe, is Out There (on the Internet). After coming up empty-handed on Snopes, I tried Googling for “geronimo skull.”
My relentless, dare I say heroic, pursuit of truth finally paid off: the Yale Herald, October 24, 2003
Of particular interest is the interaction between Ned Anderson, an Apache chief trying to recover the skull, and Jonathan Bush, brother of George H. W. Bush. Jonathan Bush agreed to meet with Ned and return the skull.
Anderson recounts that Bush sounded “very encouraging” during their initial meeting. Eleven days later, Bush presented the display case. Anderson refused to accept the skull because it appeared to belong to a small child. Bush acknowledged this fact but claimed that it was the only relevant artifact in the society’s possession.
Ah-haha. The old bait-and-switch. I can just imagine how that conversation went.
“Thank you, Mr. Bush, for returning the skull of our ancestor, (which your ancestor graverobbed). It means a lot to the Apache people who, as you know, fear and respect death.”
“Well ok here you go,” said Bush, grinning, as he slid a foot-high cube covered by a drape of crimson velvet across the table. “Now please sign this legal document stating that the Skull and Bones society does not have the skull….”
Removing the cover, Anderson peered inside the display case at the diminutive skull, no more than four inches across. Trying to control his temper, Anderson replied “Sir, this is not the skull of my ancestor. This is the skull of a small child.”
“Well, people were a lot shorter back then… anyways you can’t expect us to keep careful track of every skull we come across. We are the Skull and Bones society after all,” Bush explained. “Ia Cthulu fhtagn!,” he added, before vanishing in a puff of sulfrous yellow smoke.
Left unexplained is Jonathan Bush’s possession of the skull of a small child.
Here’s a memo for John Kerry: you must find and destroy Geronimo’s skull. It is clearly the source of the Bush clan’s malevolent power; you must make it your number-one priority to free the tortured souls which are no-doubt imprisoned within this unholy artifact. If you fail in this quest we are all surely doomed!
“George Bush, DC ‘68, and John Kerry, JE ‘66, both members of the society…”
Crap.