Measured against Yale's standards, Geronimo would scarcely have
regarded himself as a scholar, although by Chiricahua Apache standards, he likely
thought he measured up pretty well as a seer, a medicine man and a preeminent
warrior.
His clairvoyance and prestige notwithstanding, however, he probably never
foresaw finding a long-term home at Yale, with an honored place in the esteemed
university's most prestigious and enigmatic fraternity, the Skull and Bones Society,
a student organization that taught future presidents the value of cronyism and
secrecy.
How Geronimo Qualified for Yale
Geronimo did not look like the stereotypical candidate for Yale, not to mention
the Skull and Bones Society. In an early version of the manuscript for the book
Making Peace With Cochise, Captain J. A. Sladen described Geronimo — in his
early 50's at the time — as an "old looking, very dark complexioned,
unprepossessing appearing Indian... His sensual, cruel, crafty face, as
well as his dissatisfied manner had prejudiced me against him from the first.
"He was short and stout, in size, exceedingly dirty, and wore a white man's
shirt, loose like a blouse, and little else beyond the usual breech cloth and
moccasins... "
If he held few academic credentials and looked slovenly, however, Geronimo
had won the respect of the Chiricahuas for his ability to see events outside
the normal range of human perception. (That skill, of course, would have served
him well in preparing for Yale's exams.) Leading a war party at the height of
the Apache conflict, he and his warriors had paused near Casas Grandes, in northwestern
Chihuahua, to eat. "Geronimo was sitting next to me with a knife in one
hand and a chunk of beef which I had cooked for him in the other," said
Jason Betzinez in his book I Fought With Geronimo. "All at once he dropped
the knife, saying, "Men, our people whom we left at our base camp are now
in the hands of U. S. troops! What shall we do?"
"This was a startling example of Geronimo's mysterious ability to tell what
was happening at a distance. I cannot explain it to this day. But I was there
and saw it."
As his war party turned back for the base camp to investigate, Geronimo said,
according to Betzinez, "Tomorrow afternoon as we march along the north side
of the mountains we will see a man standing on a hill to our left. He will howl
to us and tell us that the troops have captured our base camp."
"About the middle of the [next] afternoon," said Betzinez, "we
heard a howl from the hilltop to our left. There stood an Apache calling to us." Geronimo
and his warriors heard the report that "the main camp, now some fifteen
miles distant, was in the hands of U. S. troops."
"Thus the event which Geronimo had foretold... came to pass as true
as steel. I still cannot explain it."
Geronimo also gained the Chiricahuas' respect as a medicine man, with battlefield
surgical abilities that might have proven useful in Yale's pre-med academic programs. "Usually
about eight persons worked together in making medicine," he said in his
autobiography Geronimo: His Own Story, "and there were forms of prayer and
incantations to attend each stage of the process.
"Some of the Indians were skilled in cutting out bullets, arrow heads, and
other missiles with which warriors were wounded. I myself have done much of this,
using a common dirk or butcher knife."
Nearing 40 years old, Geronimo gained respect at another level among the
Apaches. He became an exceptionally fierce warrior in a war-making society after
a Mexican force massacred his band's encampment, in northwestern Chihuahua, in
1858. "... I
found that my aged mother, my young wife, and my three small children were among
the slain," he said in his autobiography.
"... none had lost as I had, for I had lost all."
A year later, Geronimo — driven mad by his thirst for revenge — led a
Chiricahua Apache war party into battle against that same Mexican force in northern
Sonora, on the western slopes of the Sierra Madre range. "... I thought
of my murdered mother, wife, and babies... and I fought with fury. Many fell
by my hand, and constantly I led the advance...
"... the Apaches had seen...
"Still covered with the blood of my enemies, still holding my conquering
weapon, still hot with the joy of battle, victory, and vengeance, I was surrounded
by the Apache braves and made war chief... " (Such battlefield experiences
would certainly have been enlightening for those Skull and Bones Society members
who would someday hold the office of president of the United States and send
our military forces into war.)
Over the next two and a half decades, as a prophet, a healer and a top-gun
warrior, Geronimo would forge his place in American legend, alongside the fabled
chiefs Cochise and Mangas Coloradas, although he never reached their heights
in the tribal hierarchy. For nearly three decades, he capitalized on his skills
to lead Chiricahua warriors on raiding parties across southeastern Arizona and
southwestern New Mexico and into Chihuahua and Sonora. He led them in escaping
from the hated Apache reservation in southeastern Arizona, taking them southward
into Mexico's Sierra Madre Mountains. He led them in desperate flight from U.
S. and Mexican troopers and civilian militia. Finally, in early September of
1886, Geronimo, with the remnants of his band, dispirited, starving and defeated,
gave up their quest. He surrendered to General Nelson A. Miles at Skeleton Canyon,
in the Peloncillo Mountains, near the Arizona/New Mexico border.
Geronimo — promised by Miles that he would be reunited with family members
on a forested reservation in the east — instead found himself imprisoned
with other warriors at a squalid and disease-ridden prison in Florida. Still
a prisoner, he was moved, finally reunited with his family, to Alabama and, then,
in August of 1894, to Fort Sill, near Lawton, Oklahoma, where he put the Chiricahua
way of life behind him. (Even so, he still did not find the door open to Yale.)
As a matter of fact, Geronimo "... became a very shrewd capitalist when
the white way was forced upon him," said S. M. Barrett in an introductory
note to Geronimo's autobiography. "... he took on all the trappings
of the white man's civilization, becoming a farmer, a member of the Dutch Reformed
Church, a Sunday school teacher, and a tireless promoter of himself, hawking
photographs, bows and arrows at various fairs [including the 1904 World's Fair
in St. Louis] and exposition. He was one Indian who exploited the exploiters
better than they could him." And he may have wittingly have qualified himself
here for Yale, which has a penchant for capitalism.
He also developed a passion for the white man's drink.
In early February of 1909, at about the age of 80, Geronimo got drunk in
Lawton. Coming home alone, in a stupor, he fell out of his buggy. He "lay all night
on the road in a freezing rain," said Barrett. "He was discovered
the next day and taken to the hospital, where he died... " still, technically,
a prisoner of war.
Interred in the quiet, secluded but ill kept Apache cemetery at Fort Still,
he had probably passed from this world with little notion of going to Yale. In
fact, he had always yearned to return to the Chiricahua Apache homeland. Before
his death he said, in his autobiography, that "It is my land, my home, my fathers'
land, to which I now ask to be allowed to return. I want to spend my last days
there, and be buried among those mountains."
His people still remember him by the Indian melody that he sang, "Geronimo's
song:
O, ha le
O, ha le!
Through the air
I fly upon the air
Towards the sky, far, far, far,
O, ha le
O, ha le!
There to find the holy place,
Ah, now the change comes o're me!
O, ha le
O, ha le!
from the Indigenous Peoples' Literature Internet site
So how did Geronimo — seer, medicine man, warrior, capitalist and American
legend — lose his head and go to Yale?
How Yale Recruited Geronimo
On a night in late May of 1918, more than nine years after Geronimo fell, not
to the white man's rifles, but to his liquor, six young army officers from Fort
Sill's "School of Fire," stole into the Apache cemetery on Beef Creek.
Armed with picks, shovels and axes, they threaded their way quietly through Apache
grave markers until they arrived at Geronimo's resting place.
Alumni of Yale and members of the Skull and Bones Society, they came in great
secrecy, mindful, as one of them had said, that "Six army captains robbing
a grave wouldn't look good in the papers."
They had come to recruit the American legend, believing him fully qualified
for Yale and their organization.
Of those named, the captains, according to Kathrin Day Lissila and Mark Alden
Branch, "Whose skull and bones?" Yale Alumni Magazine, May/June 2006,
included Charles C. Haffner, Henry Neil Mallon, Ellery James, and one Prescott
Bush. The latter would become a businessman in Connecticut, a member of the United
States Senate, the father of President George H. W. Bush, and the grandfather
of President George W. Bush. These army captains, like all Skull and Bones members,
addressed each other, not as "Sir," but as "Patriarch" or "Knight."
According to the Skull and Bones Society's own Continuation
of the History of Our Order for the Century Celebration, 17 June 1933, written by one of the
organization members, one of the six grave robbers recalled that, "The ring of pick on
stone and thud of earth on earth alone disturbs the peace of the prairie. An
axe pried up the iron door of the tomb, and Pat[riarch]. Bush entered and started
to dig. We dug in turn, each on relief taking a turn on the road as guards... Finally
Pat. Ellery James turned up a bridle, soon a saddle horn and rotten leathers
followed, then wood and then, 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 to Pat. Mallon's room, where we cleaned the
Bones. Pat. Mallon sat on the floor liberally applying carbolic acid. The Skull
was fairly clean, having only some flesh inside and a little hair. I showered
and hit the hay... a happy man... "
The Skull and Bones Society has long called the story a "hoax," said
Lassila and Branch, but only a few days after the captains robbed the grave,
society member Winter Mead wrote, in a personal letter to member F. Trubee Davison,
that "The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb
at Fort Sill by your club and the K—t [Knight] Haffner, is now safe inside
the T—[or, Tomb, the crypt-like home of the society] together with his
well worn femurs[,] bit & saddle horn."
According to several accounts, the society placed Geronimo's skull, bones
and artifacts in a display case near the entrance to the Tomb, making them, according
to the San Francisco Bay View Internet site, part of a collection of dozens of
skulls (including Pancho Villa's), other human remains, several coffins and Adolph
Hitler's silverware.
Geronimo, presumably having now lost his head and gone to Yale, might have
been bewildered by the strange band that had forcibly inducted him into a life
of Establishmentarian secrecy.
(George W. Bush, in his campaign autobiography, A Charge to Keep, said that
in his senior year at Yale, "... I joined the Skull and Bones, a secret
society, so secret I can't say anything more.")
The Skull and Bones Society
"On High Street, in the middle of the Yale University campus [at New Haven,
Connecticut], stands a cold-looking, nearly windowless Greco-Egyptian building
with padlocked iron doors," said Alexandra Robbins in Secrets
of the Tomb. "This
is the home of Yale's most famous secret society, Skull and Bones... "
Founded as a furtive, elitist organization in the early 19th century, the
Skull and Bones Society became a wellspring of power on the world stage over
the past two centuries. Members include, for instance, presidents (William Howard
Taft in addition to the two Bushes), senators, representatives, cabinet members,
ambassadors, Supreme Court justices, media powerhouses, business titans, and
even CIA agents
— a remarkable number since the society accepts only 15 new members each
year. The Bonesmen hold extraordinarily close bonds, supporting George W. Bush,
for instance, through employment, financial backing and political contributions,
according to Robbins. In return, Bonesmen have received political support and
political appointments from President Bush.
Rumor holds that the Bonesmen — the pinnacle of America's social hierarchy — must
kiss a skull and swear secrecy to gain admission into the society. They place
Geronimo's skull on a table in front of them during Sunday and Thursday night
rituals.
Lissila and Branch said that, "In 2001, journalist Ron Rosenbaum... reported
capturing on videotape what appeared to be an initiation ceremony in the society's
courtyard, in which Bonesmen carried skulls and 'femur-sized bones.'" Judging
by history, these same Bonesmen, we can expect, will one day take hold of levers
of world power.
How Yale Has Retained Geronimo
The Skull and Bones Society, while claiming to possess Geronimo's skull, bones
and artifacts, have helped block the Apaches' attempts to reclaim the remains
for respectful re-burial in his mountain homeland in the Southwest.
In 1986, said Lassila and Branch, Bonesmen Jonathan Bush (President George
W. Bush's uncle) and Endicott Peabody Davison helped frustrate San Carlos Apache
Tribe chairman Ned Anderson's campaign for the return of Geronimo's remains.
President George H. W. Bush, according to another source, rejected Arizona Senator
John McCain's request to meet with Anderson to arrange the return.
Two decades later, according to an Associated Press release, "Geronimo Kin
Eyes Skull & Bones," New York Daily News, the Bonesmen still resisted
Apache calls for help. The White House had not responded to a request by Harlyn
Geronimo — Geronimo's great grandson — for help in recovering the remains. "I
haven't heard a word," said Harlyn Geronimo, of the Mescalero Apache Reservation
in south-central New Mexico. He shouldn't have expected to hear anything else.
After all, as President Bush said, "I joined the Skull and Bones, a secret
society, so secret I can't say anything more.")
According to another AP release — "Discovery Lends Weight to Ultra-secret
Skull and Bones Society Lore," posted on the MSNBC Internet site — Bonesmen
faced a different potential effort by Harlyn Geronimo, who was considering a
suit against the U. S. Army, calling for the return of the remains. "If
we get the remains back," he said, Harlyn Geronimo, "... and find
that, for instance, bones are missing, you know who to blame."
