Skeleton in the Bush family cupboard

Headhunters at Yale? Read on…

One of America’s great historical controversies intensifed yesterday with the publication of fresh evidence that members of an elite secret society may have dug up the remains of the Indian leader Geronimo and displayed his skull in their headquarters….Rumours that half a dozen members of the Skull & Bones society at Yale University – including President George W Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush – dug up the grave of the legendary Apache leader during the First World War have exercised historians for years.

That one the Chief has heard of before…but took it with a seriously generous grain of salt, but maybe it’s part of a larger pattern:

The society, founded in 1832 and famous for its strange rituals centred on symbols of death, has over the years been accused of obtaining the skulls of a range of famous figures, including the former president Martin Van Buren and Che Guevara.

Van Buren? Che Guevara? Hmmmm. That last one brings up an interesting feverish thought to the Chief: maybe the government could issue a sort of “letter of marque” – a privateer’s license – to obtain heads of for instance, al Zarqawi, bin Laden, etc. specifying that the bonesmen could have the skulls for their…er…ceremonial purposes. How could it fail with BOTH Bush and Kerry backing it (since both were “Bonesmen”).

Now contemporary evidence has been unearthed backing the theory that a group of young Bonesmen, based at an artillery school at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, desecrated Geronimo’s grave. The Apache leader had died while in custody at Fort Sill in 1909, 23 years after he finally surrendered to US troops.

In a letter written in 1918, one society member tells another that Geronimo’s skull had been exhumed and was being kept in the “Tomb” – the society’s headquarters in New Haven, Connecticut. “The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club… is now safe inside the T- [Tomb] together with his well-worn femurs, bit & saddle horn.” The letter was unearthed in Yale University archives by a historian writing about First World War Yale pilots, and published in the Yale Alumni Magazine.

You just KNOW that this gets the Native Americans fired up – and in fact this article goes into some detail about this – Geronimo at least, is worthy of respect.

As for Che – make him into a drinking mug!