Yale Secret Society 'Skull & Bones' Sued by Geronimo's Ancestors

The federal lawsuit filed in Washington on Tuesday - the 100th anniversary of Geronimo's death - also names the university and the federal government.

Geronimo's great-grandson Harlyn Geronimo said his family believes Skull and Bones members took some of the remains in 1918 from a burial plot in Fort Sill, Okla., to keep in its New Haven clubhouse, a crypt. The alleged graverobbing is a longstanding legend that gained some validity in recent years with the discovery of a letter from a club member that described the theft.

"I believe strongly from my heart that his spirit was never released," Harlyn Geronimo said.

Bush men have been Yale men and Bonesmen for generations. Prescott Bush, George W.'s grandfather, Yale '17, was a legendary Bonesman; he was a member of the band that stole for the society what became one of its most treasured artifacts: a skull that was said to be that of the Apache chief Geronimo. Prescott Bush, one of a great many Bonesmen who went on to lives of power and renown, became a U.S. senator. George Herbert Walker Bush, George W.'s father, Yale '48, was also a Bonesman, and he, too, made a conspicuous success of himself. Inside the temple on High Street hang paintings of some of Skull and Bones's more illustrious members; the painting of George Bush, the most recently installed, is five feet high.

Members swear an oath of secrecy about the group and its strange rituals, which include devotion to the number "322" and initiation rites such as confessing sexual secrets and kissing a skull. The atmosphere makes Skull and Bones favorite fodder for conspiracy theorists.

Its most enduring story is the one concerning Geronimo's remains, and in 2005, a Yale historian discovered a letter written in 1918 from one Skull and Bones member to another that seemed to lend validity to the tale.

"The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club and Knight Haffuer, is now safe inside the T - together with is well worn femurs, bit and saddle horn," Mead wrote.

The first extended description of Skull and Bones, published in 1871 by Lyman Bagg in his book Four Years at Yale, noted that "the mystery now attending its existence forms the one great enigma which college gossip never tires of discussing."[16] Brooks Mather Kelley attributed the secrecy of Yale senior societies to the fact that underclassmen members of freshman, sophomore, and junior class societies remained on campus following their membership, while seniors naturally left.[17]

The secrecy surrounding Skull and Bones has been a fertile ground for speculation, and all sorts of conspiracy theories include Skull and Bones. One particular event was originally considered a conspiracy theory but was found to be a matter of American History when documents in several US. government archives' locations were de-classified and discovered by several media outlets. That was the internet theory which claimed that companies owned and operated by Skull and Bones members had financed and supplied Hitler's rise to power and war effort before and after America's engagement in WW2.