-----An innocent email prompted me to do some research. Not much, but enough to add a page to my, already hefty homepage. Do I believe it? I am neither a right-winger or a far-lefter. Check out my website and you will come to the same conclusion.
----- From a non-Internet American Indian source, I can tell you that Yale does have a Skull and Bones Society. Is the rest of this information correct? It is pasted here for your observation and your conclusions only.
----- "America's Secret Establishment", by Antony C. Sutton, 1986, page 5-6, states: "Those on the inside know it as The Order. Others have known it for more than 150 years as Chapter 322 of a German secret society. More formally, for legal purposes, The Order was incorporated as The Russell Trust in 1856. It was also once known as the "Brotherhood of Death". Those who make light of it, or want to make fun of it, call it 'Skull & Bones', or just plain 'Bones'.
----- The American chapter of this German order was founded in 1833 at Yale University by General William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft who, in 1876, became Secretary of War in the Grant Administration. Alphonso Taft was the father of William Howard Taft, the only man to be both President and Chief Justice of the United States.
----- The order is not just another Greek letter fraternal society with passwords and handgrips common to most campuses. Chapter 322 is a secret society whose members are sworn to silence. It only exists on the Yale campus (that we know about). It has rules. It has ceremonial rites. It is not at all happy with prying, probing citizens - known among initiates as 'outsiders' or 'vandals'. Its members always deny membership (or are supposed to deny membership) and in checking hundreds of autobiographical listings for members we found only half a dozen who cited an affiliation with Skull & Bones. The rest were silent. An interesting point is whether the many members in various Administrations or who hold government positions have declared their members in the biographical data supplied for FBI 'background checks'.
----- Above all, The Order is powerful, unbelievably powerful. If the reader will persist and examine the evidence to be presented - which is overwhelming - there is no doubt his view of the world will suddenly come sharply into focus, with almost frightening clarity.
----- It is a Senior year society which exists only at Yale. Members are chosen in their Junior year and spend only one year on campus, the Senior year, with Skull & Bones. In other words, the organization is oriented to the graduate outside world. The Order meets annually - patriarchies only - on Deer Island in the St. Lawrence River.
----- Senior societies are unique to Yale. There are two other senior societies at Yale, but none elsewhere. Scroll & Key and Wolf's Head are supposedly competitive societies founded in the mid-19 th century. We believe these to be part of the same network. Rosenbaum commented in his "Esquire" article, very accurately, that anyone in the Eastern Liberal Establishment who is not a member of Skull & Bones is almost certainly a member of either Scroll & Key or Wolf's Head.
-----.. The selection procedure for new members of The Order has not changed since 1832. Each year 15, and only 15, never fewer, are selected. In the past 150 years about 2500 Yale graduates have been initiated into The Order. At any time about 500-600 are alive and active. Roughly about one- quarter of these take an active role in furthering the objectives of The Order. The others either lose interest or change their minds. They are silent dropouts.
-----.. The most likely potential member is from a Bones family, who is energetic, resourceful, political and probably an amoral team player. ... Honors and financial rewards are guaranteed by the power of The Order. But the price of these honors and rewards is sacrifice to the common goal, the goal of The Order. Some, perhaps many, have not been willing to pay this price.
----- The Old Line American families and their descendants involved in the Skull & Bones are names such as: Whitney, Perkins, Stimson, Taft, Wadsworth, Gilman, Payne, Davidson, Pillsbury, Sloane, Weyerhaeuser, Harriman, Rockefeller, Lord, Brown, Bundy, Bush and Phelps.
----- For a complete and accurate discussion of the Skull & Bones Society and the secret shadow government in control of this nation, you should purchase a copy of American Secret Establishment, by Antony C. Sutton, available from RIE.
( Of course, this is 4rie.com. Do I believe it? I believe that it is probably a "sensational-oriented" websit that is not particular a partisan fan of our present administration. dh)
Prescott Bush, father of an American President and Geronimo's bones; 1917---
---- The following includes two longish passages from: "George Bush: the Unauthorized Biograpghy" by Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin. Prescott Bush, the father of an American President served in the American Army during the war, and went to France. The following is either about events that are directly contemporary to WWI, or directly linked to the time frame of this list. Did the Geronimo, the legendary Apache fall prey to an American soldier's prank during WWI?
---- "Among the traditional artifacts the Skulland collected and maintainedwithin the High Street Tomb are human remains of various derivations. The following concerns one such set of Skull and Bones.
---- Geronimo, an Apache faction leader and warrior, led a party of warriors on a raid in 1876, after Apaches were moved to the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona territory. He led other raids against U.S. and Mexican forces well into the 1880s; he was captured and escaped many times.
---- Geronimo became a farmer and joined a Christian congregation. He died at the age of 79 years in 1909, and was buried at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Three-quarters of a century later, his tribesmen raised the question of getting their famous warrior reinterred back in Arizona.
---- Ned Anderson was Tribal Chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe from 1978 to 1986. This is the story he tells / Note #9:
---- Around the fall of 1983, the leader of an Apache group in another sectionof Arizona said he was interested in having the remains of Geronimo returned to his tribe's custody. Taking up this idea, Anderson said that the remains properly belonged to his group as much as to the other Apaches. After much discussion, several Apache groups met at a kind of summit meeting held at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. (This is just a few minutes drive where I live. The Apache group talked about here is called "Fort Sill Apache Tribe, whose offices are just north of Apache, OK. Another name for their tribe, I believe, is Chiricahua Apache Tribe. ) The army authorities were not favorable to the meeting, and it only occurred through the intervention ofthe office of the Governor of Oklahoma.
---- As a result of this meeting, Ned Anderson was written up in the newspapersas an articulate Apache activist. Soon afterwards, in late 1983 or early 1984, a Skull and Bones member contacted Anderson and leaked evidence that Geronimo's remains had long ago been pilfered -- by Prescott Bush, George's father. The informant said that in May of 1918, Prescott Bush and five other officers at Fort Sill desecrated the grave of Geronimo. They took turns on guard while they robbed the grave, taking items including a skull,some other bones, a horse bit and straps. These prizes were taken back tothe Tomb, the home of the Skull and Bones Society at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut. They were put into a display case, which members and visitors could easily view upon entry to the building.
---- The informant provided Anderson with photographs of the stolen remains, anda copy of a Skull and Bones log book in which the 1918 grave robbery hadbeen recorded. "The informant said that Skull and Bones members used the pilfered remains in performing some of their Thursday and Sunday nightrituals, with Geronimo's skull sitting out on a table in front of them"....
---- Through an attorney, Anderson asked the FBI to move into the case. The attorney conveyed to him the Bureau's response: If he would turn over every scrap of evidence to the FBI, and completely remove himself from the case, they would get involved. He rejected this bargain, since it did not seem likely to lead towards recovery of Geronimo's remains.
---- Due to his persistence, he was able to arrange a September, 1986 Manhattan meeting with Jonathan Bush, George Bush's brother. Jonathan Bush vaguely assured Anderson that he would get what he had come after, and set a followup meeting for the next day. But Bush stalled -- Anderson believes this was to gain time to hide and secure the stolen remains against any possible rescue action.
---- The Skull and Bones attorney representing the Bush family and managing the case was Endicott Peabody Davison. His father was the F. Trubee Davison mentioned above, who had been president of New York's American Museum of Natural History, and personnel director for the Central Intelligence Agency. The attitude of this Museum crowd has long been that "Natives" should be stuffed and mounted for display to the Fashionable Set.
---- Finally, after about 11 days, another meeting occurred. A display case was produced, which did in fact match the one in the photograph the informant had given to Anderson. But the skull he was shown was that of a ten-year-old child, and Anderson refused to receive it or to sign a legal document promising to shut up about the matter.
---- Anderson took his complaint to Arizona Congressmen Morris Udall and JohnMcCain III, but with no results. George Bush refused Congressman McCain's request that he meet with Anderson. Anderson wrote to Udall, enclosing a photograph of the wall case and skull at the "Tomb," showing a black and white photograph of the living Geronimo, which members of the Order had boastfully posted next to their display of his skull. Anderson quoted from a Skull and Bones Society internal history, entitled "Continuation of the History of Our Order for the Century Celebration, 17 June 1933, by The Little Devil of D'121."
---- "From the war days [W.W. I] also sprang the mad expedition from the School of Fire at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, that brought to the T[omb] its most spectacular 'crook,' the skull of Geronimo the terrible, the Indian Chief who had taken forty-nine white scalps. An expedition in late May, 1918, by members of four [graduating-class years of the Society], Xit D.114,
---- Barebones, Caliban and Dingbat, D.115, S'Mike D.116, and Hellbender D.117, planned with great caution since in the words of one of them: 'Six army captains robbing a grave wouldn't look good in the papers.'
---- The stirring climax was recorded by Hellbender in the Black Book of D.117: '... The ring of pick on stone and thud of earth on earth alone disturbs the peace of the prairie. An axe pried open 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[riarch] 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[riarch] James dug deep and pried out the trophy itself....
---- We quickly closed the grave, shut the door and sped home to Pat[riarch] Mallon's room, where we cleaned the Bones. Pat[riarch] 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...." / Note #1 / Note #0
---- The other grave robber whose name is given, Ellery James, we encountered in Chapter One -- he was to be an usher at Prescott's wedding three years later. And the fellow who applied acid to the stolen skull, burning off the flesh and hair, was "Neil Mallon." Years later, Prescott Bush and his partners chose Mallon as chairman of Dresser Industries; Mallon hired Prescott's son, George Bush, for George's first job; and George Bush named his son, "Neil Mallon Bush," after the flesh-picker.
---- In 1988 the "Washington Post" ran an article entitled "Skull for Scandal: Did Bush's Father Rob Geronimo's Grave?" There was a small quote from the 1933 Skull and Bones "History of Our Order": "An axe pried open the iron door of the tomb, and ... Bush entered and started to dig...." and so forth, but neglected to include other names beside Bush.
---- According to the "Washington Post," the document which Bush attorney Davison tried to get the Apache leader to sign, stipulated that Anderson agreed it would be "inappropriate for you, me [Jonathan Bush] or anyone in association with us to make or permit any publication in connection with this transaction." Anderson called the document "very insulting to Indians." Davison claimed later that the Order's own history book is a hoax, but during the negotiations with Anderson, Bush's attorney demanded Anderson give up his copy of the book. / Note #1 / Note #1
---- Bush crony Fitzhugh Green gives the view of the President's backers on this affair, and conveys the arrogant racial attitude typical of Skull and Bones: "Prescott Bush had a colorful side. In 1988 the press revealed the complaint of an Apache leader about Bush. This was Ned Anderson of San Carlos, Oklahoma [sic], who charged that as a young army officer Bush stole the skull of Indian Chief [sic] Geronimo and had it hung on the wall of Yale's Skull and Bones Club. After exposure of 'true facts' by Anderson, and consideration by some representatives in Congress, the issue faded from public sight. Whether or not this alleged skullduggery actually occurred, "the mere idea casts the senior Bush in an adventurous light""
************** ---- So what is my take on this. I am certainly not going to say the Bush group was involved in moving the bones of Geronimo, when in fact, they have never been moved.
---- "I can guarantee you that Geronimo's grave has not been desecrated," said Michael Durrow, historian for the Fort Sill Apache Tribe. "I think it is true that Yale has a Skull and Bones Society, but they certainly wouldn't know the exact location of where Geronimo's grave is. Few people do."
---- Is the subject listed on the "snopes site?" I could not find it there, which lends some credibility that Bush family may well be part of the Skull and Bones Society at Yale. If they are, their involvement goes back quite aways. I can, though, guarantee you that Great grandpa Bush, did not find Geronimo's skull and take it to Yale. Yet another lie by the Bush historians. Geronimo's grave is located where no pale-face could find it. Harrumph.
(c) Dale Hill 2003