Academic

Cemetery Law, Reparations, and Geronimo ....

By propertyprof

On the heels of the news that Princeton had a law school (for a few years), comes the news that some of Geronimo's descendants are suing the Skull and Bones Society at Yale to recover Geronimo's remains.  The remains were allegedly taken by some Yale alumni stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma during World War I.  The alumni allegedly  included Prescott Bush.  Nora Caplan-Bricker of the Yale Daily News has the story.  I can't wait to see the complaint.  Apparently the suit's based on the Native American Grave Repatriation Act, though it's not clear to me that the Skull and Bones Society is subject to it.  But I'd think that some common law property doctrine would work just as well in this case.

Actually, now that I'm doing a little more reading, this story gets even more bizarre--if such a thing is possible.  F.O. Matthiessen (author of American Renaissance and a huge figure in American literature) wrote a history of Skull and Bones around 1933, which recounts a grave robbery by several Skull and Bones members at Fort Sill. There is some question what grave that was--because Geronimo's grave was unmarked untilt the 1920s.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on February 18, 2009 (boomark / email).