It was the accurate assessment of a pattern of behavior by the people who might seek to use the grave for their own purposes.

The Specific Concern: His Head

The concern about Crazy Horse’s physical remains was not abstract.

There was a specific and documented pattern of the Army collecting the skulls and bones of Native American war leaders killed in conflict.

The Army Medical Museum had specifically requested battlefield specimens from Army officers in the field, and the remains of warriors killed in the Indian Wars were among those collected.

The scientific rationale — measuring skulls to compare racial characteristics — was real in the sense that people genuinely believed in it, though it was also pseudoscientific in the sense that the conclusions drawn from these measurements were not supported by actual evidence.