The skull mystery matters not only because Geronimo was Geronimo, but because it illustrates a relationship between power and dignity that is still being worked out in the American context more than a century later.

The Long Shadow Of Captivity

Geronimo’s twenty-three years as a prisoner of war cast a long shadow over everything that came after his death, including the skull mystery.

He was a prisoner who could not control where he lived, where he traveled, or where he was buried.

The decisions about his life and his death were made by the U.S. government, the Army, and the political forces that shaped American Indian policy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

When he died, his burial was determined by those same forces.