A full account of its meaning would require something this article cannot fully provide: the perspectives of the Apache communities most directly connected to the history.

The Mescalero Apache Tribe, the Fort Sill Apache Tribe of Oklahoma, the Chiricahua Apache descendants — these communities have their own processes for engaging with questions about their history and their dead.

Their perspectives on the skull mystery, on DNA testing, on repatriation, and on the appropriate resolution of this situation are not uniform and are not reducible to what any single descendant has said in public.

The proper response to questions about what should be done with Geronimo’s remains is not for journalists, historians, or the broader American public to decide.