Researchers believe Casimir Pulaski’s skeleton indicates the 18th-century cavalry officer may have been female or intersex

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Researchers believe a famed Polish general who fought in the American Revolutionary war may have been female or possibly intersex.

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A new Smithsonian Channel documentary examines the history of Casimir Pulaski, a Polish cavalryman who became a protege of George Washington.

Researchers began their work when a monument to the general in Savannah, Georgia, was set to be removed. Pulaski’s bones were contained in a metal box under the monument, which was erected in 1854. Charles Merbs, a forensic anthropologist at Arizona State University who worked on the case, said that allowed researchers to exhume the skeleton for study.

“Basically I couldn’t say anything about what I found until the final report came out,” Merbs told ASU Now. He worked with Dr Karen Burns, a physical anthropologist at the University of Georgia, and other experts.

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“Dr Burns said to me before I went in: ‘Go in and don’t come out screaming.’ She said study it very carefully and thoroughly and then let’s sit down and discuss it. I went in and immediately saw what she was talking about.

“The skeleton is about as female as can be.”

Another team member, Virginia Hutton Estabrook, a Georgia Southern University professor of anthropology, told NBC News: “One of the ways that male and female skeletons are different is the pelvis. In females, the pelvic cavity has a more oval shape. It’s less heart-shaped than in the male pelvis. Pulaski’s looked very female.”

The most immediate question was whether the skeleton was indeed Pulaski. Previous researchers had failed to identify the bones, lacking DNA for a match.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Monument to General Casimir Pulaski in Savannah, Georgia. Photograph: Don Klumpp/Alamy Stock Photo

Estabrook said: “It is remarkable that the will to persist in this project continued more than a decade after it was declared by a team of experts that this was as far as it could possibly go.”

This time, researchers were able to confirm the skeleton through the mitochondrial DNA of Pulaski’s grandniece, known injuries and physical characteristics. The Smithsonian Institute funded the research.

Pulaski was raised as a man in an aristocratic Polish Catholic family, learning to fight and ride. He put those skills to the test against the invading Russians before leaving Poland in 1772 and finding his way to Paris. According to the Smithsonian documentary, the American delegation there sent him across the Atlantic with letters of recommendation from Benjamin Franklin.

Pulaski joined the American forces and on 11 September 1777 fought the British at Brandywine, south of Philadelphia, probably saving Washington from capture in a damaging defeat. The Pole went on to formalize the American cavalry, demanding better resources and training.

He was fatally wounded at the Siege of Savannah in October 1779, dying aboard ship days later.

Researchers said contemporary accounts of the general painted him as private and deeply driven, a fierce fighter and skilled horseman. He never married or had children.

“I don’t think, at any time in his life, did he think he was a woman,” Merbs said. “I think he just thought he was a man, and something was wrong.”

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As much as 2% of babies may be born intersex, according to a survey of medical literature from Brown University. That means the children could be born with characteristics – genital, chromosomal or hormonal – that put them outside the “platonic ideal that for each sex there is a single, universally correct developmental pathway and outcome”.

Pulaski is considered a Polish American hero, honored each year at the Casimir Pulaski Day parade in New York City. The Pulaski Skyway in New Jersey is named for the general, as is the Fort Pulaski national monument in Georgia.

Speaking to NBC, the New York Pulaski Day parade president, Richard Zawisny, said he was “a little shocked” by the news Pulaski may have been female or intersex.

“But in this day and age,” he added, “I don’t think it will matter to most people.”

The documentary about Pulaski is scheduled to be broadcast on Monday.

• This article was amended on 11 April 2019. An earlier version said Pulaski may have been “a woman or intersex”; this has been corrected to “female or intersex”.