US Revolutionary War hero Casimir Pulaski was a
woman or intersex, according to a documentary due to be broadcast on
Monday.
The Polish-born general, who has been credited with saving the life
of George Washington during the 1775-83 war against Britain, was
known as the "Father of the American Cavalry."
He went to the US voluntarily to fight, and was known for his
extraordinary bravery in battle as well as for being a very private
person, difficult to deal with and having no interest in women or
drinking.
Researchers first made the discovery about Pulaski's sex 20 years
ago, when a monument to the general in Savannah, Georgia, was
dismantled and Pulaski's bones were exhumed.
Charles Merbs, then a forensic anthropologist at Arizona State
University (ASU), studied the bones together with Karen Burns, a
physical anthropologist.
"Dr Burns said to me before I went in, 'Go in and don't come out
screaming,'" he told the university in an article published this
week. "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."
At that time, despite tracking down the bones of a female relative of
Pulaski, researchers did not have the DNA techniques that could
definitively prove the bones in the monument belonged to Pulaski.
However last year, three researchers at ASU took up the case again -
and were able to match mitochondrial DNA in both Pulaski and his
grand niece.
Casimir Pulaski
