Nearly 10 years ago, three of us published an article, "Back to the Little Bighorn" (Drs. Richard A. Glenner, P. Willey and Douglas D. Scott, July 1994 JADA). It concerned the dentistry and osteology of the remains of a Seventh Cavalry trooper who had been killed during the Battle of Little Bighorn in June 1876. The dental restorations, osteological determinations and historic accounts supported the identification of the remains as a specific soldier: namely, Cpl. George Lell. While proposing this identification, however, we noted its inconclusiveness. We now have evidence that the skeleton is not George Lell’s.
In the years since our article was published, biomolecular techniques have been employed increasingly to aid the identification of unknown individuals. The material most frequently used with ancient remains is mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA. The advantages mtDNA has over nuclear DNA are that it preserves longer, especially under harsh conditions, and that it is maternally inherited, so all individuals in the same maternal lineage have the same mtDNA sequence.
The mission of the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii, or CILHI, is the recovery and identification of missing service personnel, and the CILHI has increasingly relied on mtDNA in these efforts during the past decade. Under contract with the CILHI, the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory, or AFDIL, Rockville, Md., conducts those analyses. AFDIL has aided the identification of approximately 400 service members.
In 1999, a tooth (no. 28) from the dentition believed to be Cpl. Lell’s was submitted to the CILHI, where it was prepared for analysis. It was transferred to AFDIL the following year, and mtDNA was obtained. A total of 425 bases were sequenced. For comparison, two of George Lell’s living maternal relatives were located, and graciously provided blood. Both their mtDNA sequence and that from the tooth were unique in a mtDNA database of more than 4,000 individuals. And, most importantly for our purposes, the Lell relatives’ mtDNA sequence and the tooth sequence were different from one another.
So, barring some improbable error in genealogy or microbiology, our previous identification of the skeleton as George Lell is incorrect.
