Washington: A hero of the US Revolutionary War, who rescued George Washington and was known as the "Father of the American Calvary," was actually a woman or intersex.

New evidence has found that Casimir Pulaski, a Polish-born general who fought in the 1775-83 war against Britain, has the "identical" DNA with his grand-niece, and was therefore female.

Count Casimir Pulaski.

Pulaski 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, 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.

Their view was put down as an "opinion".

Last year, three researchers at Arizona State University took up the case again and were able to match mitochondrial DNA in Pulaski and his grand niece, finding it identical.

The United Nations says that up to 1.7 per cent of the world's population are born with intersex traits – meaning they are born with both male and female sex characteristics.

Dr Merbs says it is unlikely that Pulaski, who was raised male, ever believed he was female or intersex – just that "something was wrong".

"Back in those days, they just didn't know," he adds.

DPA

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