Indian Bones Go Home At Last
The bones of nearly 2,000 American Indians, which for decades were handled by special researchers at Harvard University, were signed over Tuesday to a New Mexico tribe for proper burial.
It was the largest, and arguably the most scientifically significant, repatriation under the 1990 law that required the return of Indian artifacts, Harvard said.
"It is a great joy," said Ruben Sando, governor of the Pueblo of Pecos during an afternoon ceremony in which the remains were transferred to the Indians. "I am very, very grateful."
The human remains - as well as funerary objects that will be returned from Phillips Academy in Andover next week - were taken from excavations in the upper Pecos Valley in New Mexico by archaeologist Alfred V. Kidder between 1915 and 1929.
Together, they represent the foundation of scientific knowledge about the early cultures of the American Southwest, according to James Bradley, director of the Peabody Andover museum.
A century before Kidder began digging, Pecos Pueblo had been a thriving trading center that interacted with the Plains Indians, other Pueblos and Spanish communities.
Kidder had gone to the Southwest to try out a new archaeological technique he'd learned at Harvard called stratigraphic excavation. He found thousands of funerary objects and skeletal remains dating from the late-12th to the mid-19th century.
For 70 years, scientists at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology studied the remains in one of the first systematic studies of a population ever conducted.
The bones were important for research into nutrition, trauma and disease, particularly osteoporosis, according to the museum.
"Our ancestors have contributed significantly to science and the archaeological world," said Raymond Gachupin, governor of the Pueblo of Jemez. "We also feel good about that."
After the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act took effect in 1990, Bradley initiated the repatriation of the remains.
He was uncomfortable that the sacred remains and funerary objects were not where they belonged.
"We sent them a letter and said, `We have a lot of your stuff'," Bradley said. "They said, `We know. Let's talk'."
Years of negotiations and preparation followed, culminating in Tuesday's ceremony with museum officials, the commissioner for New Mexico Indian Affairs and tribal officials wearing traditional clothing.
The simple ceremony, held in an exhibit hall, included solemn prayers, speeches, the symbolic transfer of a Pueblo bowl and the signing of a memorandum of repatriation of 1,912 human remains from the Pecos Valley in the care of the museum. Regis Pecos, Indian Affairs commissioner for New Mexico and a Pueblo Indian, fought back tears as he described the importance of the return of the ancestors.
"I hope it symbolies a new beginning for all of us," he said.