2 Northern Arapaho boys go home for burial; another is still missing
CARLISLE, Pa. — The pine coffins were small — about 2 feet long and 1 foot wide — and held together with 32 nails.
Ninety years after they were buried at the Carlisle Post Barracks Cemetery, two of them still had their lids intact when unearthed last week.
The archaeologists started with the site for Little Plume. Then LittleChief. And then Horse.
They carefully took the remains to a team of anthropologists, who methodically cleaned the bones and began putting them in their anatomical place, an effort to confirm their identities. In the coffin meant for Little Plume, they found instead the remains of two others.
“We looked at the remains, and we just knew,” Elizabeth DiGangi, a forensic anthropologist, said early Monday afternoon at a news conference discussing the team’s findings.
There were two right hip bones — neither of which could belong to Little Plume. A short distance away, the boys’ family members were anxiously awaiting updates. They hoped to take the boys’ remains home to Wyoming for burial next to their Northern Arapaho relatives on the Wind River Reservation. It was supposed to mark the beginning of a healing process not only for them, but for many other Native American families who have loved ones buried at the cemetery. The cemetery holds the remains of nearly 200 Native American children who died while attending the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which sought to eradicate their cultures and assimilate them into European-American life.
the school closed.
“I think to find Little Plume, a lot more research is going to need to be done,” Mr. Trimble said, “but there is an enormous amount of information that is already out there.”
The cemetery represents a painful part of the history for many tribes. Children at the school were required to convert to Christianity. Their traditional clothing was replaced with a military style uniform. The school forced them to speak English and choose an English name. Punishments includedbeatings.
Many children died of infectious diseases, as the team suspected was likely the case with Little Chief, Little Plume and Horse. All three were dead within two years of their arrival at the school in 1881.