And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Discovery of 19th-century skeletons presents
problems
http://www.dallasnews.com/texas_southwest/0602tsw10skeletons.htm
06/02/99
By Darren Barbee / Scripps Howard News Service
REFUGIO, Texas - Archaeologists have started the delicate
process of removing as many as 60 human skeletons from a
19th-century mission cemetery discovered beneath a highway.
What happens before the remains are reinterred may be even
more delicate.
The burial ground was found in March by a construction crew
that was widening U.S. Highway 77. Since then, the crew has
held up construction pending notification of next of kin - a
task made daunting by the passage of more than 150 years in
some cases.
But officials couldn't continue to wait because of congestion
on the highway, said Becky Kureska, a Texas Department of
Transportation spokeswoman. For that reason, Refugio
County Judge Roger Fagan ruled that the Transportation
Department could proceed with excavation.
A six-member crew will spend about three weeks on the
excavation, Ms. Kureska said. As many as 60 sets of remains
may be found in the site that lies 2 feet below the highway
surface near Our Lady of Refuge Catholic Church, officials
estimate. The building occupies the location of the original
Spanish colonial mission founded in 1795. Authorities believe
the burials took place between 1800 and 1830.
The remains of seven people have already been found.
As the dirt is carefully sifted for bones, and as those
bones are
in turn separated skeleton by skeleton, at least one American
Indian tribe disagrees with plans for the bones before they are
reburied.
After the remains are unearthed, they will be packed and sent
to the Center for Archaeological Research at the University of
Texas at San Antonio, said Nancy Kenmotsu, branch
supervisor of archaeological studies for the Transportation
Department.
There, the remains will be studied to identify descendants.
Failing that, bone structures may at least reveal the
ancestry of
the person - an American Indian or Spaniard, for instance.
The bones will also be examined to glean insights into the
lifestyle at the mission.
"The issues of trying to study them is tied to an obligation
under the National [Historic] Preservation Act," Ms.
Kenmotsu said.
Tribes including the Caddo, Tonkawa and Mescalero Apaches
have been notified of those plans.
Don Patterson, tribal president of the Tonkawa, said he had
no problem with relocating the remains to another cemetery -
but not to a laboratory. "That's what Indians object to," said
Mr. Patterson, who lives in Oklahoma. "Pulling people out of
the ground and putting them on shelves and letting them sit
there. It's an indecent thing.
"Why don't we go dig up Sam Houston and study him? He's
of historical significance," he said.
The Rev. John Vega, pastor of Our Lady of Refuge, said the
transportation department had taken pains to handle the
situation with discretion. The department "doesn't plan on
making a museum exhibit out of all of this," he said. "They
are trying to learn any useful information on the life and times
of people. Then they will be reinterred properly."
Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
doctrine of international copyright law.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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