University Daily Kansan / Thursday, April 6, 1989
Lifestyle
9
Hopewell reburial Ancient Indian bones finally sleep in peace
Story by Marian Weeks • Illustration by Paul Linder
he Bocks had no idea that there was a tomb constructed 2,000 years ago on the land that is now the city of New York.
"We were having trees taken out," said Sharon book, a professional artist. "I didn't know it was a fence."
Ine man bullocking came to the house and said, "I think I ran into an old well up there." Leonard Lock
Sharon and her husband, Leonard, hired a man three years ago, to bulldoze a mound in their field and remove the high tops of the field contours to make farming the land easier.
The Bocks went to investigate and while removing limestone found a little piece of bone, which Sharon Bock thought was a deer that had fallen into the well, she said. But while removing more stones, they found more bones and human teeth and decided not to disturb the site further.
From Logan, Sharon Bock learned that the mound was a Hogwolf Indian burial site.
Sharon Bock contacted Brad Logan, research associate at Spooner Anthropology Museum, who came to take slides and examine the site the following fall. she said.
Alfred Johnson, KU professor of anthropology, said that the Hopewell Indians hunted white-tailed deer, gathered nuts and seeds and farmed corn and squash in this area 2,000 years ago.
The tribe, which left its relatives in Illinois about the time of Christ, constructed square toms of dry mason walls in which to bury their dead. Johnson covered the toms with timbers and then with earth.
The Bocks said they would not have disturbed the grave if they had known what it was.
"We somehow inadvertantly disturbed his spirit, and it had to be put back to rest." Sharon Bock said.
They felt a great responsibility, like the responsibility to a relative, to return the bones to the exact place where they had been, they said.
By the time Logan finished his work, Sharon Bock had begun to look for a medicine person to rebury the bones uncovered accidentally. It took a year to find him.
"It's like contacting a priest or a minister," she said of her relationship with the medicine person.
said,
"But people like me, they don't know where to start," said Sharon Rock, who is not Indian.
Sharon Bock's questioning led her to Lee Lawhead, past director of the Heart of America Indian Center
Kansas City, IA.
Lawhead arranged for Hollis Thomas, a Pottowa-
tomic-Kickapoo medicine person, to come on May 15, 1988, to conduct a ceremony to rebury the uncovered remains of the Hopewell Indian male, Sharon Bock said.
Lawneen meditated the arrangements for the ceremony and informed the Bocks that there could be no photographs of the ceremony and that those present would be requested not to describe the ceremony to them.
Leonard Bock, an engineer, hand printed invitations to the ceremony to be given to close friends and family they thought would understand the need for the reubral.
Iomas came with his wife and four or five others the day of the reburial. Leonard Coack said he was busy the day of the ceremony making sure that all was prepared correctly for the ceremony.
— a Hopk saying printed on Leonard and Sharon Bocks' invitation to a Hopewell Indian reburial ceremony
'Feathers in the wind mark a sacred place. Prayers for eternal peace and harmony fill a spiritual space.'
"The ceremony was so special that it was really something I'll never forget," Leonard Bock said.
Sharon Bock said. "Those who were there know we shared something very special. They've told me or they've written letters. It's kind of like a bonding of those who gathered that day.
"My grandmother, who is 96, was upset when the grave was opened, or desecrated. It pleased her that we put back his spirit to rest. Hollis hooks hands with her and did not shake hands with anyone else. He treated her like an elder of the tribe. He was especially nice to her."
Leonard Bock said that he and his wife, often
taught him to walk and walked in their
thoughts almost 2,000 years ago.
Sharon Bock said she almost felt the presence of the native men and women when she walked in the woods gathering vines and reeds that she uses in her basket-like sculptures.
"My main goal as an artist is to communicate to other people life and death and decay in nature, so I'm sensitive to that. I know some Indian tribes do believe that in India there is a spirit," he wrote. "In everything there is a spirit."
— there is a spirit. In everything there is a spirit,"
she said.
Editor's note: Kansan reporter Marian Week interviews several prominent Native Americans on the subject of ancestral reburial while researching her stories. The following excerpts are intended to promote a deeper understanding of the Native American viewpoint.
Circle of life
From David Hill, a Choctaw,
Lawrence resident and American
Indian Movement coordinator;
"In Native American culture, we identify with the circle of life and we are relatives of all things. The animals and the plant life whom we are also related to give of their bodies to our sustenance.
"The buffalo was once our main connection with the circle of life. We could not eat grass, but the buffalo could eat grass. And we ate the grass and then learned to make the grass grow. We consider the earth our mother and the Great Spirit our father. Even the white man's Bible says, 'Honor thy father and mother,' and somewhere in there it even talks about the circle
"They should not deny those buried from participating in the circle of life. It is our way since the beginning unto now.
"If people dig up our ancestors, then no respect is shown to our culture and even the white man's culture is disrespected in his own belief. Inadvertently, two cultures are disrespected.
"In the coming generations, if the two cultures are taught a disrespect, if this is allowed to continue and presented as good, then like so much of the earth that has become our cultures have become polluted.
The basic Christian culture produces a strong man, a strong woman and a strong family. The basic Native American cultures produce strong men, strong women and strong families.
Our cultures are the foundation of our communities. They are the product of ancient knowledge and have stood the test of time. All things are related, even respecting the bodies of the deceased.
"There's the M.I.A. example. Look how much trouble the United States goes to to get their bones and help them in helping their relatives over here."
"What unseen, hidden teaching is there in respecting the bones of our elders? What unseen danger is there in disrespect?"
"This disrespect for the remains of ancestors could also be a reflection of how in the family life in this Western culture, the elders are not respected. Their bones, before they've even passed on, are taken to places away from the home and are kept drugged up.
"The whole family circle is disrupted from the womb to the tomb."
From Dennis Banks, a Lakota Sioux and co-founder of the American Indian Movement, who lives on the Pendleton Reservation in South Dakota.
"It's not just disrupted from physical, cellular disruption — it's spiritual and emotional disruption."
The balance
"When death occurs, it's completing the cycle of life. But yet there's still that journey that the one who died must follow. The journey must take, called the spirit journey."
"In this understanding of life there is an understanding of the purpose of life, an understanding of life and the understanding of the understanding of life itself."
"That journey lasts a long time.
But from birth until death, there are different phases of life that each individual goes through. . . ."
There is a balance in the cycle of life, banks said, just as there is a balance between oxygen and hydrogen in the air that we breathe.
"If that balance is upset or
tipped, then the other side doesn't get full recognition of being a part of that balance.
"When you die, your spirit goes on a journey, but your bones themselves are part of the fruit that you give back to the mother earth. Once you die, it happens, once death happens, it (your body) becomes fruit."
"Burial is also part of it, and that spirit goes on a journey and the bones are left to be undisturbed
"To upset that, to interrupt that process, you're interrupting the process that is the balance of the body and the earth. You're denying the earth the last meal, the last Thanksgiving."
The purpose of life is the "continuation of life itself, the continuation of culture, the continuation of song, the continuation of art, the continuation of ideas. That's the purpose of life.
"The purpose of life is to carry on, to pass on those instructions, to understand our relationship with each other. That relationship between man and trees was understood at the very beginning.
"We are all related to each other part of the universe. That's the Great Spirit."
Rest in peace
From Joseph Geronimo, who says he is the great grandson of Geronimo, the famous Apache medicine man. Joseph Geronimo lives in Mescalero, New Mexico. He was a tribal councillor for eight years for his tribe. About four years ago, state and other officials planned to move his great grandfather's remains from Fort Sill, Oka., to Arizona as part of a centennial celebration in an effort to attract tourists.
"Geronimo had a surviving daughter named Lena, Lenna Geronimo. She moved here to Mescalero, with her mother and her brother, as well as many of the century, Lenna Geronimo had several children, one of which was my
father. And that is how we are direct descendents of Geronimo.
"This was causing a lot of anguish for the family. It's beyond any words in the English language for me to describe what I feel about the people that would even think of disturbing anything like that.
"Several years ago, (officials) wanted to remove the remains of my great-grandfather back to Germany, so it as to attract tourism in that area.
"We need to let the general public understand how we feel about it, the desecration of the sacredness of burials.
"There's a common saying that when a person's dead, they should rest in peace. That certainly isn't the case with the Native Americans.
" Their remains have been dug up and on displays some place, sometimes in national museums like the Smithsonian National Museum in New York, medicine bags, things like that. This is an appealing.
"We couldn't even think of stealing from the Catholic Church or any other church and putting their vestments on display in our museum. What they are doing is robbing our church."
"There's no way in the world that I would ever consent to the disturbing of any remains, whether out of curiosity or to determine whether or not the remains are still there. It's just not right."
"... I think the best way to resolve conflicts is to know one another, so everyone will understand we're all humans no matter what color we are. Take the religions, for instance.
"I think there is only one God. And he gave the various people different ways to communicate to him and for him to communicate to the different people the best way they know how.
" . . . These things that are disturbed without anyone meaning to, it's too late. But they should rebury them. I don't think that they should display them. They should be reburied as soon as possible."
"They gave us our religious rights and practices because at that time
—and we still are — closer to nature and the wildlife, so he gave that to us."
Nature's people
From a speech by Noah Sealth,
also known as Chief Sealth, delivered
in autumn 1854, in response to
a government treaty offer. Chief
Sealth died in 1866 at about 80 years of age.
"To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their final resting place is hallowed ground . . . "
"Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its winding rivers, its great mountains and its sequestered vales, and they yearn in tenderest affection over the lonely hearted living and often return to visit, guide and comfort them."
" . . . I here and now make this first condition (to accepting a treaty) — that we will not be denied the privilege, without molestation, of visiting at will the graves of our ancestors, friends and children.
"The very dust under your feet responds more lovingly to our footsteps than to yours, because it is the ashes of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic power that is rich with the life of our kindred.
"The noble braves, fond mothers, glad, hearty maidens, and even the little children, who lived and rejoiced here for a brief season, and whose very names are now forgotten, still remember their deep fastnesses which, at eventide, grow shadowy with the presence of dusky spirits.
"And when the last Red Man shall have perished from this earth and his memory among the white men shall have become a myth, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe; and when your children's children shall think themselves alone in the fields, the store of darkness, the pathway, or in the silence of the pathness woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth, there is no place dedicated to solitude.
"At night, when the streets of your cities and villages will be silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled and still love this beautiful land.
"The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless.
Dead — did I say? There is no death. Only a change of worlds."