Mass Grave at Crow Creek in South Dakota Reveals How Indians Massacred Indians in 14th Century Attack. (original) (raw)
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Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2010
Recent excavations at the Sacred Ridge Site, just south of the town of Durango, Colorado, have uncovered the single largest deposit (to date) of mutilated and processed human remains in the American Southwest. This deposit dates to the very late eighth or very early ninth century A.D. and therefore represents an incidence of large-scale violence and perimortem mutilation dating to the Pueblo I period (A.D. 700– 900), when initial village formation occurred in the northern San Juan Region of the Southwest. Expectations for various interpretations for the Sacred Ridge assemblage are generated based on previous research and cross-cultural data on cannibalism, warfare, and human bone processing. Based on a lack of fit with previous models developed to account for extreme processing (EP) events, including starvation cannibalism, warfare and social intimidation, and witch-craft accusations, it is proposed that the Sacred Ridge massacre was the result of ethnic conflict during the Pueblo I period.
Remains of 38 Native children found in South Dakota on the grounds of an Indian residential school. By Raffaella Milandri, 2024
The American press is silent. Catholic church denies tribal authorities documents to help identify the remains. Despite Biden's famous and recent “apology” for the abhorrence of the Indian residential school system, practiced in the United States and Canada for more than 100 years, omertà descends over the recent discovery of the wretched remains of 38 Native children at the grounds of the former Immaculate Conception Mission Catholic Indian Residential School on the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota. The news, as of the past few days, has only popped up in three newspapers: the Arizona Daily Star, the Rapid City Journal and the Indian Country News, as if the apology had washed and whitened consciences, creating an imperishable absolution from all sins committed against Native Americans.
The Crow Creek Site Massacre: A Preliminary Report
1981
The full 1981 original report for the USACE-Omaha District on the Crow Creek Massacre (39BF11) in South Dakota. 379 pages. A poorly scanned pdf of the typescript, but very readable. Image scans are of poor quality. The scanners scan records occupy the first few pages, so scroll by them. Authors: L. Zimmerman, T. Emerson, P. Willey, M Swegle, J. Gregg, P. Gregg, T. Haberman, E. White, C. Smith, M. P. Bumsted. The Appendices include all reviewer comments and author responses.
Protecting Native American Human Remains, Burial Grounds, and Sacred Places: Panel Discussion
Wíčazo Ša Review, 2004
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A re-assessment of Basketmaker II cave 7: massacre site or cemetery context
Journal of Archaeological Science, 2012
Our ongoing investigation of early maize farming in the American Southwest has entailed stable isotope analysis and accelerator radiocarbon dating of Basketmaker II remains from sites in the Four Corners region. Here we report radiocarbon dates on a large mortuary assemblage excavated by Richard Wetherill in 1893 from a burial cave in southeastern Utah. It has long been thought that all individuals interred in Cave 7 were massacred in a single violent attack given embedded projectiles and evidence for blunt force trauma. However, accelerator radiocarbon dates on purified bone collagen (n ¼ 96) do not lend strong support to this argument, even among the subset of individuals with clear evidence for violent injuries. Moreover, nearly 80% of Cave 7 burials examined in the study show no evidence of perimortem trauma and no adult females or subadults under the age of 12 appear to have suffered violent deaths. Rather than an anomalous single-event massacre, the Cave 7 radiocarbon dataset suggests that raiding and intragroup, male/male violence was episodic among Basketmaker groups in southeastern Utah. Population densities were relatively high and individuals interred in Cave 7 and elsewhere in the region were heavily dependent on maize agriculture, a prehistoric economic strategy typically characterized by high amplitude fluctuations in productivity. Variability in the array of grave goods accompanying Cave 7 male burials and elsewhere suggests competitive social differentiation likely heightened during periods of resource shortfall leading to intra-group conflict, raiding and perhaps ritualized acts of violence.
1000 to 1100 CE, human sacrifice Cahokia Mounds a pre-Columbian Native American site
“The practice of human sacrifice in America’s largest prehistoric city, the remains of sacrificial victims at the ancient city of Cahokia reveal that those who were killed were not captives taken from outlying regions, as many archaeologists had believed. Instead, they may have been residents of the same community that killed them. When Cahokia was at its peak 900 years ago, it was the largest city in what’s now the United States, a metropolis of about 15,000 people in southwestern Illinois, whose economic and cultural influence reached from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. But one of the many mysteries lingering among the city’s ruins, just outside modern-day St. Louis, is a burial mound excavated in the 1960s and found to contain more than 270 bodies — almost all of them young women killed as victims of human sacrifice. Dated to between 1000 and 1100 CE, their remains were mostly buried in large pits, laid out in neat rows, and bearing few signs of physical trauma, perhaps killed by strangulation or blood-letting. But the mound also contained a striking group of outliers: a separate deposit of some 39 men and women, ranging in age from 15 to 45, who — unlike the rest — had been subjected to all manner of physical violence: brutal fractures, shot with stone points still embedded in their bones, even decapitation.”
The history of the post-discovery Anzick Clovis Site has been questioned as to its proper handling for decades regarding the dynamics of law, tribal position, public position, scientific and academic position and the interactions of the Anzick family as the owners of the real property. In this thesis, I present my findings that the Anzick remains and artifact assemblage were indeed handled appropriately through the years, considering the longitudinal changes in law and continual contribution from other legal cases to the concepts of proper handling of ancient remains. Reflecting on theoretical concepts such as individual human agency, socio-cultural construct and cultural diversity, it is possible to fill the void of cultural misunderstanding pertaining to many anthropological issues. The application of anthropological thought to cultural topics is critical to provide an informed basis from which we may study a specific issue. The anthropological community must consider the potential corollaries of their findings, focusing on respectful and collaborative interaction with a subject society and its peoples. While anthropology is the “the study of humankind”, the definition itself may be misconstrued to suggest or reflect an overtly ethnocentric and hegemonic arrogance. To achieve a collaborative objective, the anthropologist must consider aspects of the study and its cultural implications, with an emphasis on the emic perspective. In this paper, I evaluate specific archaeological case studies which elucidate the importance of respectful collaboration and understanding between the public, anthropologists and Native Americans. As an example of system failure, I discuss the case of the Kennewick Man, comparing and contrasting it with the facts pertaining to the handling of the Anzick Clovis remains which were in fact reburied in June, 2014. My personal involvement with the Anzick reburial, included in-depth personal correspondence and discussion with the family regarding viable options as well as actually hand-digging the grave for the reburial. This close connection with the Anzick reburial activities provides a first-hand accounting of real-life issues encountered during such a process. It is incumbent upon everyone involved to understand our mutual perspectives, from individual agent to the highest level of a cultural entirety. With the help of balanced collaborative interactions we may successfully implement a much needed trans-cultural healing. As the importance of these collaborative interactions cannot be overstated, I will utilize this thesis as the foundation from which I will build my doctoral dissertation. This dissertation will be presented in the form of a comprehensive study of the Anzick Site.