Institutional Death and Ceremonial Healing Far from Home: The Carlisle Indian School Cemetery (original) (raw)

Abstract

The remains of 186 Native American children from nearly 50 nations are buried in the Carlisle Indian School cemetery, which today stands just inside the main entrance of the U.S. Army War College, in Carlisle, PA. Taken in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from homes across the United States, these childrenFtrained for American citizenship and to reject their traditional culturesFdied and were buried far from home. The children remain historically and spiritually connected to native peoples across the United States, but the Carlisle Indian burial ground does not fall under NAGPRA. In this article, the complex history of this cemeteryFits creation, segregation, removal, contraction, transformation, and preservationFintroduces an account of its repossession by the students' descendants at ''Powwow 2000: Remembering the Carlisle Indian School.'' Parallels between the treatment of Indian dead in the Carlisle cemetery and the treatment of Indian ancestral remains are drawn; yet, although a study of loss and recovery, this is not a story of repatriation. Rather, it is an analysis of the history of a unique Indian burial site and its reclamation as a place for ceremony, healing, and recovery.

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References (60)

  1. US$8,000. http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ai/rqpi/index-eng. asp, accessed May 27, 2010.
  2. J. N. Choate created and sold a commercial series of the most popular images of Carlisle students.
  3. The plot measures 180Â55 ft, the size is given in War De- partment, Q.M.C. Form No. 117, Carlisle Barracks, PA, Building No. 79, Cemetery, 1931, U.S. Army MHI.
  4. The date is inaccurate; the cemetery was moved in 1927, see footnote 33.
  5. Amos La Fromboise, Carlisle Indian School Student File #116, Record Group 75, National Archives; St. John's Epis- copal Church, Carlisle, Record of Burials, number 231, 196; The Sentinel, Friday, November 28, 1879; American Volunteer, Thursday, December 4, 1879; The Carlisle Her- ald, Thursday, December 4, 1879.
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  11. This recapitulated existing black-white patterns of cem- etery segregation in Carlisle, and embraced Indians in an all-too-familiar American racial attribution of space.
  12. This plot was marked as an old military burial ground (Beers 1872).
  13. Adjutant General, E. D. Townsend to Richard Henry Pratt, January 28, 1880, NARA, Records of the Quartermaster General, as above.
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  17. It is possible to locate the cemetery at the northern ex- tremity of the campus, and chart its expansion from a small triangular shape to a large rhombus, using Photo- shop to rescale and superimpose surveys, drawn up to facilitate the laying of the borough sewer, onto engineer- ing maps made by the U.S. Army. See survey map of ''United States Indian Industrial School for Proposed Borough Sewer,'' 1884, and ''Map of the United States Barracks,'' 1909, National Archives, Record Group 77 subgroup b, Records of the Office of Chief Engineers.
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  28. As part of a conference presentation (American Indian Workshop, Swansea, 2006), I showed photographs ta- ken of the cemetery in 2000. Grayson Noley (Choctaw), who visited the cemetery in the 1980s, told me that at that time it was unkempt and dilapidated.
  29. Public law 101-601, Section 5, ''Inventory.''
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