Neenah burial ground studied
Archaeologists will probe bones at water plant site
By Duke Behnke
Post-Crescent staff writer
NEENAH — Archaeologists will arrive today to dig into the mystery of an American Indian burial ground that was discovered last week during the construction of Neenah’s new water plant.
The city hired Great Lakes Archeological Research Center of Milwaukee to exhume the site, which is situated along the water plant’s south property line midway between Lake Winnebago and S. Park Avenue.
American Indian artifacts and bones from at least two people were inadvertently unearthed last week during excavation for a storm sewer.
“I think there are probably more (graves) from what these archaeologists are saying, but they won’t be sure until they get in there,” said Larry Wettering, Neenah’s water works director.
Leslie Eisenberg, coordinator of the burial sites preservation program for the Wisconsin Historical Society, said the bones are believed to date to the 1600s. She has notified four American Indian tribes — the Menominee, Ho-Chunk, Potawatomi, and Sac and Fox of Iowa — of the discovery because it lies within their ancestral territories.
Eisenberg said the bones, once they have been exhumed, could be moved to tribal lands for reburial, allowing construction of the storm sewer to proceed.
The discovery has alarmed segments of the American Indian community, which holds its ancestors sacred.
Garland Twohawk Walker, a Cherokee from Beeville, Texas, told The Post-Crescent Tuesday that the burial ground should not be disturbed.
“The plant should be moved,” Walker said. “You can find another ground to build a plant on. If it was a white man’s grave or a black man’s grave, they wouldn’t bother it.”
Wettering said the archaeologists will comb through an area 50 feet long by 8 feet wide.
“The graves may go beyond that point, but we don’t have to excavate beyond that point” for the storm sewer, Wettering said.
The archaeological work is expected to last seven to 10 days and cost $20,000 to $25,000. The payment will be drawn from the contingency fund for the $25.7 million water plant.
Wettering said the city has hired a security guard to protect the site whenever construction workers and archaeologists are not present.
“It is a construction site,” he said. “We would like people to stay away.”
Eisenberg said Neenah would have been wise to have had an archaeologist on site during the initial excavation but acknowledged the city had no legal requirement to do so.
“We have records of village sites all around the area where the bones were found,” she said. “Any place around Lake Winnebago you are more likely than not to find burials.”
Eisenberg said only a handful of unmarked American Indian graves are uncovered each year in Wisconsin.
“It’s not something that happens on a regular basis, thankfully,” she said. “You don’t want to see anyone’s cemeteries dug up.”
posted by Oshkosh Music Scene @ 1:48 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home