CARLISLE, Pa. \u2013 The Carlisle Indian Industrial School had not yet held its first class when Matavito Horse and Leah Road Traveler were taken there in October 1879, drafted into the U.S. government\u2019s campaign to erase Native American tribes by wiping their children’s identities. <\/p>\n
A few years later, Matavito, a Cheyenne boy, and Leah, an Arapaho girl, were dead.<\/p>\n
Persistent efforts by their tribes have finally brought them home. The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma received 16 of its children, exhumed from a Pennsylvania cemetery, and reburied their small wooden coffins last month in a tribal cemetery in Concho, Oklahoma. A 17th student, Wallace Perryman, was repatriated to the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma in Wewoka.<\/p>\n
Burial ceremonies are \u201can important step toward justice and healing for the families and Tribal Nations impacted by the boarding school era,\u201d the Cheyenne and Arapaho government said. Seminole communications director Mark Williams said Perryman\u2019s family wanted no public statements.<\/p>\n
Most details are lost to history, but records in the National Archives and documents assembled by a team at Dickinson College offer glimpses into experiences at Carlisle, where 7,800 students<\/a> from more than 100 tribes were sent amid genocidal warfare as the U.S. government seized land for white settlers.<\/p>\n Among the 17 were children who tended fires, raised pigs and learned how to make clothes. Some were baptized as Christians. One earned 66 cents over four days at the school shoe shop. Another was praised for finishing three pairs of pants in one week \u2014 when he wasn\u2019t making bricks.<\/p>\n Who were the children?<\/p>\n Their causes of death, if mentioned in school records, include tuberculosis, spinal meningitis and typhoid fever. Perryman died after abdominal surgery. The records are often contradictory, obviously wrong about names and ages or lacking basic information about their families.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes the only evidence of a child\u2019s existence is a scrap of paper with a hastily scribbled note,\u201d said Preston McBride, a Pomona College historian who has examined boarding school death records.<\/p>\n Upon arrival in Carlisle, their long hair was cut. They were issued military-style uniforms and often housed apart from any relatives, forced to speak English.<\/p>\n In addition to lessons in reading, writing, math, science and other subjects, they were sent to work in \u201coutings\u201d at farms and homes.<\/p>\n Several of the 17 were closely related to tribal leaders, reflecting how the U.S. government used the boarding system to control Native people. Each one was somewhere between a hostage, prisoner of war and student being forced to assimilate, Harvard University historian Philip Deloria said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s undoubtedly true if you have someone\u2019s kids you have a certain amount of leverage against them,\u201d Deloria said.<\/p>\n The Cheyenne and Arapaho had been debilitated by decades of battles for their very existence by the time classes began at Carlisle. Some of their children had lost relatives in the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado and the 1868 attack on Black Kettle\u2019s camp along the Washita River in present-day Oklahoma.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery tribe has slightly different sorts of experiences, but in the aggregate, especially in the western parts in the 1860s on, it\u2019s just violence all the time,\u201d Deloria said.<\/p>\n A promising artist<\/p>\n Matavito and Leah’s journey was recounted by federal Indian Agent Charles Campbell, who wrote that care had been \u201ctaken to accept the most promising.” He also noted that Matavito\u2019s father, a brother of famed Cheyenne leader Black Kettle, \u201cforced me to accept his boy.\u201d<\/p>\n Matavito became the first typhoid fever victim at Carlisle. Why Leah died is unclear. <\/p>\n Also repatriated was Elsie Davis, whose father, Cheyenne Chief Bull Bear, was a leader of the Dog Men Society of warriors and a signatory to the 1867 Medicine Lodge Treaty<\/a>.<\/p>\n Called Vah-stah by her family, she was about 13 when enrolled, according to her great grand-niece, Cheyenne citizen and Native American rights advocate Suzan Shown Harjo.<\/p>\n Vah-stah\u2019s family remembers her as kind and a promising artist. She died at the school at 18 of tuberculosis in July 1893, while her etching was exhibited at the Chicago World\u2019s Fair. Her headstone, like many others, contained an error \u2014 in her case, the year of death.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not even clear if they had a service to bury her or if they just buried her without much of a funeral or ceremony,\u201d Harjo said. \u201cIt must have been just quite awful.\u201d<\/p>\n A published eulogy attributed to the brother of one of the 17 students, William Sammers, said his death of meningitis in May 1888 at age 19 \u201chappened in these glorious and grandest days of our school lives.\u201d But records also show Sammers had at one point escaped and traveled 70 miles (113 kilometers) away before he was arrested and returned.<\/p>\n Shattering experiences<\/p>\n Many reports of sexual, physical and emotional abuse of children at boarding and residential schools across the U.S. and Canada have come to light, with much more undoubtedly having been unreported, ignored or covered up. In 1913, 276 Carlisle students petitioned the U.S. Department of the Interior to investigate its conditions, including harsh punishments for minor infractions. <\/p>\n A 2024 Interior Department review found at least 973 Native American children died<\/a> at 400 federally funded schools. McBride said the true number is likely in the thousands. The shattering experiences factored into President Joe Biden\u2019s apology<\/a> last year. <\/p>\n The Pennsylvania school\u2019s legacy remains complex, said Amanda Cheromiah of Laguna Pueblo, who directs the Center for the Futures of Native Peoples at Dickinson College in Carlisle. “There were such diverse experiences, some were good and some were bad \u2014 and everywhere in between,\u201d Cheromiah said. Six of her relatives attended Carlisle.<\/p>\n Cheromiah said several hundred people attended services in early October for the 16 Cheyenne and Arapaho children. She called it \u201cone of the most memorable moments that I\u2019ve ever heard other people share.\u201d<\/p>\n Some tribes are not interested in opening their children\u2019s graves. Because of poor documentation, others may never be returned. A grave thought to contain a 15-year-old Wichita boy<\/a> was found to hold someone else\u2019s remains last year. Expecting a 13- or 14-year-old boy from the Catawba Indian Nation<\/a> of South Carolina in 2022, the team instead found a female teenager. Their remains were reburied, the graves marked unknown.<\/p>\n Norene Starr, a Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes projects coordinator who led their repatriation, called it a \u201cfederal atrocity\u201d that the exhumed remains of two more students didn\u2019t match their gravestones and had to be reburied. She\u2019s working with forensic experts to identify them.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s gonna be a long, long journey,\u201d Starr said.<\/p>\n Since repatriations began<\/a> at Carlisle in 2017, the bodies of 58 students<\/a> have been returned, leaving 118 graves with Native American or Alaska Native names. About 20 more contain unidentified Native children.<\/p>\n Costly undertakings<\/p>\n Exhumations are complicated and costly. The federal government and the Christian churches involved have a moral imperative to fund the work at many more boarding school graveyards, said Samuel Torres with the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.<\/p>\n \u201cFor those tribes that are interested in identifying where their children are and to bring them home, there\u2019s an opportunity for complicit entities to step up and fund these initiatives,\u201d said Torres, who is Mexica\/Nahua.<\/p>\n To approve repatriation, the U.S. Army requires a notarized affidavit from the closest living relative, but defers to families and tribes to determine who that might be.<\/p>\n Starr said in cases where the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes weren\u2019t able to locate lineal descendants, the tribal governor\u2019s office adopted the children to effectuate their return.<\/p>\n