Chris Sikich

chris.sikich@indystar.com

The first summer archaeologists began excavating a Native American burial ground at Strawtown Koteewi Park, they found a human jawbone.

The law was clear. They should have notified Native American tribes to allow them the opportunity to rebury their ancestor.

Instead, they studied, cataloged and boxed up the bone fragments. And for the next 10 years, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne's archaeological team and the Hamilton County Parks & Recreation Department continued digging aggressively — never notifying tribal leaders.

"What happened is awful," Richard Sutter, the head of IPFW's anthropology department, told IndyStar. "It's inexcusable."

An IndyStar investigation found archaeologists and park officials ran roughshod over a federal law designed to protect Native American graves. Their actions not only compromised an important archaeological site, they further eroded the state’s already long-strained relationship with Native Americans.

From 2001 to 2011, archaeologists pulled 500,000 items from the ground, including arrowheads, pottery and worked animal bone, and handed them over to the parks department. They removed more than 90,000 artifacts associated with human remains and 200 human bone samples and teeth, putting it all in storage.

“It’s outrageous and it’s disrespectful,” said George Strack, a member of the Miami of Oklahoma. “The tribes were trying to be respectful of those people who came before us … and honor the wishes of the people they buried, that they not be disturbed and they be put back to rest.”

The county parks department and archaeologists had hoped the extensive dig would tell the story of one of Central Indiana’s richest ancient Native American settlements. They also hoped it would draw interest to Hamilton County’s newest and most ambitious park.

But when digging into grave sites, the law is straightforward. Under the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), the parks department was required to consult with tribes to return human remains, spiritual items and artifacts found in graves.

The parks department relied on the expertise of the archaeologists, including those with IPFW and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Historic Preservation & Archaeology. But at no time did they make the parks department aware of the need to comply with NAGPRA, despite the fact it was a well-known law in the archaeological community.

Native Americans did not discover the extent of the excavations until years later. Now they want the parks department to hand over the funeral objects of their ancestors.

Other states have taken steps to ensure such disputes never arise, passing strict laws that prevent excavations of graves and sacred ground. But Indiana has not.

To many, the excavations at Strawtown are another injustice for Native Americans in Indiana since tribes were forcibly removed from the state in the 1800s.

"I always got the sense from the people at Strawtown that they never felt they had ever done anything wrong and that the tribes were just picking on them,” Strack said. “That we were just being bullies.”

But the central damning question about Strawtown is: How did this injustice come to pass? Specifically, how could such an extensive dig at a well-known Native American burial ground happen for so long without anyone notifying the tribes?

The U.S. Department of the Interior, which enforces NAGPRA, held Hamilton County responsible for not complying with the law — and assessed a $13,000 fine. But archaeological experts and people associated with the dig who spoke to IndyStar suggest the blame is more widespread and systemic.

For one, Indiana has no system to ensure NAGPRA compliance. But just as significantly, experts are troubled by the lack of effort on the part of archaeologists who had intimate knowledge of the law. That includes state officials who oversaw the project and the prominent archaeologist whose passion for Native American artifacts drove the ambitious Strawtown excavations.

There were plenty of reasons to believe the 810-acre Strawtown Koteewi Park on Ind. 37 north of Noblesville was the site of an ancient burial ground.

As far back as 2,000 years ago, Native Americans built two burials mounds and two enclosures in a sweeping bend of the White River.

The site of the park was farmed for two centuries. Locals curious about the mounds dug up and collected skeletons and other artifacts.

From the 1870s to the 1930s, the archaeological wealth of the site was so well known that scholars and tourists — including such luminaries as Eli Lilly — trekked to Hamilton County to see them. They found the remains of adults and children.

The most significant earthwork was a 300-foot diameter enclosure built around 1200 to 1400. Surveyed in the 1870s, the 6-foot-high flat-topped mound was surrounded by a 20-foot-wide, 9-foot-deep ditch. By then, it had begun to erode because of farming.

In 1939, Dan Taylor acquired the land and closed it to archaeologists and other enthusiasts.

It wasn’t until the late 1990s that IPFW archaeologist Robert McCullough tried to revive that interest.

McCullough, one of the region's foremost archaeologists, has a keen interest in prehistoric ceramics and had noted the significance of Strawtown in his dissertation. Archaeologists who worked with him say he was in search of significant Native American artifacts. He wanted to help tell the story of the civilizations that thrived in the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley states beginning 2,200 years ago.

McCullough declined to answer questions posed by IndyStar.

Colleagues of McCullough’s say he sought Taylor’s permission to excavate at the site but was denied. Then, in 1999, Taylor died and things at Strawtown began to change.

The next year, Hamilton County Parks Director Allen Patterson convinced the county to buy Taylor’s farm for $3.75 million. He dreamed of developing the largest park in Hamilton County, something akin to a state park with multiple recreational activities.

He and McCullough put their heads together and created the idea for Central Indiana's largest public archaeology program.

IPFW began digging at Strawtown Koteewi Park in 2001.

Every year, McCullough received federal grants awarded by the state to archaeologists who teach schoolchildren about their methods and goals. Most programs allow students to observe field work. But McCullough developed a hands-on approach that made Strawtown a destination for Central Indiana schools.

Students would screen dirt from the excavations, under supervision, during Indiana Archaeology Month.

The first year, 250 students participated. By 2011, more than 4,200 kids screened for artifacts, sometimes finding bones or teeth. News articles celebrated the program. The park won awards.

The added labor helped McCullough dig extensively at Strawtown. Some of the archaeologists involved questioned whether digging so much was necessary.

Andrew Smith and Craig Arnold, two of McCullough’s assistant archaeologists, said they excavated entire structures, in many cases leaving nothing untouched. They dug so extensively that future archaeologists who might have new technology will not be able to reinvestigate certain sites. Procedure calls for no more than half of structures to be excavated and they took so many artifacts from the ground, it left little money for analysis.

"We would have gotten better information had we dug 2,000 artifacts and really analyzed them,” Arnold said.

Others found the extent of the excavations troubling. Beth McCord, an archaeologist from Ball State University, said she could understand digging so thoroughly had the site been in danger of being bulldozed by a road or development.

“The excavation went from educational in nature to, ‘we have to open up a big block of stuff every summer for those school groups,’” she said.

The parks department asked IPFW to avoid graves, but archaeologists continually found themselves digging into shafts that contained human remains. Some items they found were displayed at the park’s nature center. Others were used in promotional materials.

After several years, Arnold and Smith said, signs they had hit a grave became routine. Animal bone left as offerings. Gravel. Funerary vessels. Engraved tools and pottery. But the digging continued.

Bone and teeth samples were often removed for studies on dental health and nutrition. But they said many items never were tested as the artifacts began to pile up.

During those same years, the park took shape as one of the most beautiful in Central Indiana. A trail system follows the river. A ropes course lines a forest. An archery center rises from the plains. A faux village is taking shape. Patterson cut a deal to allow Beaver Materials to dig a gravel pit at the site, to be turned into a boating and swimming lake.

Compromises were made along the way. The lake will be smaller than imagined, and S-shaped, to avoid Native American sites. An observation deck overlooking what once was a Native American settlement was scaled down after another survey found artifacts nearby.

State law required IPFW and the parks department to notify the county coroner and the Division of Historic Preservation & Archaeology when they found human remains, which they did.

But federal law also required them to notify tribes. And, for 13 years, they did not.

The wholesale excavation of Native American graves in search of funerary artifacts has occurred repeatedly throughout U.S. history. Tribal leaders are fed up.

Even when plunder is not the object, a double standard has often been applied to Native American graves.

When officials in Iowa moved a burial site in the 1970s to make way for a highway, for example, the bones of white settlers were respectfully reinterred. Native American remains were put in storage.

Public outrage was so strong that state laws were changed in 1976 to prevent a repeat offense.

Marcus Winchester of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi said tribes are not opposed to archaeology. They view it as an opportunity to learn about their past. But they want their ancestors left in peace.

"We need to honor our ancestors who were put in the ground there for a reason. That's where they need to be, and that's where they need to stay," he said.

To help Native Americans ensure their dead are treated with respect, Congress passed NAGPRA in 1990.

Under NAGPRA, agencies — such as the Hamilton County parks department — or museums that receive federal funding are required to inventory sacred objects, human remains and funerary objects in their collections. Federally recognized tribes have the right to consult with the agencies to determine whether they will claim the objects.

But tribal leaders say some archaeologists and agencies resist the requirement.

Kevin Daugherty, former historic preservation officer of the Pokagon Band of Potawatami, said archaeologists are concerned that Native Americans will say "no" when they want to dig.

"There is an old-school mentality in archaeology in the United States,” he said. “Call it the cowboy mentality or the Indiana Jones mentality, the rugged archaeologist who is going to go out there and nobody is going to tell me what to do with these items I found in the ground.”

At Strawtown Koteewi Park, McCullough and Patterson were warned they were breaking the law by others working at the park.

Don Cochran, a respected archaeologist in Indiana who is responsible for most of the interpretation at Mounds State Park in Anderson, said he raised concerns with both men.

McCord warned the parks department, too. She said McCullough and Patterson had the knowledge they needed to determine whether they should have complied with NAGPRA. A phone call to the national NAGPRA office would have sufficed.

"They obviously had enough of a resource base to reach out and ask people the appropriate way to handle the remains and reporting procedures," McCord said.

Another warning came from within. Karin Maloney, an archaeologist who worked as a history interpreter for the park from 2006 to 2012, said she told McCullough and Patterson the excavations were violating NAGRPA within a year of being hired.

Maloney resigned July 30, 2012, after the parks department suggested re-creating two structures she thought were charnel houses, essentially mortuaries, as part of a faux Native American village at the park. She thought re-creating the structures would be disrespectful to Native Americans.

"I believe that I was justified in 2007 in raising concern over the NAGPRA compliance, archaeological ethics and (the parks department's) role in protecting its resources," she wrote in her resignation letter. "I should've trusted myself."

But officials declined to notify Native American tribes.

Patterson said Rick Jones, the state archaeologist at the time of the digs, told him he did not have to follow NAGPRA because the parks department did not meet the definition of a museum that receives federal funds. The department, though, receives federal funds, had opened a history center and collected artifacts.

"All along, we have tried to do the right thing and follow the instructions of the people we (talked to),” Patterson said.

Jones, who has retired, said he does not recall that conversation. Jones, though, said that neither the state nor McCullough was responsible for complying with NAGPRA. The parks department, he said, was responsible.

It was McCullough’s most significant discovery at the site that eventually brought the digging to a halt and exposed the NAGPRA violations.

In 2007, McCullough dug into the center of the enclosure in search of a solar post he believed was used to determine the time of year.

His theory was that the enclosure wasn't a burial ground but a village where people occasionally buried their dead near their homes.

As IPFW archaeologists dug into the enclosure, they encountered telltale signs, such as bear bones and gravel, that McCullough’s theory was wrong.

As they dug deeper and deeper, they found a ceramic pot, embedded with a mussel shell.

They did not stop until they uncovered a skull. They found a copper plate beneath the skull, indicating a person of status.

Even then, they did not file a report with the NAGPRA office.

Instead, McCullough removed the pottery, which is now thought to be a burial vessel. A significant find, it was the first artifact to link an early Great Lakes culture called the Oneota to Central Indiana.

A new theory emerged about the enclosure. Rather than a village, the habitation may have been built as a spiritual place where offerings were made in graves. Later cultures traveled to the site to use it as a sacred burial ground.

McCullough planned to show the piece off at a conference at the University of Notre Dame, which would attract attention to the digs. Before the conference, he contacted the Miami of Indiana, a nonprofit group based in Peru, Ind., to ask permission to remove the pottery. The problem? The Miami of Indiana is not one of the more than 500 federally recognized tribes, a fact commonly known among archaeologists. They had no jurisdiction in how to handle Native American graves.

Sutter, of IPFW, said McCullough never told him the pottery vessel found in 2007 was from a grave.

He recalls only one discussion about an item found in a grave. Sutter said he asked McCullough in 2011 whether he had obtained permission from federal tribes to test a human tooth in the IPFW laboratory. McCullough, Sutter says, assured him he had talked to the Miami. Sutter said he later realized McCullough was talking about the Miami of Indiana, not the federally recognized tribe.

Sutter believes McCullough "knowingly chose not to go to a federally recognized tribe, instead choosing to deal with a nonfederally recognized entity."

The Miami of Indiana told McCullough he could take the pottery from the grave but should rebury it in a year, which he did.

When Strack learned of the reburial, he became suspicious.

At that time, Strack was a historic preservation officer for Miami of Oklahoma, a federally recognized tribe that lived in Indiana until 1846. That's when the U.S. government removed its members from the state at the request of the Indiana General Assembly. Strack no longer works for the Miami of Oklahoma but answered questions for this story.

In 2009, Strack was told about the reburial by an archaeologist who had toured the park. Strack decided to tour it, also. He was shown where human remains had been discovered and where the reburial had taken place, but he said he did not learn that other grave goods and remains had been excavated.

Strack heard about Strawtown again two years later when McCullough was appointed by the Indiana Department of Transportation to return several items that highway workers had found near Prophetstown State Park, northeast of Lafayette.

McCullough told Strack that archaeologists at Strawtown had found a couple of bones that year and wanted to rebury them, Strack told IndyStar. Strack said he'd be glad to help. Strack said McCullough later told him there were more items from 2004 and 2005.

"At that point," Strack said, "red flags started waving in the wind."

By March 2012, Strack was unsatisfied with the information he was receiving from the parks department and McCullough. The Miami contacted IPFW.

IPFW's chancellor had just fired McCullough for an unrelated personnel matter.

Sutter said he was surprised to learn from Strack of the Native Americans' concerns. He said complying with local, state and federal laws was part of McCullough's responsibilities.

"I would say in general," Sutter said, "I don't think anybody who has knowingly violated NAGPRA regulations should be permitted to work as an archaeologist at a minimum.”

Arnold and Smith began working with the tribes, a collaboration that ultimately led to a list of 90,000 items that were found in graves, near human remains or within sacred sites.

Each new revelation over the next several years — from the fact human bones and grave offerings had been excavated, to the discovery that thousands of children had participated in digs at grave sites — heightened the outrage of Strack and other tribal representatives.

"The idea that uninformed, untrained children were participating in the excavations, pushing dirt through screens, was unthinkable," Strack said. "That could be the decomposed remains of our ancestors."

By November 2012, three tribes had filed federal complaints.

In December 2013, the secretary of the Department of the Interior found that under the federal definition used in NAGPRA, the parks department qualified as a museum that receives federal funds and should have been consulting with Native American tribes. The Department of the Interior issued two citations.

They are the only NAGPRA citations ever issued in Indiana. A handful of citations are issued annually throughout the U.S.; two were issued last year.

McCullough's reputation doesn't appear to have been damaged in the archaeological community.

Jones, the former state archaeologist, defended McCullough's role in the excavations.

"His work has been outstanding as an archaeologist," Jones said.

McCullough was hired by the University of Illinois as a director of special projects in its archaeological survey.

He also is collaborating with the University of Southern Indiana to survey Fort Ouiatenon on the Wabash River in Tippecanoe County. That project received federal grants awarded by the state archaeological office.

Robin Kaler, spokeswoman for the University of Illinois, said the excavations at Strawtown have nothing to do with McCullough's work at Illinois.

"He is a respected research scientist in our Prairie Research Institute," she said.

Tribal leaders who spoke to IndyStar said the failure of the county, university and state to involve the tribes from the beginning damaged Indiana’s already tenuous relationship with them.

Tougher laws might have helped. States such as Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin prohibit excavations of Native American mounds and burial grounds.

Iowa and Illinois keep online databases of all known burial grounds, mounds and sacred sites to avoid potential development.

Minnesota has a NAGPRA compliance officer, currently Leah Bowe, who ensures the federal law is followed.

Bowe said her state orders agencies into civil mediation with Native American tribes when disputes arise.

But she said archaeologists and museums in Minnesota have learned why respecting graves is so important.

"Native people see a direct relationship between tearing their ancestors out of the ground and a lot of the issues we face today," Bowe said.

Even more important, some tribal leaders say, is a state’s willingness to follow the spirit of the laws.

"The real issue is that Indiana removed Native Americans beginning in 1830 and now there is a vacuum of Native Americans that are not available to speak up for those folks left behind in the soil," said Ben Barnes, second chief of the Shawnee.

Phil Bloom, spokesman for the state archaeologist's office, declined to answer questions about the state's role in the Strawtown excavations or whether it should assure NAGPRA is followed.

"DNR honors its relationships with federally recognized Native American tribes and their Tribal Historic Preservation Offices and what we’ve learned from them, and we relish every opportunity to build on those connections," he said in a statement.

Tribal leaders and parks officials disagree on how to move forward at Strawtown.

Tribal representatives want the parks department to tell visitors the land was a sacred burial ground and to take that into account as they develop at the park. Geophysical testing suggests there could be at least 300 burials at the park.

Patterson said the parks department has offered to make a sign on which the Miami of Oklahoma can detail their beliefs about how the land was used. He said the department has been watering down the history of Native American use of the land until the disputes are resolved.

"I don’t want to offend them. I don’t want to cause more problems,” Patterson said.

The Miami of Oklahoma signed an agreement to ensure the parks department collaborates with Native American tribes. Three of the archaeological dig sites have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places to protect them from development, but they still could be excavated. The parks department is considering purchasing land north of the park to excavate another ancient Native American settlement.

The parks department in September agreed to turn over 1,200 items that were taken from or associated with graves.

Rather than rebury those items at Strawtown Koteewi Park, the Miami of Oklahoma removed them from Indiana during the reporting of this story.

As for the remainder of the items, Patterson argues that tribal leaders are demanding more than the law requires.

He doesn't want to return the larger list of 90,000 items the tribes want because he thinks they should be studied. He thinks there is always going to be a debate between science and spirituality.

Under NAGPRA, it's his decision. Indiana does not have a compliance officer or a mediation process to help advocate for Native Americans.

"If it doesn't have to go in the ground and it can help tell the story and be of significance at some point, why?" Patterson said. "And if someone gives us a reason why, we'll do it."

Winchester, of the Pokagon tribe, put it this way.

"If people were going around and digging in their cemeteries, they wouldn't like it, either.”

Call IndyStar reporter Chris Sikich at (317) 444-6036. Follow him on Twitter: @ChrisSikich and at facebook/chris.sikich.