Indian remains returned to ancestral tribal village Story-Date: 04:12 a.m. PST Friday , May 28, 1999 ------------------------------------------------------------ Indian remains returned to ancestral tribal village By Catherine C. Robbins New York Times PECOS, N.M. -- After spending the better part of the century in museums a continent away, the bones of nearly 2,000 Pecos and Jemez Pueblo Indians were finally returned home last week. On May 23, after a 2,200-mile journey, a truck arrived in the Pueblos' ancestral village with bones returned by museums at Harvard University and Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. Before the bones were buried in sacred ground in the 7,000-acre Pecos National Historical Park, about 30 miles southeast of Santa Fe, tribal leaders led a procession, including the Pecos governor, Ruben Sando, who carried the ceremonial cane of authority given to the Pecos tribe by King Philip III of Spain in 1620. Joshua Madalena, the tribe's cultural officer, described the mood of the people as one of "spiritual excitement." Madalena had spent the previous week in Massachusetts, preparing for the return of the remains and artifacts in line with the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The return of the skeletal remains, which were excavated by the archaeologist Alfred Kidder in the early part of this century, is the largest repatriation in the nation's history, experts say. The remains, which date from the 12th century to the 19th, were reburied at the park because the Indians consider it a sacred ancestral site, despite its being owned and managed by the National Park Service. The Pueblo of Pecos was designated as a national monument in 1965, through the efforts of the actress Greer Garson and her husband, E.E. Fogelson, who lived in Santa Fe. Some of the ruins of the pueblo and the church built by the Spaniards have been restored. The return of the remains has raised some unexpected questions for the Jemez people. For instance, although Pueblos have a burial ceremony for returning the dead to Mother Earth, the idea of reburial was foreign to the Pueblos, said Randolph Padilla, a former governor of the Pueblo of Jemez who is also a coordinator for the repatriation activities. At Jemez Day School, a Bureau of Indian Affairs elementary school, Paul Tosa had another task added to his usual year-end job of readying his sixth-grade students for graduation to middle school: He also explained the repatriation, which he said was an event as momentous for the Jemez as the Civil War was for the nation. The students were full of questions about the repatriation process and the remains themselves. "The big issue is why so many," Tosa said. Other questions followed, he said: "Why from Pecos so far over there? Who gave them permission? Why has it taken so long to get them back?" For answers, Tosa, a Pecos descendant and former governor of the Pueblo of Jemez, relied on the history he has been teaching them all year. The history curriculum begins with the stories of the Jemez and Pecos people that Tosa has heard since childhood from his father and grandfather, who heard them from their own grandfathers. Tosa integrates the Pueblo stories into Greek mythology and European and American history. On the walls of his classroom, he has hung pictures of the Hubble telescope and fossils alongside hand-lettered posters of native stories and newspaper clippings about contemporary American Indian issues. Still, Tosa said he had difficulty explaining to an outsider the balancing act he performs in answering the children's questions. Part of the problem is that his stories compete with modern life. Another barrier is the complexity of the Towa language spoken by most of the pueblo's residents. The children might learn that "scientist" means someone who is here just to study. In the context of archaeological activities, Tosa said, that word acquires another connotation in the Towa language, namely, a scientist is someone who creates "a disturbance." Tosa's ancestors have been laid to rest in what is an archaeological treasure house. The national park is on a rocky promontory surrounded by the broad, lush valley of the Upper Pecos River. It tells centuries of stories. The most visible ruins are tall, stark adobe walls of the Spanish mission church. But to the west of the church is the ancestral Pecos village, built by Rio Grande Pueblo Indians -- perhaps even by some of those reburied there Saturday -- beginning in the 12th century. A series of mounds covered with grasses, shrubs, wildflowers and dirt are the telltale signs of unexcavated archaeological sites. Their stone outcroppings mark the remnants of the four- or five-story buildings with nearly 700 rooms -- the homes of the Pueblo people who came home last week. Some of the Jemez Indians at last week's ceremony had walked for three days, crossing mesas, mountains and the Rio Grande, in a reverse re-creation of a similar walk in the 19th century. Pecos was a thriving pueblo and trading center with about 3,000 inhabitants when Spaniards found it in 1540, but by 1838, the population had been reduced by warfare and disease to about two dozen. The remaining Pecos residents abandoned their pueblo and walked to the Pueblo of Jemez, joining with kin to whom they are related by language, culture and religion. ------------------------------------------------------------