Caretakers memorialize children of Chilocco boarding school
Dan Bigbee:
In 1884, the Chilocco Agricultural Indian School opened in North Central Oklahoma. In that same year, the Chilocco Cemetery was established. The cemetery was abandoned in 1935. Out of 150 ground-penetrating radar anomalies, the remains of 67 children have been identified in the cemetery at Chilocco.
The children belong to 79 tribes. Today local tribes and individual Native Americans have taken it upon themselves to restore the cemetery and honor those buried here.
Dan “Sasuweh” Jones:
First little girl was buried here in 1884. It went on to 1935 where the cemetery was used. After 1935, it was abandoned. At some point in time in the history since 1935, the cemetery has run down a lot, overgrown. Today it’s being carefully attended to and cared for.
But the monument started as an early dream. There’s always been a monument here. Sometime in the last 30 years, the monument that was here was stolen. There’s some 79 tribes on the memorial. This is memorial that I built on behalf of the tribes.
They died of all sorts of types of things from drowning to accidents of various kinds, different kinds of diseases that they died of. Consumption was certainly a major problem with American Indians at this time.
The United States government kept records of the children that were buried here. From those records, we were able to come up with these names. But we also did ground-penetrating radar here.
We know that there’s a lot more than 80 anomalies under the ground. We’ve identified over 150 anomalies. We’ve tried to keep the area of the cemetery big enough that still in honor of those who are unknown that’s still buried here.
It always breaks my heart that the first little girl who died here was a member of the Wichita Nation. She died in 1884. She was the first little girl buried here. Her Indian name Takare is translated to take care. That’s what we’re trying to do within the spirit of Takare is to take care.
Dan Bigbee:
From the Chilocco Indian School in North Central Oklahoma, this is Dan Bigbee reporting for Buffalo’s Fire.
