Crow Creek Massacre - Reburial and Further Study

Reburial and Further Study

Before the excavations could proceed, the Crow Creek Sioux Reservation Tribal Council, the Corps of Engineers, and the University of South Dakota Archaeology Laboratory agreed that the remains could not leave South Dakota for study and that after study the remains should be reburied on the Crow Creek site itself, the place where the families had lived and died. At the request of the Arikara, the remains were placed in five burial vaults and so as not to disturb the site, the vaults were buried in areas where earlier excavations had taken place in the 1950s. The study took three years, and the reburial took place in late summer 1981. Several Christian ceremonies, a traditional Lakota ceremony, and a private Arikara ceremony were offered. The reburial was controversial (Zimmerman and Alex 1981) and one of the largest ever to have occurred in the United States. So much skeletal evidence was gathered that more than 30 years after the excavations studies are still occurring based on measurements, photographs, and radiographs. New analyses of the dates on the massacre and the occupational history of the site are also occurring, which may change some interpretations (Bamforth and Nepstad-Thornberry 2007).