Federal investigation launched into missing bones at Effigy Mounds

The resurfacing last summer of a box of human bone fragments has prompted a federal investigation into the mishandling of Native American remains at Effigy Mounds National Monument.

“We would hope that the powers that be do something. All we want is justice and to take care of the remains of our ancestors,” said Johnathan Buffalo, historic preservation director for the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa, also known as the Meskwaki Nation.

“The general public does not really know how serious a matter this is,” said Buffalo, who is representing the Meskwaki on a committee established to monitor and participate in the investigation.

Representatives of the Meskwaki and 11 other tribes with ancestral connections to Effigy Mounds “were understandably upset,” said Jim Nepstad, superintendent of the National Park Service facility established to preserve and make accessible to the public more than 200 Indian burial and effigy mounds along the Mississippi River north of Marquette.

Nepstad said Tom Munson of Prairie du Chien, Wis., a former superintendent at Effigy Mounds, returned the box of bone fragments last summer. The bones, which had been removed from the museum collection at Effigy Mounds, had been stored in Munson's garage.

Munson said the bones were transferred from an Effigy Mounds storage building to his garage without his knowledge when he retired from the Park Service in 1994.

He had been living in a home at the Effigy Mounds site and the box of bones – which he described as “about the size of an apple box” – was inadvertently transported along with his personal possessions to his home in Prairie du Chien, Munson said.

When he later discovered the contents of the box, Munson said he called then-Effigy Mounds Superintendent Karen Gustin, who asked him to retain custody until an appropriate storage site could be found.

When asked about the bones last year, Munson said he promptly returned them.

Munson said he does not believe he did anything wrong and is not “feeling any pressure” from the investigation.

Ranger Bob Palmer, who worked at Effigy Mounds before transferring last year to the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site in West Branch, said the investigation started with a “very innocent general inquiry” into the whereabouts of artifacts covered by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

An inventory of collections and records revealed that dozens of ancient human remains had been removed from the museum collection in 1990 – the same year Congress passed the law that required the return of human bones and funerary objects to lineal descendants or tribal organizations.

“Given that a lot of time had passed (between the enactment of the law and the discovery of the missing artifacts), we were seriously at risk of losing the trust of the affiliated tribes,” Nepstad said.

Accordingly, the National Park Service established “an unusually transparent procedure” for conducting its investigation, Nepstad said.

The Park Service formed an oversight committee that includes Buffalo and three other tribal representatives, as well as Iowa State Archaeologist John Doershuck, Jerome Thompson of the State Historic Preservation Office and NPS archaeologist Jeff Richner.

“This was something that really needed to be looked at carefully. It was not just neglect of paperwork,” Doershuck said.

NPS Special Agent David Barland-Liles, who is leading the investigation, said his focus is on whether a crime has been committed in the mishandling of the human remains.

He said the Graves Protection and Repatriation Act may have been violated and that a crime may have been committed even before that law took effect.

Barland-Liles is also conducting a second investigation into the malfeasance of officials who built three elevated trails and a maintenance shed at Effigy Mounds without first securing clearances under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, which requires federal agencies to consider the impact of projects on "significant historic properties."

Though he declined to provide details, Barland-Liles said both investigations “are moving along well.”

Nepstad said members of the human remains committee are kept fully informed of the progress of the investigation, with copies of all relevant documents.

“They can see what we see, so it can't be swept under the rug again,” he said.

Nepstad said it is difficult to quantify the volume of the missing remains.

“Some are just fragments. Others are larger. The documentation often lacked specific detail,” he said.

In addition to the returned box of remains, “there is still quite a bit (of the recorded artifacts) missing,” he said.

Nepstad said he understands that whoever has the missing remains might be reluctant to return them out of embarrassment or fear of prosecution.

“I worry that somebody might do something stupid with them,” like disposing of them, he said.

“We're hoping someone will leave them where they can be found by others,” he said.

Abuses by Effigy Mounds officials “have made the spirits of the natives buried in these wooded hills restless,” said Tim Mason, 61, of rural McGregor, a former 19-year seasonal Effigy Mounds employee who was among the first to call attention to the violations of the National Historic Preservation Act.