When Old Worlds Meet (1992)

Several months ago, two Native Americans joined an archaeologist and a clergyman near a construction site in Jacksonville, Florida. Excavations for the new Holy Spirit Catholic Church had disturbed the bones of 23 Indians, thought to be the victims of a 16th-century epidemic, and the four had come together to reconsecrate the burial ground.

Harvey Silver Fox Mette, the white-haired chairman of the Commission for Native Americans of the Diocese of St. Augustine, made offerings of corn and tobacco. After burning sweetgrass for incense, he lit a sacred pipe and passed it to each participant. "Creator, help the spirits of all generations buried in this site to understand," Silver Fox intoned. "We are here to honor this place and honor the dead."

Southern Indians, living and deceased, have not always been treated with such respect. When the Seminole chief Osceola died in a South Carolina prison in 1839, for instance, the attending physician felt no qualms about removing the Indian leader's head and taking the skull home to St. Augustine as a souvenir.

Today, museums across the country are reconsidering their position regarding human remains and sacred artifacts scavenged from Indian sites by earlier generations. Those planning the new National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. are taking special pains to design a facility that treats the Native American past with proper regard.