Lake Erosion Uncovers Abandoned Grave Sites

KAW CITY, Okla. —  The murky waters of Kaw Lake, washing in wavy rhythms against the shoreline, have uncovered some secrets buried in the red clay.

Erosion of the lake bank has turned up human bones, casket fragments and pieces of tombstones left behind at old cemeteries.

The cemeteries supposedly were moved when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built a dam on the Arkansas River in the early 1970s, creating the huge lake with 168 miles of shoreline in northern Oklahoma.

One of them is the Washunga Cemetery, the onetime graveyard for 669 Kaw Indians. Concrete strips that form the borders of some family plots can still be seen here. Objects shaped like vaults are still underground here and there.

No one knows what else remains, or why.

A North Carolina company was hired to relocate the 11 cemeteries to make way for the lake. Were the overlooked remains the result of honest mistakes, sloppiness or deliberate negligence?

The Corps of Engineers and the Kaw Nation are seeking answers, trying to curb the erosion, and taking care of the abandoned remains.

Timothy Kennedy, hired by the tribe to investigate the 20-acre Washunga site, says, “People say, ‘Don’t you get the creeps or weirded out?’

“I feel like if you’re out here with an honest heart and you’re doing a good thing, you don’t have to worry about the spirits getting mad at you.”

Kaw Lake, about 100 miles northwest of Tulsa, was authorized by the Flood Control Act of 1962 and was completed in 1976. Today it boasts some of the state’s best crappie fishing, with campgrounds and boat ramps around its miles of shoreline.

But its construction caused the displacement of residents on the flood plain. The Corps of Engineers hired Big Wheel Inc. of North Carolina to relocate Washunga and the 10 other cemeteries to nearby Ponca City.

“I don’t want to make this into a sinister story,” says Robert Jobson, an archeologist for the corps’ Tulsa district, “but either burials were missed for whatever reason, or people looked but didn’t see anything, or . . . people were incompetent.

“Somebody didn’t do their job.”

Jobson says he doesn’t know what became of Big Wheel Inc. Officials at the corps say they have been searching their files and can’t find out who the principals in the business were, or whether it’s still in business.

People familiar with the project are suspicious that the contract company might have removed only the easily accessible parts of the caskets--leaving behind, for instance, what collapsed or broke off in the dirt.

“What they didn’t tell you is they only reburied the skull,” Jobson says. “That’s probably as hurtful and as gruesome as not reburying them at all.”

Jim Pepper Henry, director of historic preservation for the Kaw Nation, says his relatives were among the 669 people buried at Washunga and the 495 buried at Oak Grove Cemetery. Washunga and Oak Grove were the biggest of the cemeteries relocated.

Pepper Henry says some people back in the 1970s watched to make sure Big Wheel properly moved their loved ones.

“Just the fact that people [bones] have washed out, and there is evidence that other places have not even been disturbed, I think anyone would have their doubts, unless they saw it happen,” he says.

Pepper Henry sent the Oklahoma Department of Health some photos of objects that erosion has uncovered. One photo showed blue socks covering foot bones protruding from a cliff at Oak Grove.

Pepper Henry says he was concerned because the city of Stillwater obtains its drinking water from the lake. Records list diphtheria and tuberculosis as the causes of death for some people buried in the cemeteries, he says.

Roger C. Pirrong, a deputy commissioner at the Health Department, says officials are testing the water, but he doesn’t believe there is any reason for alarm.

“After all this time, it wouldn’t have any bearing,” Pirrong says. “It wouldn’t have when the graves were moved, either.”

A Stillwater municipal official says the city’s drinking water comes from other parts of the lake.

The Kaw Nation stepped in at the Washunga site in August thanks to the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which gives American Indians increased authority over what happens to human remains and sacred objects found on federal lands.

The tribe has cleared away the overgrown brush and willow trees. Kennedy, paid through a federal grant, is devising a grid system and plans to search for graves with radar.

Bees and earthworms and crickets thrive at the remote site, partly covered by lake water. Dry leaves rustle in the wind.

Carolyn Godberson of Ponca City says her great-grandfather in 1895 donated five acres for the Oak Grove Cemetery, now called Coon Creek Cove. She says she learned of the erosion when a boater spotted an exposed casket about 10 years ago.

But the matter received little attention or priority until the Kaw Nation got involved, she says.

While the Kaw Nation has taken the lead at Washunga, the Corps of Engineers went into the Oak Grove Cemetery recently with sandbags and vegetation to stop the erosion.

Parts of human skeletons found in the open were sent to Tulsa for storage and attempts at identification.

“We did not go probing and looking for things we couldn’t see, and I know some folks in the community were unhappy with that,” Jobson says.