Hey check this out! one of our people has come home!

EBay skull confirmed as area American Indian remains

By Dan Reany

December 1, 2005

http://www.newsadvance.com/servlet/Satellite?

pagename=LNA/MGArticle/LNA_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1128768457658&

path=

After as many as 300 years on the road, it appears a local American

Indian has finally come home.

Tests have confirmed that a skull for sale on eBay was that of an

American Indian; the remains will now find a permanent resting place

in Amherst County.

A New York doctor had listed the skull on eBay in February, noting in

the description that it had two stickers on it – one listing the

years 1671-1701, and another that said, “Roanoke, Va.” and included

an undisclosed family name.

The doctor, who wishes to remain anonymous, didn’t realize the name

on the skull, Suponi (or Saponi), wasn’t a family name, but the name

of a local tribe. Owning or selling the remains of American Indians

is a federal crime, so the doctor quickly sent the skull to Kenneth

Branham, chief of the Monacan Indian tribe, which has an office in

Monroe.

Branham immediately started making plans for the skull to be reburied

at a secret site in Amherst County, but the first step after getting

the skull in the mail was finding out whether or not it was really

that of an American Indian.

Tests were recently conducted by Joanna Wilson, an archaeologist with

the Virginia Department of Historic Resources in Richmond. They

confirmed that the skull was American Indian.

Though the person’s identity will never be known, Wilson’s report on

the skull does offer some insights.

She says the heavy brow ridge shows the skull came from a man.

The plates of the skull are well fused, so it was an old man who

appears to have lost almost all of his teeth years before he died.

Bony growths in his ear canals indicate he may have been hard of

hearing as well.

The old man would have spent most of his life in a village like the

one that was recreated at Natural Bridge, never guessing that three

centuries after he died, his skull would show up for sale on the

World Wide Web.

“It’s kind of a two-edged sword there,” Branham says. “I’m glad we

got it back, but it shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”

The doctor who owned the skull says he had no idea it belonged to an

American Indian, and that he simply got it from another doctor, a

former mentor.

“I’m just glad it’s going to be where it belongs,” the doctor said in

a telephone interview from his office. “That makes me feel much

better than to find out later it was sold off and disappeared, and

that someone was missing it. People donating a body is one thing;

people stealing it is something else.”

Soon, the story of that American Indian’s life and death will have a

peaceful ending. Branham says a traditional burial ceremony should

take place by summer.