They were soldiers the military
stationed at Fort
Craig or women and
children who sought medical treatment there. All received burials in wooden
coffins in the sandy desert following their deaths. All lay in a cemetery with
no grave markers — a cemetery that was supposed to be empty. In 2007, the Bureau of Reclamation’s
Albuquerque Area Office exhumed 65 full or partial remains from the Fort Craig Cemetery in New
Mexico. The
military left bodies behind when it closed the fort and moved graves in 1878
and 1886 after reporting the graves were empty. The military built the fort in
the 1854 to protect the area from Apache raids. The fort played a significant
role in the Civil War and Indian wars. The cemetery became Reclamation property
around 1910 as part of the federal government’s acquisition of land for
Elephant Butte Dam and Reservoir. The possibility that the
military had left bodies behind came to light in November 2004. A retired federal historian came into Reclamation’s
Albuquerque Area Office to review documents and casually mentioned seeing the
mummified remains of a buffalo soldier in a friend’s home. He said the body
came from Fort Craig Cemetery
in the 1970s. The historian said his
friend was dying and he was trying to talk him into turning in the remains
before his death. Reclamation archeologists Jeff
Hanson and Mark Hungerford’s visit to the cemetery revealed signs of looting. The man accused of removing
the body from the cemetery and displaying it in his home is referred to around
the Albuquerque Area Office as the “Gravedigger.” He died in December 2004 just
as a formal federal investigation was about to begin. By February 2005, the historian’s tip to Reclamation had the attention of
federal agents from the Bureau of Land Management, and they opened a criminal case. BLM handled the investigation because Reclamation
does not have a full-time investigator in Albuquerque.
On April 25, BLM investigators
asked the Reclamation archaeologists to meet them in a field next to “Gravedigger’s”
home. An anonymous drop of remains was to take place. Hungerford and Hansen arrived
to see that someone had left a skull in a brown paper bag. The historian identified it as the same one he had
seen in the Gravedigger’s home. He wondered aloud about the whereabouts of the
rest of the body. To this day, no one has been able to answer that question. The archaeologists believe
the skull is that of Thomas Smith, a 23-year-old farmer from Butler County, Ky.
He had enlisted in the 125th infantry in 1864. After the Civil War, he headed to
Fort Craig with his unit. Smith’s death records
state his cause of the death as dysentery and the date of his burial as Nov. 24, 1866. Witnesses
identified the skull as Smith’s. They also told investigators that the Gravedigger
had the plot map for Fort
Craig and that Thomas
Smith’s name on the map had a circle around it. Reclamation efforts to get a
copy of the map from the National Archives have been unsuccessful. Smith’s name
does not appear on any of the re-internment rolls for the cemeteries that
accepted the remains the military had moved from Fort Craig when it exhumed the
cemetery twice before. Federal agents executed a search warrant on the
Gravedigger’s home on April
27, 2005. The search revealed artifacts from Fort Craig
and other historical sites. A flowerbed was lined with potsherds (broken
pottery from excavations) and iron artifacts. Agents found a box of buttons with
the label “Fort Conrad
and Fort Craig” and buckets containing hundreds
of Civil-War-era bullets and cartridge casings. They could not seize many items
in the home because the warrant was specific to documents and artifacts related
to Fort Craig. The criminal investigation of
the Gravedigger ended in 2007. He was dead, and nobody connected with the case would
undergo prosecution. Throughout the
investigation, the archaeologists continued to examine the cemetery for signs
of additional bodies. Although an initial excavation revealed only bone
fragments, ground-penetrating radar revealed evidence of at least 17 bodies.
Reclamation had previously attempted to fence the cemetery, which is located in
a remote area between Socorro,
N.M., and Elephant Butte
Reservoir. Vandals destroyed the fence. Suddenly, it wasn’t a question of water
management or energy production that faced Reclamation managers and staff. It
was a question of proper protection and honor for the soldiers and civilians
that time has forgotten. They determined
that the only way to ensure this was to move the remains to a properly
maintained national cemetery. Reclamation began a full
excavation of the cemetery in August 2007. That is when archeologists exhumed the
bodies of 36 adult males, 2 females, 26 children and a surgeon’s pit. Rochelle Bennett, a physical anthropologist
with Reclamation’s Technical Service Center
in Denver, has spent weeks at a time in Albuquerque performing full osteologic examinations to try to identify
the bodies. Reclamation expects
to turn the remains over to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs next summer for burial at the Santa Fe National
Cemetery. For many in the Albuquerque
Area Office, especially the archaeologists, this case has become very personal. “This is one of the most
important things I’ll do in my lifetime,” Hanson said. Tears filled his eyes one
day as he described the partially mummified remains of a child in one of the
coffins that remained completely intact during the excavation. During breaks from assisting
with the analysis, Hungerford and Hanson answer calls from concerned veterans
groups. They answer e-mails from the public on whether they can assist with
headstones or other honors for these people. “History left these people
behind,” Hanson said. “They need not to be forgotten, and it’s our obligation
to do everything we can to make sure that happens.” Hungerford and Hanson hope
that through the analysis process, they might identify some of the remains.
They have left open the possibility of doing DNA comparisons if anyone comes
forward with a strong connection that matches one of the remains. Reclamation excavated the cemetery
with funds from the Albuquerque Area Office and the Technical Service
Center’s cultural
resource program. Reclamation selected the
project as its Heritage
Education Project of the Year for 2008. Reclamation Cultural Preservation
Officer Tom Lincoln has provided much support to the Albuquerque Area Office on
Fort Craig. He is also helping as Reclamation
moves forward with a documentary on the project. Hungerford and Hanson now use
the case involving the looting at Fort
Craig as an educational
tool in their lectures. They talk of archaeological community’s irresponsibility,
noting some professionals and government employees knew of the looting and
failed to report it or take action against it. They also lecture on the damage looters
do to cultural resources. “Once you loot a site, once
you take a shovel and start digging into a prehistoric hearth or a room block
or even a grave or coffin, you are destroying it in a way that can never be
reconstructed again,” Hanson said. Hanson and Hungerford realize
that many archaeologists will never see a project of this magnitude in their
entire career. “It’s a story I will tell my grandchildren,” Hungerford said.
Contents
Bureau News
More About Interior