Representatives from the Eastern Shoshone Tribe traveled to Pennsylvania this month to retrieve the remains of William Norkok, a Tribal member who died in 1892 and was buried at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
The U.S. Army has been disinterring and returning Native American children from the Carlisle Barracks for seven years, but this is the first return of remains for the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, the EST said in a newsletter this week.
“The Eastern Shoshone Tribal Historic Preservation Office, with the support of the relatives of William and the Shoshone Business Council, coordinated the repatriation efforts with the Office of Army Cemeteries,” the newsletter states. “The repatriation process started more than a year ago.”
The newsletter says Tribal members and Tribal staff traveled to the Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania on Sept. 24 to assist in the disinterment, with support from forensic archaeological and anthropological experts hired by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“Spiritual leader Arlen Shoyo offered the cedaring, prayers, and a song throughout the process,” the newsletter states.
On Sept. 27, the group was notified that William’s records matched the exhumed remains, which were wrapped in Muslin cloth and placed in a cedar box along with a buffalo hide and Pendleton blanket.
“By Sept. 28, William journeyed home,” the newsletter states. “The community will be invited and notified of his burial services at the Sacajawea Cemetery.”
Norkok was born in 1873, the son of Narkok, one of the signers of the Treaty of Fort Bridger of 1863 and 1868 and Chief Washakie’s War Chief and main interpreter, according to school records, which listed Norkok’s mother as deceased.
Norkok went to Carlisle in 1881, when he was 8, joining a group of 13 Arapaho boys and one other Shoshone boy named Jimmie McAdams for the trip to Pennsylvania, the EST said.
“Jimmie was able to leave the school on July 4, 1893, in good health,” the newsletter states.
Norkok returned home in 1889 due to the expiration of his term at school, the EST said, but he returned to Carlisle later that year.
“William was scheduled to return home but grew sick and according to the school records, died of tuberculosis,” the newsletter states. “He was buried in the cemetery on the school grounds, with a tombstone that read, ‘B Norkok Shoshone May 23 1892.’”
His family was able to take a piece of the tombstone home with them, the EST said.
The rest of the tombstone “will be destroyed now that the disinterment process is completed.”
A total of 11 children were identified as part of the recent disinterment operation: William Norkok from the Eastern Shoshone Tribe; Almeda Heavy Hair, Bishop L. Shield, and John Bull from the Gros Ventre Tribe of the Fort Belknap Indian Community; Fanny Chargingshield, James Cornman, and Samuel Flying Horse from the Oglala Sioux Tribe; Albert Mekko from the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma; and Alfred Charko and Kati Rosskidwits from the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, with one Tribe wishing to remain anonymous.
Staff from the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center said a total of 93 Shoshone children from the Fort Hall, Nevada and Wind River agencies attended Carlisle during its 39 years of operation.
At least 187 Native American and Alaska Native children died while attending the Carlisle school, the EST said, and approximately 32 have returned home, with plans in place for 18 more children to be returned in fiscal year 2025.
“We honor the survivors of residential boarding schools and stand by the tribes who have been reunited with their children or are working towards repatriation,” the newsletter states. “May we never forget William and the other children who were removed from their homelands.”
Between 1869 and the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of Native American children were removed from their homes and families and placed in boarding schools operated by the federal government and the churches, the EST said.
“According to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, the U.S. Native children who were voluntarily or forcibly removed from their homes, families, and communities during this time were taken to schools far away where they were punished for speaking their Native language, banned from acting in any way that might be seen to represent traditional or cultural practices, stripped of traditional clothing, hair and personal belongings and behaviors reflective of their native culture,” the newsletter states. “They suffered physical, sexual, cultural, and spiritual abuse and neglect, and experienced treatment that in many cases constituted torture for speaking their Native languages. Many children never returned home, and their fates have yet to be accounted for by the U.S. government.”
The EST said a clipping from a Carlisle Indian School newsletter from 1882 describes Norkok standing up on the chapel stage and talking about only speaking English to other students.
“On the evening of March 17th we had exercises in the chapel,” the clipping states. “Boys and girls did well. Billy Norkok, a little Shoshone boy … who came here February a year ago knowing not a word of English, said, after walking up on the stage and making a nice bow, ‘Boys and girls, I have a word to say to each – “Speak only English!”‘ And then, turning around to Capt., said- ‘This is my speech.'”
In another document of school records and written statements from staff, the EST said one entry reads, “In the death of Billy Norkok, the school loses another good and faithful boy.”
Click here to see more of William’s records.