Swarthmore College apologizes for digging up a Native American burial ground a century ago

Swarthmore College apologized Monday after detailing how a professor dug up a Native American burial ground in Chester County in 1899 and displayed its human remains and artifacts on campus — before those remains were lost, presumably forever.

“No matter the educational intentions or that these practices may have been commonplace at the time they occurred, these remains should have been treated with dignity and respect and should never have been removed from their burial site,” Swarthmore president Valerie Smith said in a statement.

The school will consider renaming a campus building named after the professor, who wrote on “racial hierarchy,” a belief by some that certain racial groups are superior to others and that was used to justify prejudicial social and health policies. The school also will further investigate a collection of unidentified human bones it houses in its biology department.

Swarthmore isn’t the only area institution trying to explain past handling of Indigenous remains. An estimated 110,000 remains continue to be held by major American institutions — including the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, the Mütter Museum, and others in the Philadelphia region. Seven institutions in Pennsylvania, mostly museums, are among those listed in a recent ProPublica investigation that tracked the remains of Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Natives’ ancestors.

In some cases, museums have been slow to comply with, or outright resisted, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, which requires the return of remains, funerary objects, and cultural items, much of it looted in the 1800s.

Swarthmore learned of the burial ground excavation from an Inquirer story in April 2022 that chronicled the effort of Carol McCloskey to donate a Lenape burial ground on her Newlin Township property to Native Americans, whom she viewed as rightful owners. It is the only officially recognized Native American burial ground in Chester County.

» READ MORE: A Native American burial ground in Chester County is returning to its ‘rightful owners’

After a yearslong process, McCloskey found a taker for the half-acre of what was once known as Indian Knoll Farm: the federally recognized Delaware Nation in Anadarko, Okla.

In the story, the Inquirer mentioned a Lenape burial that took place on an unrecorded date likely in the 18th century atop a peaceful knoll overlooking the west branch of Brandywine Creek. The Lenape dug down 4 feet, 7 inches, and gently laid a man’s 6-foot-1 frame on a stone floor. They customarily pointed his head east, placed some copper objects, glass beads, and a cloth inside, and covered the body with dirt.

The body lay undisturbed until 1899, when the Swarthmore professor dug up the skeleton, as well as objects buried alongside it, and moved it all to the college — a practice not uncommon by white people, both professional and amateur. In fact, four graves at the same site in 1878 were exhumed out of 30 found, indicating the property eventually purchased by McCloskey was part of a much larger burial ground.

However, there was no further information on what had happened to the remains or artifacts after being taken to Swarthmore.

In 1909, the burial site, known locally as Indian Knoll, was designated by the county as a historical Native American burial site of the Lenape.

“The histories of institutions of higher learning often contain disturbing chapters,” Smith said in her statement. “Swarthmore College is no exception. I am writing to you today to share an aspect of our history that requires us to reflect on and confront our past. This reckoning will ultimately help us shape a better future.”

Smith said that the college had looked into circumstances regarding the Inquirer story. It found that Spencer Trotter, who taught natural history at the college, and Bird T. Baldwin, a member of the Class of 1900, were two men mentioned in the article who had dug up the remains.

In 1899, “Trotter displayed that skeleton and the funerary items found with it on campus during a meeting of the Joseph Leidy Scientific Association,” according to the Swarthmore investigation. Trotter, a longtime biology department faculty member with a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania, retired from the college in 1926 and died in 1931.

Smith said that after she learned of Trotter’s involvement, she formed a group to examine whether the school still held the remains. The group consulted with representatives from the National Museum of the American Indian and received guidance from the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) division of the National Park Service.

“We can say that there is no indication that the remains unearthed by Trotter and Baldwin remain on campus,” Smith said, adding there is no evidence the school held any other Native American human remains. School officials could not identify how long the remains were on campus or what happened to them

“Our work to try to answer those questions is ongoing,” Smith wrote. “And none of these facts change the distressing truth that more than 120 years ago and for an unknown period thereafter, these remains were held and displayed here.”

Smith said the remains should never have been removed from the burial site.

“Considering these actions today, with our values, convictions, and compassion, the act of collecting any Native American remains is unethical and inexcusable,” Smith said. “I deeply regret these actions, and on behalf of Swarthmore College, I apologize for the harm they have caused.”

Smith said the group will investigate Trotter’s work and “develop a process to reexamine the name of Trotter Hall.”

The hall was built in 1881 for the study of natural sciences. In 1920, a wing of the hall was named after Trotter, who was then a popular professor. The full building was named after Trotter in 1937. Trotter Hall eventually housed other departments.

Swarthmore is also looking at the biology department’s collection of human bones. Currently, it has no records for the collection, though it likely stems from before the 1940s. Prior to that, Philadelphia was a hub for the legal sale of human skeletons for medical and research purposes.

“However, we now know that those specimens often were not sourced ethically and may have come disproportionately from underrepresented populations,” Smith said.