by Allen Snow

On a sweltering morning in July 1997, more than 200 people assembled on a grassy hillside in the heart of Tupelo, just a few steps from busy streets. Amid the din of grinding gears, honking horns, and the other sounds of a growing city going about its business, they prayed. Some danced and sang. Some wandered away from the crowd and stood quietly beside a small, neatly landscaped plot and perhaps tried to conjur memories from a time long before they were born.

In a joint effort with the Cobb Institute of Archaeology at Mississippi State and Northeast Mississippi Medical Center, a delegation of almost 100 Chickasaws had traveled from Oklahoma and elsewhere to properly reinter the remains of 20 ancestors.

In accordance with a 1990 state law, Native American remains uncovered in Mississippi must be treated as any other burial site and a permit obtained to remove them. When NMMC began construction of a new rehabilitation center in 1996, workers uncovered evidence of a 300-year-old Chickasaw village that had nestled on a ridge at the edge of a much larger settlement.

Bruce Ridgway, the medical center's vice president of facilities management and construction and a 1971 Mississippi State graduate, turned to Cobb Institute archaeologist John O'Hear for assistance.

Among those on hand for the ceremony were, from left, John O'Hear, curator of North American archaeology at the Cobb Institute; Bill Ridgway ('71), vice president of facilities management and construction at North Mississippi Medical Center; Gov. Bill Anoatubby of the Chickasaw Nation; Tonya Loper, Chickasaw Junior Princess; Latasha Johnson, Little Miss Chickasaw; and Glenn L. McCullough Jr. ('77), mayor of Tupelo.

Having worked with the Chickasaws before, O'Hear arranged an agreement with the Chickasaw Nation-now headquartered in Oklahoma-to excavate the site, remove any human remains that were found, and rebury them nearby. Thus began an historic venture-the first such in state history.

O'Hear and a team of student archaeologists from Mississippi State surveyed and excavated the site and catalogued thousands of artifacts found there. Along with the artifacts were at least 20 burials, in keeping with the Chickasaw custom of interring their dead beneath their homes. Throughout the process, Ridgway and O'Hear worked closely with Chickasaw Gov. Bill Anoatubby and other tribal leaders to see that their wishes were carried out.

One year later, those efforts culminated in a quiet service during which two cultures came to understand each other a little better.

"We know that sooner or later something like this is going to happen again in the Tupelo area or elsewhere," O'Hear said. "There is now a process in place to deal with it. I believe this event will serve as a model."

In remarks delivered at the ceremony, Gov. Anoatubby echoed O'Hear's optimism about future relations, saying, "I believe this is the dawning of a new age of more cooperation between the Chickasaw Nation and those who have become more culturally sensitive to the burial of our people."