The Newark Advocate from Newark, Ohio • 5

The Advocate, Newark, 0., Sun. Oct. 23, 1988 Page 5A Indians trying to save site they say is sacred ground INDEPENDENCE, Ohio (AP) 'You want to cry. You just want to cry. You can feel the spirit when you go Mel Fletcher, Choctaw Tears well in Mel Fletcher's eyes when he walks over eight weedy acres he says is a desecrated Indian burial ground.

"You want to cry. You just want to cry. You can feel the spirit when you go there," Fletcher says. "I'll tell you exactly what one of our medicine men felt. Mad Bear dropped to the ground in tears with his hands to the sky.

That's how bad he felt. It's a very depressing feeling. In Indian culture, Fletcher says, "you can't separate the bones from the spirit." Since 1984, the social worker at Akron's North American Indian Center has sought to preserve the plot from potential destruction as a source of cover soil for an adjacent landfill pit. The site has been ravaged over the years, mostly by amateur acheologists in search of artifacts from centuries ago when Indian tribes lived on the bluff above the Cuyahoga River. Fletcher believes the site once was used by an Iroquois tribe.

David S. Brose, curator of archaeology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, said Indians who lived there were more likely Algonquin. Brose was unsure whether the site was a burial ground or a village. The last museum research at the site was in 1981, and his report indicated it was stopped partly due to "careless looting of what partially disturbed deposits still existed." Clark Hosick, 42, director of the North American Indian Center, said the suspected Indian burial ground "has been dug up in places by amateurs and professionals. There "rtiwfnrfr-itit-nii mil i iinTMniiTniiMiTwiii in-1 tut mnr-nii- mr ir wmimmr iiiijiit 44-4tlfo mm iini mninnniiMiTm inimiiiiiii are still a number of remains there.

It's kind of overgrown now, or you would be able to see remains strewn about on the ground." Only about 25 percent of the orginal site is left, Hosick said. The rest was destroyed in excavation for a 19-acre, 300-foot deep landfill pit. He said the site is the logical source for cover layers of soil over the landfill, except that the landfill owner, Boyas Excavation has been denied a landfill permit. "It's a site we want to see protected. It's gone far enough, and it doesn't need to be disturbed anymore," said Hosick, whose grandmother was of the Alaskan Tlingit tribe.

Ohio Environmental Protection Agency Director Richard L. Shank is to decide in November the merits of the excavation company's landfill application. Fletcher says that at his home he keeps bones of what he believes was a young Indian woman. He found them at the Independence site in 1984, causing him to believe it was a burial ground. He says he will put them back in the ground there only when Indians again control it.

Fletcher, 60, is a white-haired Choctaw, a tribe native to Oklahoma and Mississippi. Until 1984, Fletcher, who has lived in northeast Ohio since 1949, didn't know about the site. Then he read a newspaper column which sent an arrow to his heart. James Neff, then columnist of The Cleveland Plain Dealer, wrote how a local doctor and archeology buff was dismayed at the way the site, known in Independence as South Park, had been torn up by amateurs seeking Indian mementos. With no public announcement, Fletcher and about a dozen other native Americans broke through a gate at the site and for one weekend set up a traditional Indian camp, tepees included.

"When you get a bunch of young folks involved, it's pretty hard to control them," Fletcher recalled. "Especially natives, because they're so moved by this, it makes them angry inside. We wanted to keep the public sentiment with us. We were told we would be arrested, but that really didn't materialize." Fletcher now returns to the site once or twice a week. On one recent visit, he pointed to new shallow pits left by "grave robbers." Recent events have encouraged him to believe the eight acres will one day soon belong to Indians again.

State Sen. Grace Drake, R-Solon, has introduced legislation that would stop creation of a landfill in any puBlic park. The Independence site in adjacent to the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area. The bill would authorize the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to pay up to $3 million to acquire South Park and the landfill. It could become a city or state park, or it could be run by the adjacent national park.

SACRED GROUND. Choctaw Mel Fletcher displays they were found in Independence, Ohio. Fletcher is bones that he says are the remains of an Iriquom trying to save the eight-acre site, which he says is a woman from the 1300s. at the quarry site where sacred Indian burial ground. AP Don't Be Happy Get your wardrobe ready for the Holidays.

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