A real estate investor who discovered pre-Columbian skeletal remains of 33 Native Americans in the attic of recently purchased bungalow in Bloomington has decided to donate the find to the state for further study.
Kathleen Hollonbeck of Rochelle said Thursday that the decision was easy after state experts identified the relics as coming from an Indian mound on an Illinois River bluff in Downstate Fulton County called Anderson Lake, where Oneota and late Mississippian Indians buried their dead 600 to 700 years ago. There are no modern tribal equivalents to that agricultural community of Indians, so there is no written record of their history, nor any direct descendents to lay claim to their remains.
Hollonbeck called it a "wonderful find for Native American people and people in Illinois."
The Illinois Historic Preservation Agency will help transfer the bones to the Illinois State Museum in Springfield. They will not be put on public display out of respect for the sanctity of the remains, which is the state's policy for all human remains. There are no immediate plans to rebury the bones, despite calls to do so by Joseph "Standing Bear" Schranz, executive director of Midwest SOARRING Foundation, a Westchester-based not-for-profit organization that helps re-inter Indian remains.
"They've been in someone's home about 70 years now, and so my thinking is waiting a little longer and learning more about the people who lived along the Illinois River, the Mississippians, is a good thing," Hollonbeck said.
The bones had been shelved in a glass cabinet in the home's attic and are currently being held by Bloomington police. They included 26 skulls of males and females from about age 6 to older than 50, as well as several jawbones.
Earlier this week, experts from the state's Dickson Mounds Museum and the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency said the bones, apparently excavated in 1933 and gathered by a dentist who formerly owned the home, were by far the largest private collection of historic human remains they have encountered.
In the 1980s, the state passed laws protecting Indian burial grounds from excavation, but in the 1930s it was legal and even popular among both collectors and those looking to sell what they had dug up.
Hollonbeck said she also will donate other items from the attic that apparently were from the same site.
Illinois Historic Preservation Agency spokesman Dave Blanchette said the donation could provide anthropologists with a wealth of information about how this long-gone community lived, what they ate, what kinds of illnesses they may have had and whether they intermixed with other people in the region.
"It also ensures the remains will remain safe," Blanchette said. "The Illinois State Museum is one of the premier institutions in the country for this type of thing. I think it's a good choice."
Hollonbeck bought the run-down bungalow in a middle-class neighborhood last fall by paying off its back taxes and intends to fix it up and sell it, possibly holding an estate sale for the more modern items found inside.
The home was unoccupied for more than a decade after the owner, died last year.
Hollonbeck said she came across the skulls last year but did not scrutinize them closely, thinking they were teaching tools used by a dentist studying his trade. His house, others said, was jammed with a memorabilia, antiques and artifacts--including Indian rugs, pottery shards and arrowheads.
Recently Hollonbeck took a closer look and noticed some of the bones had inscriptions with a date, 1933, and a place, Anderson Lake.
When she brought a neighbor to see them, the neighbor called police, who identified it as a death investigation, rather than a crime.
The McLean County coroner's office became involved last week, quickly determining the remains were not from anyone recently deceased.
"It is bizarre, and you just wonder, `Gee, it's not typical that someone would collect these kinds of things,'" Hollonbeck said.