125 years later, Long Island tribes remember deaths of 2 boys sent to Indian school

Long Island’s native nations gathered at a Kew Gardens cemetery Saturday morning to honor the lives and mark the premature deaths of two boys sent to a Pennsylvania boarding school for Indian "assimilation" more than 125 years ago.

Leaders of the Unkechaug and Matinecock nations, and members of the Shinnecock, Setauket and Montaukett tribes, led ceremonies and songs of remembrance and healing over two newly installed headstones for the boys and their four young sisters on ground that lay unmarked for more than a century.

Charles Edward Jones and Harry Jefferson Jones both died in 1900 at the ages of 15 and 11, respectively, after returning home with tuberculosis contracted at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, tribal leaders said. They were the children of Jane Davis Waters, of the Unkechaug nation, and Charles Waters, of the Shinnecock and Montaukett nations, the leaders said.

"The devastating part of the story is that we know they were not honored in the traditional way," said Harry Wallace, chief of the Unkechaug Indian Nation reservation near Mastic, who led the ceremony and whose family has generational ties to the clan.

The new headstones, which bear the Unkechaug turtle crest, also honor the boys’ four sisters who also died prematurely after their return home: Waunitta Alberta, Ida Jennie and Lydia May Jones. The name of a fourth sister, Harriette Hellen Jones, did not appear on the headstone.

"Bless our cousins," the inscription reads, in Algonquin and English.

Wallace said the boys’ deaths were "the result of practices of abuse at most of these schools, of horrific conditions, and military-style execution of policy." Their stated goal to "kill the Indian but save the man," he said "not only killed the Indian, they killed the man as well. [Killed] the boy."

Wallace said he believes his name derives from Harry Jefferson Jones, his grandfather’s second cousin.

The ties extended well beyond the Queens border where the family lived. 

"These relatives who are buried here are very much our relatives as well," said Shane Weeks, who led drum playing and song at the grave site. "It’s not often we get to acknowledge what was done to our communities from the residential school era. It’s not often spoken about by our elders or modern society."

Weeks called the ceremony "a moment of remembering and healing."

Wallace said abuse suffered by indigenous children at the boarding schools has had a lasting impact on native communities across North America.

"The legacy of abuse and genocidal practices has affected every native community in North American," he said. "You have that generational trauma that is ongoing and continuing."

Chenae Bullock, a Shinnecock member with shared Montaukett ancestry, said while remembrance for the Jones children was "a long time coming," she also expressed gratitude at "all the humans that are gathered around [today], not just native people but all people" to honor them.

"I think it’s just so beautiful," she said. "It just shows there’s so much more we can do together."

Lawmakers at the ceremony said the story was an essential one to tell.

"It’s important, even when it’s uncomfortable, that we tell history like it is," Assemb. Edward Braunstein (D-Bayside) said.

The full story of the two brothers and four sisters has only been fully understood in the past two years, after Donna Barron, genealogist and author from the Matinecock nation in Queens, began researching their stories. The work led her to their connection to Long Island tribes and the site of the previously unmarked grave at Maple Grove with the help of Helen Day, senior vice president of the Friends of the Maple Grove Cemetery.

"It was a very sad story, but I feel it had a very good ending," Barron said after the ceremony. "I’d rather think of the ending instead of the tragic past."

Nicole Schorr, an adviser to the Douglaston and Little Neck Historical Society, who had worked with Barron on Matinecock projects in the past, mobilized her group to raise money for the headstones, which cost $1,000 each. Maple Grove donated the headstone foundations.

"It feels right," Schorr said. "Anything that helps bring a sense of healing among people is very restorative for me. I’m at peace about and I’m happy and I’m happy the tribe is happy."