Remains of 13 Chinese men from 1800s, exhumed and ‘treated like objects’, will finally be reburied in Nevada
The remains were dug up by a private property owner and archaeologists more than 20 years ago, and have since been the subject of impassioned pleas for respect
The remains of 13 Chinese men unearthed in northeast Nevada more than two decades ago will finally be reburied in the Carlin City Cemetery.
The remains will be honoured with a traditional Chinese ceremony Tuesday, the Elko Daily Free Press reported. The remains had been sent for archaeological study in 1996.
“They will be laid to rest back where they should have been,” said Margaret Johnston, a Carlin City Council member.
Thousands of Chinese immigrants arrived in the western United States to work in mines following the California Gold Rush in 1848, and later, many were hired to construct the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1880s.
A Carlin property owner discovered the 19th Century remains after doing some digging in November 1996. The caskets were exhumed from the forgotten Chinese cemetery by archaeologists from the Nevada State Museum, the US Forest Service and the Elko County Chapter of the Nevada Archaeological Association.
The finding gained attention because there have been only a few professional archaeological excavations of Chinese cemeteries in the country, said Tim Murphy, a retired archaeologist living in Elko. Most early Chinese immigrants requested that their remains be sent back to China after their deaths.