Now the Lost are Found
Three mid-May Apache ceremonies of blessing were more than a century in the making.
by Sherri Kimmel
July 1, 2009
Morning had just broken, and the purifying smell of burning sage hung in the air. Several Dickinson alumni, faculty, administrators and students joined about a dozen other folks graveside, their shoulders draped with colorful shawls and blankets in a gesture of respect for the sacred ceremony. Richard Gonzalez, dressed in traditional Apache tunic and headband, beat a ceremonial hand drum. His wife Anita, in an 1860s-style dress and brilliant blue blanket, joined him in reading the Lord’s Prayer in Apache.
This May 16 ceremony of blessing was more than 130 years in the making. Around the headstone of Jack Mather at the Indian Cemetery on the grounds of the U.S. Army War College the two Lipan Apache band members led the ceremony. Gonzalez, a retired police officer whose great-grandmother was a first cousin of Jack, and Anita had driven 30 hours straight from their native west Texas to close the fragmented circle of life for a long-lost relative.
Participating in the blessing ceremony were three individuals who had played a key role in solving the mystery that had haunted the Lipan Apaches for more than a century. What ever happened to the brother and sister taken from the Lipans by the U.S. cavalry in the 1870s?
During a 2000 faculty exchange, Jacqueline Fear-Segal of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, had done research for her book, White Man’s Club: Schools, Race, and the Struggle of Indian Acculturation. Fear-Segal learned about children who had been removed from their families and taken to the Carlisle Industrial Indian School for assimilation into the white world and was particularly drawn to discern the origins of Kesetta Roosevelt and her brother Jack Mather. She discovered that Kesetta had a son, Richard Kaseeta, who became the mascot and youngest enrollee of the Indian School. He spent his life in Carlisle but never knew his family history, for his mother died when he was 3.
With the help of Barbara Landis, the Cumberland County Historical Society’s Indian School biographer, Fear-Segal began to find the threads linking Kesetta and her son Richard. Eventually, Fear-Segal made the connection between the Kesetta and her brother Jack and the present-day Lipan Apaches in Texas.
“That Richard Kaseeta was indeed Kesetta’s son had been noted by Genevieve Bell, when she catalogued the Carlisle student records for her Ph.D,” said Fear-Segal. “Bell shared this information with Barbara Landis, the Cumberland County Historical Society’s Indian School biographer, who passed it on to me. Searching the Internet to discover more about the history of the Lipan Apache, I made contact with the children’s great-great-nephew, Daniel Castro Romero Jr., general council chairman of the Lipan Apache Band of Texas Inc., whose family
had mourned the children’s loss down four generations.”
While Richard Gonzalez led the ceremony of blessing on May 16 in the Indian Cemetery, Romero led two following-day blessings, one at the graveside of Richard Kaseeta at Westminster Cemetery in Carlisle, the other at the Lahaska, Pa., gravesite of his mother, Kesetta Roosevelt.
Besides Fear-Segal, who had flown from England to attend the ceremonies, and Landis, another instrumental person in solving the mystery was present. Susan Rose ’77, director of the Community Studies Center (CSC) and professor of sociology, provided Fear-Segal with key information about Richard Kaseeta, since she resides on his former property and knew his late widow, Helen, and extended family.
Rose provided food and lodging at her creek-side home for the visitors and enlisted Manuel Saralegui ’09 and Ryan Koons ’10 to film and photograph the blessings for a CSC project. She and Saralegui are working this summer to edit the footage and plan to complete a film by this fall about the historical detective story that has been so touchingly resolved.
Also on hand May 16 were two young alumni with a deep interest in Native American religious practices and cross-cultural relations. Alex Froom ’08, a magna cum laude religion major now doing a dual master’s in theology and social work at Boston University, absorbed the scene, as did Ross Weissman ’08, a cum laude religion graduate now working as a research program assistant at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore. Both had worked in the past with native indigenous peoples, Froom with the Navajos and Weissman with populations in Alaska.
His forehead daubed by Anita with the bee pollen that Richard Gonzalez said was “the start of life,” Weissman left Jack’s graveside, reflecting on the experience: “One hundred years later, this could be the moment of redemption. This is exciting for the community and any individual attending. For the individual buried here this allows closure. It’s a ceremony for the living but also for the dead.”
For more information, read this story from the summer 2008 issue of Dickinson Magazine: www.dickinson.edu/magazine/article.cfm?article=203.
To learn more about Dickinson’s Community Studies Center, go to http://www.dickinson.edu/departments/commstud.
Ross Weissman ’08, who became interested in Indian spiritual practices through classes taught by Christopher Bilodeau, assistant professor of history, has bee pollen applied to his forehead by Anita Rodriguez as he leaves Jack Mather’s gravesite.
Richard Gonzalez talks about his origins with about 20 ceremony participants, including Dickinson faculty, staff, students and alumni.
Part of Jack Mather’s short life was lived on the campus of the Carlisle Industrial Indian School, upon whose former grounds he is now buried.
Kesetta Roosevelt was the young single mother of Richard Kaseeta, age 3, when she died north of Philadelphia.
Daniel Castro Romero held two ceremonies on May 16. This one occurred in Carlisle’s Westminster Cemetery at the grave of Richard Kaseeta, who never knew he was of Lipan Apache origin.
Relatives of Richard Kaseeta’s wife Helen also traveled far to attend the ceremonies.