The Legacy of Fort William Henry: Resurrecting the Past

6 The Dead Have Stories to Tell: Forensic Anthropology at the Fort

6 The Dead Have Stories to Tell Forensic Anthropology at the Fort On March 29, 2012, the National Geographic Channel aired a program titled “The Last Mohican?” in its cold-case forensics series, The Decrypters. New research conducted on one of the human skeletons discovered at Fort William Henry, identified as “Burial 14,” had just revealed the DNA of a Native American who had been buried in the British cemetery outside the fort. For a Native American to be buried side by side with his British allies was most likely a fairly rare occurrence, but even more significantly this was a Native American who had grown up in the American West, two thousand miles from his final resting place. Such a possibility—a tremendous journey from west to east in the mid-eighteenth century—had never occurred to researchers before, and this amazing discovery was but the latest finding to be made through the analysis of skeletons unearthed at the fort in the 1950s and the 1990s. In this case and many others, credit goes to the exciting field of forensic anthropology, identified as a distinct field only since the 1970s. Forensic anthropology has proved extremely successful in analyzing human bones to determine age, sex, race, stature, disease, pathologies, trauma, and cause of death. Early American forts such as Fort William Henry often have associated cemeteries with unmarked graves, containing individuals who died from disease, noncombatant injuries, or battle-related trauma. Forensic anthropology has helped greatly in assigning an identity to these longforgotten soldiers. All the same, in every case it is important to remember that these human remains deserve respectful treatment, and they should be disturbed only by trained professionals who have appropriate research questions. We do not know precisely how many soldiers and civilians died and were buried in the village of Lake George between 1755 (the Battle of Lake George) and 1775 (the beginning of the American Revolution). Nevertheless, we believe that disease, injuries, and raids may have killed 500 or more members of the British garrison of Fort William Henry between its construction in 1755 and the British surrender to the French in August 1757. As many as 60 ✴ legacy of fort william henry 200 or more were then killed in the massacre on August 10; and perhaps in excess of 1,000 died in Lake George in the mid-1770s, when this community was home to the most extensive smallpox hospitals in the British colonies. In summary, then, perhaps as many as 2,000 individuals died in Lake George during the mid- to late-eighteenth century, and virtually none of their graves has survived down to the present day with a marker of any sort (fig. 6.1). Skeletons First Exposed in the 1950s The largest concentration of human remains at Fort William Henry is in the unmarked cemetery that lies about 200 feet southwest of the reconstructed fort. It was in the mid-1950s that Stanley Gifford deliberately sought and then exposed ten skeletons at one corner of this cemetery (figs. 6.2, 6.3); he also encountered scattered skeletal remains, sometimes incomplete, throughout the charred ruins of the fort (fig. 6.4). Newspaper reports at the time indicated that “the graveyard was discovered after topsoil was cleared by a bulldozer. When the undisturbed sub-soil was reached, grave lines could be discerned by variations of color in the soil” (McGary 1953). Although no detailed forensic analysis survives from the time of Gifford’s work, contemporary newspaper accounts trace his progress in the winter of 1953–54 and describe the heating cables and blankets provided by General Electric that enabled him to continue working in the military cemetery during cold weather. Thermostats made sure that the temperature in the 6.1. The log exhibit building that was built to house ten skeletons excavated at Fort William Henry in the 1950s. The bones were removed from view in 1993, and large photographs on the walls depict the skeletons as they formerly appeared in this location. Forensic Anthropology at the Fort ✴ 61 open graves was a constant 40 degrees. As Gifford exposed the skeletons in the cemetery, he observed that one had a musket ball in its elbow, another had its feet tied together, and a third had a flattened musket ball resting next to a vertebra (fig. 6.5). In addition to remains uncovered in the formal cemetery, the skeletons of five soldiers...