Caledonia Argus

Human bones still a mystery in Hokah

Posted: 12/10/03

By David Heiller
Argus News Editor

Bones found under a house in Hokah on November 29 are still raising more questions than answers.

The discovery received a lot of publicity in local media circles, but as of this writing on December 8, there are no clear answers as to where the bones came from.

Hereís what happened: Bill McCabe was doing some digging to reinforce his kitchen floor at 511 Ash Street that Saturday morning. He found some bones, including a human skull.

He stopped working at that point, and kept his news quiet until Monday morning, when he told Hokah Police Chief Rod Blank.

ìBy the age of the bones, it was easy to determine that what I was looking at was nothing recent,î Blank said on December 3.

Blank called the Houston County Coronerís office and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. They concluded that the bones were too old to be the subject of a criminal investigation, so they contacted Susan Myster, a professor of anthropology and forensic science at Hamline University.

She and some of her students came to Hokah and sifted through the dirt to find all the bones. The remains were taken to the regional coronerís office in Hastings, which serves Houston County and six other counties.

Myster said on December 4 that her busy teaching schedule would keep her from analyzing the remains for several weeks.

All unidentified human remains or burials greater than 50 years and found outside identified cemeteries are handled under state law 307.08. It states that if they are Native American remains and their probable tribal identity can be determined, such remains will be turned over to contemporary tribal leader probably of the Ho-Chunk Nation for disposition.

Robert Boszhardt, a professor of archeology at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, said on December 4 that several Indian burial mounds were mapped in the area in the 1880s. In the Hokah park he mapped a bird-shaped mound that is about 1,000 years old, and several others on the bluff.

ìThere has not been a lot of archeology in the immediate area of Hokah itself,î he said. ìThe valley itself has stuff that goes back 12,000 years.î

Blank said that then Houston County deputy Brian Wetterlin worked a case about 27 years ago where human remains were found a couple blocks from the ones found last week. Those remains were determined to be Native American, probably from a burial.

McCabeís house was built in 1865. The kitchen under which the bones were found was added later.

Investigators at the Minnesota Regional Coronerís office in Hastings are looking at previous ownership of the house to see if that sheds any light on the bones.

Some Hokah residents wonder if the bones could be those of Anna Vogel, a 68-year-old Hokah woman who disappeared on December 11, 1928, while walking to the cemetery in town. Her body was never found, and her disappearance remains a mystery.

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