The worms don’t have an easy time with bones. Bones last a long time. I know because I’m an anthropologist. I worked with the Florida state archaeologist, Calvin Jones, as an undergraduate. He’s gone now, too, a good man, in amongst his own worms. We excavated Spanish missions and Native American sites. While excavating San Jose de Oculla in Madison County, we came upon a graveyard of the First Peoples. We weren’t looking for it. It was just there, the only one we found at a mission. When we realized what it was we didn’t stop, though. The skeletons were in layers, one on top of the other in a mass grave. They were not disorderly. They had been laid to rest very neatly, first one way, then another, head to foot.

This number of deaths may have been due to disease brought by the Spanish. It was nothing like the film of murdered Jews in the Holocaust, hauled by their hands and legs, swung over the edge of a pit, landing on those already there, arms and legs intertwined, sliding down to fill in the spaces, entangled with those above and below.

CHRISTIANS

These were “Christian Indians”. I found a hand-beaten silver cross amongst the bones, the only “valuable” artifact we found that hot summer. You could see the little round impressions made by the silversmith’s hammer. It is in the State Museum of Florida at the Gray Building. I don’t know if it is on display. The knowledge we gained that summer was apparently not considered very valuable. This was 1972. Our project was to find the missions so one could be chosen to restore for the US Bicentennial. The money never came through. The Oil Crisis! When we were done we took our photographs and with the same shovels that brought it all to light we covered it back up again. Gone now, lost. With our leader gone himself, a man with an uncanny knack for where to look, they are unlikely ever to be found again.

LUCK

Calvin’s luck was the old-fashioned kind, hard work, Thomas Edison’s 99% sweat and 1% inspiration. No one had ever found the Spanish missions. The one in Tallahassee was only found when they scraped away the ground for a golf course. Calvin went to Spain, studied the original reports and records of these Franciscan missions, and realized they had been placed a day’s march apart, seven leagues. Starting with St. Augustine he traced arcs of seven leagues radius with a compass on maps of Florida. He then looked for high places by running water. He stalked the farmers every time they plowed a field. He found pieces of pottery called Majolica unearthed by the plow, then dug his potholes to find the sites.

THE HEREAFTER

Bones last a long time. I know they last at least 200 years. That is how long these “Christian Indians” (we did not call them Native Americans in 1972, not even as anthropologists. Calvin himself was part Cherokee) had been in the ground. Their Christian religion and apparent baptism, though, did not stop the local white folks, good Christians all, from wanting to disinter the bones. We barely succeeded in stopping them. As long as they were in the ground they could last till eternity. Above ground animals gnaw them to supplement their diet in our mineral deprived Southeast.