PORT ANGELES — The ancestors have come back home.
In two days of painstaking earth moving, the intact remains and skeletal fragments that were disinterred from Tse-whit-zen have been reburied close to where they were unearthed.
The work ended late Tuesday morning with Indian Shaker Church prayers and Klallam songs, including one that, translated, said:
My heart aches for you.
You are so far away.
A large front-end loader dug clean fill dirt from a nearby pile, then slowly and carefully tipped it into the burial trench beside the handmade cedar boxes that held the remains.
Workmen shoveled the jet-black soil by hand over the boxes. Leveling the larger site also will be done manually.
“There will be no more machinery on top of them,” said Tribal Council member Dennis Sullivan.
