Babaamaajimowinan (Telling of news in different places)
Babaamaajimowinan (Telling of news in different places)
Albert Mekko, 17, (seated, center) from the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, died and was buried at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1881, two years after arriving at the school. More than 140 years later, Mekko's remains are set to be returned to his family and tribe in Fall 2024. In this photo, believed to have been taken in 1879, Mekko is shown with three other students who arrived with him on Oct. 27, 1879. (Historical photo via the Cumberland County Historical Society)
If not for a chance meeting between his father and Lt. Richard Pratt, Albert Mekko might not have died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
Mekko's father, Tulsey (Chief) Mekko, of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, was an itinerant Christian preacher who was on a "preaching tour" in what is now Anadarko, Oklahoma, in the late 1800s when he met Pratt, the founder and longtime superintendent of the government-run school.
Pratt convinced the elder Mekko to send his son Albert to the school. So in 1879, at age 17, Albert was sent 1,300 miles away to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He died in 1881 of a lung ailment.
https://ictnews.org/news/eleven-more-students-will-go-home-from-carlisle
Reader Comments(0)