Albert Afraid of Hawk Subject of Archaeological Associates of Greenwich Lecture

“The Long Journey Home for Albert Afraid of Hawk” will be the subject of a lecture to be given by Connecticut State Archaeologist Nicholas Bellantoni on Thursday, Sept. 18, at 8 p.m. at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich.

Sponsored by the Archaeological Associates of Greenwich (the AAG), the lecture is free to AAG, Bruce Museum members, students with ID and $15 to the public at the door.

Albert Afraid of Hawk, an Olgala Lakota Sioux, died in Danbury, in June 1900. He died while performing with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and was buried in an unmarked grave near Danbury. In 2008, a local historian found archives with the exact burial location. When alerted, family members on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation requested Albert’s remains be returned to the Pine Ridge Reservation for reburial. Archaeologist Bellantoni was called in to participate in the exhumation, the forensic work and final repatriation.

Professor Bellantoni received his Ph.D. in 1987 from the University of Connecticut in Anthropology. As State Archeologist at the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History and Archaeology Center at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, he has been teaching and excavating in Connecticut for more than 30 years. He will be retiring this fall and this is just one of the many unusual stories he has to tell.

Photo: Nicholas Bellantoni via YouTube.