Comanche Nation Repatriation Records — NAGPRA Database

The Repatriation Database Data from Jan. 6, 2025

Where Native American remains made available for return to the Comanche Nation were taken from

Each county is a peak

Height is amount of remains taken from county and made available by institutions for return to tribe

No remains taken from these counties made available for return to tribe

Institution that made remains available for return

Note: Remains of 331 Native Americans with no location information were made available for return to the Comanche Nation.

Under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, when an institution establishes a connection between tribes and remains, it must publish a list of the tribes eligible to make a repatriation claim. The remains are then made available for return to the tribe(s). Once a tribal claim is made, physical transfer may occur. Many remains have been physically returned to tribes, but data on this is spotty because the law does not require institutions to report when these transfers occur.

These 33 institutions made Native American remains available for return to the Comanche Nation.

Institution	Remains Made Available for Return To Tribe
History Nebraska	586
History Colorado	475
New Mexico State Univ. Museum + U.S. Dept. of Interior + U.S. Dept. of Agriculture +	288
U.S. Department of Defense	150
U.S. Department of the Interior	109
Baylor University, Mayborn Museum Complex	61
University of Wyoming	54
Texas A and M University	48
University of Colorado Museum	48
University of Denver, Museum of Anthropology	36
Denver Museum of Nature and Science	33
Witte Museum	32
University of Iowa, Office of the State Archaeologist	21
Fort Collins Museum of Discovery	18
Museum of Texas Tech University	17
Harvard University	16
Texas Parks and Wildlife	16
U.S. Department of State	16
Colorado College	11
Southern Methodist University	10
Chadron State College	8
Metropolitan State University of Denver, Department of Sociology and Anthropology	8
University of Texas at Austin, Texas Archeological Research Laboratory	6
Colorado Bureau of Investigation	3
Brown University, Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology	2
New York University, College of Dentistry	2
Dalton State College	1
Kerr County	1
Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art	1
Mercyhurst Univ.	1
U.S. Department of Agriculture	1
U.S. Department of Justice	1
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology	1

Timeline of Native American remains made available for return to the Comanche Nation

Tribal and institutional capacity, funding, staffing, regulatory changes, audits, Review Committee decisions and litigation may influence timelines. Under NAGPRA, institutions make Native American remains available for return and determine whether they are culturally affiliated using evidence such as tribal traditional knowledge and biological and archaeological links. From 2010 to 2024, remains could also be returned through disposition based on geographic affiliation. Institutions can also determine that remains are culturally unidentifiable. Tribes may request the transfer of these remains, or they may be reinterred by the institution.

These institutions have not made available for return the remains of at least 5,500 Native Americans that were taken from counties known to be of interest to the Comanche Nation.

These are estimates calculated using remains not made available for return from counties that the tribe has previously been eligible to claim remains from, as well as counties that the tribe has indicated interest in to the federal government. They are not comprehensive figures. The tribe may not wish to claim the remains, and other tribes may also seek to claim them.

Institution	Remains Not Made Available for Return That Were Taken From Counties of Interest to the Tribe
Univ. of Texas at Austin	1,774
Museum of New Mexico, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture	566
Dept. of Agriculture	343 Santa Fe NF (240) Lincoln NF (45) Gila NF (36) Carson NF (11) Cibola NF (8) Rio Grande NF (2) Apache-Sitgreaves NF (1)
Harvard Univ.	286
Dept. of the Interior	279 BIA (156) New Mexico State Office (103) Wyoming State Office (17) Reclamation, Missouri Basin Region, Montana Area Office (3)
Field Museum	278
West Texas A and M Univ.	273
Univ. of Texas at San Antonio	231
Museum of Texas Tech Univ.	220
American Museum of Natural History	188
Dept. of Defense	134 Fort Worth District (73) Fort Bliss (55) White Sands Missile Range (4) National Museum of Health and Medicine (1) Omaha District (1)
Univ. of Oklahoma	105 Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History (83) Oklahoma Archeological Survey (22)
Texas State Univ.	66
Univ. of Arizona	64
Univ. of Michigan	63
Univ. of New Mexico	56
Trinidad State Junior College	48
New York Univ.	42
Brazos Valley Museum of Natural History	39
New Mexico Highlands Univ.	35
Carlsbad Museum	32
Univ. of the Incarnate Word	32
Sul Ross State Univ.	30
Witte Museum	29
Western Colorado Univ.	25
Univ. of Texas, El Paso	23
Kansas State Historical Society	22
Univ. of California, Berkeley	22
Univ. of Wyoming	21
Beloit College	19
Houston Museum of Natural Science	18
Univ. of Kansas	18
Texas Parks and Wildlife	17
Univ. of Nebraska State Museum	14
Texas A and M Univ.	13 Dept. of Anthropology (8) Commerce (5)
Ohio History Connection	12
No Man's Land Historical Society	11
Univ. of Pennsylvania	11
Coryell County Sheriff's Dept.	8
Texas Dept. of Transportation	8
Texas Historical Commission	8
Los Angeles County Natural History Museum	7
Univ. of Texas Permian Basin	6
Hastings Museum	5
Milwaukee Public Museum	5
Fort Concho NHL	4
New Mexico State Univ. Museum	4
Univ. of Minnesota, Duluth	4
Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville	4
Dartmouth College	3
Illinois State Museum	3
Nassau County Dept. of Parks and Recreation	3
Wichita State Univ.	3
Artesia Historical Museum and Art Center	2
Buffalo Bill Center of the West	2
Carnegie Museum of Natural History	2
Fort Lewis College	2
Heard Museum	2
Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale	2
Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer	2
The Heritage Museum of the Texas Hill Country	2
Univ. of Kentucky	2
Brooklyn Museum	1
Cass County Historical Society Museum	1
Cleveland Museum of Natural History	1
Florida State Univ.	1
Fort Worth Museum of Science and History	1
Grayson County Frontier Village Museum	1
History Nebraska	1
Hutchinson County Historical Museum	1
Kansas City Museum	1
Meeteetse Museums	1
Mercyhurst Univ.	1
Missouri Historical Society	1
Museum of Us	1
Natural History Museum of Utah	1
Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology	1
Rochester Museum and Science Center	1
San Bernardino County Museum	1
Tioga Point Museum	1
Univ. of Memphis	1
Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	1
Utah Dept. of Natural Resources	1
Wichita County Sherriff's Office	1
Yale Univ.	1

Counties of interest used in estimate include: Apache in Arizona. Riverside in California. Adams, Alamosa, Arapahoe, Archuleta, Baca, Bent, Boulder, Broomfield, Chaffee, Cheyenne, Clear Creek, Conejos, Costilla, Crowley, Custer, Denver, Douglas, Eagle, El Paso, Elbert, Fremont, Gilpin, Grand, Gunnison, Hinsdale, Huerfano, Jackson, Jefferson, Kiowa, Kit Carson, La Plata, Lake, Larimer, Las Animas, Lincoln, Logan, Mesa, Mineral, Moffat, Morgan, Otero, Park, Phillips, Pitkin, Prowers, Pueblo, Rio Grande, Routt, Saguache, Sedgwick, Summit, Teller, Washington, Weld and Yuma in Colorado. Cheyenne, Clark, Finney, Ford, Gove, Grant, Gray, Greeley, Hamilton, Haskell, Kearny, Lane, Logan, Meade, Morton, Rawlins, Scott, Seward, Sherman, Stanton, Stevens, Thomas, Wallace and Wichita in Kansas. Adams, Antelope, Banner, Boone, Box Butte, Boyd, Burt, Cass, Cedar, Chase, Cherry, Cheyenne, Cuming, Custer, Dakota, Dawes, Dawson, Dixon, Dodge, Douglas, Dundy, Franklin, Frontier, Furnas, Gage, Garden, Garfield, Hall, Harlan, Hitchcock, Hooker, Howard, Keith, Keya Paha, Kimball, Knox, Lancaster, Lincoln, Mcpherson, Morrill, Nance, Nemaha, Platte, Red Willow, Richardson, Sarpy, Saunders, Scotts Bluff, Sherman, Sioux, Stanton, Thayer, Valley, Washington and Webster in Nebraska. Beaver, Beckham, Blaine, Caddo, Canadian, Cimarron, Comanche, Cotton, Custer, Dewey, Ellis, Grady, Greer, Harmon, Harper, Jackson, Jefferson, Kiowa, Major, Roger Mills, Stephens, Texas, Tillman, Washita and Woodward in Oklahoma. Anderson, Andrews, Aransas, Archer, Armstrong, Atascosa, Austin, Bailey, Bandera, Bastrop, Baylor, Bee, Bell, Bexar, Blanco, Borden, Bosque, Brazoria, Brazos, Brewster, Briscoe, Brooks, Brown, Burleson, Burnet, Caldwell, Calhoun, Callahan, Cameron, Carson, Castro, Childress, Clay, Cochran, Coke, Coleman, Collingsworth, Colorado, Comal, Comanche, Concho, Coryell, Cottle, Crane, Crockett, Crosby, Culberson, Dallam, Dallas, Dawson, Deaf Smith, Denton, Dewitt, Dickens, Dimmit, Donley, Duval, Eastland, Ector, Edwards, El Paso, Ellis, Erath, Falls, Fannin, Fayette, Fisher, Floyd, Foard, Fort Bend, Freestone, Frio, Gaines, Galveston, Garza, Gillespie, Glasscock, Goliad, Gonzales, Gray, Grayson, Grimes, Guadalupe, Hale, Hall, Hamilton, Hansford, Hardeman, Harris, Hartley, Haskell, Hays, Hemphill, Henderson, Hidalgo, Hill, Hockley, Hood, Houston, Howard, Hudspeth, Hunt, Hutchinson, Irion, Jack, Jackson, Jeff Davis, Jim Hogg, Jim Wells, Johnson, Jones, Karnes, Kaufman, Kendall, Kenedy, Kent, Kerr, Kimble, King, Kinney, Kleberg, Knox, La Salle, Lamb, Lampasas, Lavaca, Lee, Leon, Limestone, Lipscomb, Live Oak, Llano, Loving, Lubbock, Lynn, Madison, Martin, Mason, Matagorda, Maverick, Mcculloch, Mclennan, Mcmullen, Medina, Menard, Midland, Milam, Mills, Mitchell, Montague, Montgomery, Moore, Motley, Navarro, Nolan, Nueces, Ochiltree, Oldham, Palo Pinto, Parker, Parmer, Pecos, Potter, Presidio, Rains, Randall, Reagan, Real, Reeves, Refugio, Roberts, Robertson, Rockwall, Runnels, San Jacinto, San Patricio, San Saba, Schleicher, Scurry, Shackelford, Sherman, Somervell, Starr, Stephens, Sterling, Stonewall, Sutton, Swisher, Tarrant, Taylor, Terrell, Terry, Throckmorton, Tom Green, Travis, Trinity, Upton, Uvalde, Val Verde, Van Zandt, Victoria, Walker, Waller, Ward, Washington, Webb, Wharton, Wheeler, Wichita, Wilbarger, Willacy, Williamson, Wilson, Winkler, Wise, Yoakum, Young, Zapata and Zavala in Texas. Albany, Big Horn, Campbell, Carbon, Converse, Fremont, Goshen, Hot Springs, Johnson, Laramie, Lincoln, Natrona, Park, Platte, Sheridan, Sublette, Sweetwater, Teton, Uinta and Washakie in Wyoming

Search for institutions holding Native American remains and tribes seeking to reclaim them

Try the University of California, Berkeley, the Chickasaw Nation or Arizona.

Institutions that have not submitted information to the federal government are not listed.

These tribes were also listed when institutions culturally affiliated Native American remains to the Comanche Nation. Institutions often make remains available for return to multiple tribes, so the amount of remains listed below may be counted for more than one tribe.

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About the Data

This tool presents a dataset maintained by the National Park Service containing all the Native American human remains and associated funerary objects that institutions have reported to the federal government under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The dataset includes information about the state and county where remains and objects were taken from, which institutions hold them and whether they have been made available for return to tribes.

The data is self-reported by institutions. The amount of unrepatriated Native American remains reported by institutions is a minimum estimate of individuals and institutions frequently adjust these numbers when they reinventory groups of remains. Some institutions that are subject to NAGPRA have also entirely failed to report the remains in their possession. As a result, the numbers provided are best taken as estimates. The actual number and geographic scope of what’s held by publicly funded institutions is larger than what is presently documented.

ProPublica supplemented this dataset with information about cultural affiliation and disposition to specific tribes by systematically parsing the text of Notices of Inventory Completion published in the Federal Register. An additional dataset from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Tribal Directory Assessment Tool, was used for the section on remains not made available for return from counties that each tribe has indicated interest in to the federal government.

Institution location and tribal headquarters location information was provided by National NAGPRA. The location of some groups that are not federally recognized was provided through research by ProPublica.

Institutions that are part of a larger entity are grouped. (For example, the Mesa Verde National Park is part of the U.S. Department of the Interior.)

Institutions that have not submitted information to the federal government are not listed. The Smithsonian Institution is not listed because its repatriation process falls under the National Museum of the American Indian Act and it is not required to publicly report its holdings with the same detail as institutions subject to NAGPRA.

If you work for an institution and would like to provide comment on your institution’s repatriation efforts, please email [email protected]. If you think the data is incorrect or have a data request, please get in touch. We are aware of some issues with the accuracy of location information and tribes mistakenly being identified for disposition of Native American remains in published notices.

If you want to share something else with ProPublica, we’d like to hear from you.

If you have questions about implementing or complying with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, get in touch with National NAGPRA or the NAGPRA Community of Practice.

We use the word “tribes” to refer to all groups that institutions made Native American remains available to under NAGPRA. This includes tribes, nations, bands, pueblos, communities, Native Alaskan villages, Native Hawaiian organizations and non-federally recognized groups.

Data sources from Department of the Interior, National Park Service, National NAGPRA Program, the Federal Register, Department of Housing and Development, Tribal Directory Assessment Tool

by Ash Ngu and Andrea Suozzo Jan. 11, 2023 Data from Jan. 6, 2025 Additional reporting by Asia Fields, Mary Hudetz and Logan Jaffe for ProPublica and Graham Brewer for NBC News. Additional development by Alec Glassford.