SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — The remains of a South Dakota student who died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania will be returned to the state later this year, according to the U.S. Office of Army Cemeteries (OAC).

Amos LaFramboise of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation was one of several students who died between 1880 and 1910 at the school. An estimated 200 students died while the school operated from 1879 and to 1918.

The Army intends to begin disinterment activities on Sept. 11. It will be conducted under the authority of Army Regulation 290–5, in accordance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation.

LaFramboise is one of five individuals whose remains will be returned to their relatives and home states.

A KELOLAND News story from Oct. 6, 2021, said Tamara St. John, a tribal historian for Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, and the tribe were working to bring the remains of students who died at Carlisle home. The remains of two of six children who were at Carlisle were still at the school’s burial site in 2021.

LaFramboise died 20 days after arriving at Carlisle. He was the first to die at the school. 

The remains of nine children from the Rosebud Sioux Tribe were returned home in July of 2021.

The OAC said it had received written requests for disinterment from the closest living descendent of each of the five individuals from the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation.

“Kill the Indian, Save the Man” was the premise behind establishing the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, according to the National Park Service.

Col. Richard Pratt, who started the school, believed that if an Indian child was removed from his surroundings and placed in what he viewed as a more civilized settings, the child could then assume the qualities that would make him fully equal. About 10,000 were enrolled in the school throughout its operation.