“It happened with alarming frequency. When the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock, one of the first things they did was come across mounds in the earth. Out of curiosity, they dug them up. They later wrote that finding buried there a Wampanoag man and child, they made off with ‘sundry of the prettiest things.’ Thomas Jefferson did the same. He sent his slaves out to excavate burial mounds and then displayed these Native people’s remains and sacred items in the entryway to Monticello.”
