More than 180 children are buried in the original Carlisle Indian Cemetery. In 1927, nine years after the school closed, the US Army disinterred the remains of indigenous children without tribal consent to make way for a parking lot.

Since 2017 the US Army War College and the Carlisle Barracks, to which the current burial ground belongs, has been involved in the repatriation of the remains of former students, at the request of their families and tribal members.

Of the 21 who have so far gone through this process, Sophia Tetoff was among the latest.

Despite her grueling continent-crossing journey by both boat and train, very little is known about her five years at the Carlisle school except that she spent more than half of that time working for months at a time in country homes. She was on her fifth such outing when she contracted tuberculosis in 1905 and was sent back to Carlisle, where she died a year later.

Posthumously, she had existed only on a couple of student cards which can now be viewed at the website of Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center. That was until a few years ago when Lauren Peters, her great niece who had studied Native American history, learned about her existence through a tribal elder. Peters and her family eventually contacted the Boarding School Healing Coalition, which had helped repatriate other Carlisle students.

Describing the event as "intimate and deeply powerful", Torres was invited by Peters and her son to be "part of the process of removing dirt", "one narrow layer after another, in a reverent procedure overseen by professional archeologists".

That was before a tiny wooden coffin, "with a bit of wear but still intact", to use the words of Torres, revealed itself. He then retreated to give the family "privacy with their ancestor", almost exactly 120 years after she first set foot on Carlisle soil, on June 26, 1901.

"None of those decisions－h(huán)er arrival at Carlisle and her burial there－were Sophia's own ones, Torres says.

"None of the children whom Sophia had been with, in life or death, got to have their own choices. It's time for home."

Contact the writer at zhaoxu@chinadailyusa.com