March 19, 2025
John Kopp/PhillyVoice
The Penn Museum has agreed to repatriate the remains of a child who belonged to one of the Indigenous Wabanaki tribes in Maine during the 19th century. The child's skull has long been held by the museum in its Morton Cranial Collection.
The Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania will soon return the skull of an Indigenous American child to an organization in Maine that represents the state's four federally recognized tribes. The remains, part of the museum's controversial Morton Cranial Collection, were identified as belonging to a member of the Wabanaki confederation of tribes during the first half of the 19th century.
A notice filed Wednesday by the Federal Register, the daily journal of the U.S. government, said Penn Museum determined the remains have a cultural affiliation that meet the criteria for repatriation under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
The skull is thought to belong to a child of unknown gender who's most likely from Maine and died between 12 and 15 years old. The child was a member of the Penobscot tribe, one of four recognized tribes that make up the Wabanaki confederation of Eastern Algonquin-speaking nations. The Indigenous Wabanaki, whose name means "People of the Dawnland," have inhabited northeastern New England and maritime Canada for thousands of years.
The child's remains are expected to be returned to representatives of the four tribes on or after April 18, the notice said. The Penn Museum consulted with the Maine Wabanaki Intertribal Repatriation Committee, who worked on behalf of the tribes to identify the remains and determine their history.
Since the passage of NAGPRA in 1990, Penn Museum has received at least 70 formal repatriation claims seeking the return of remains and other objects to Indigenous tribes. The museum said it has completed 50 repatriations, including the transfer of 334 sets of human remains, 830 associated funerary objects and more than 100 other objects of cultural or sacred significance. Another 21 sets of human remains have completed the NAGPRA process and are awaiting repatriation to affiliated tribes.
"In our 35-year history of working with NAGPRA, centering human dignity and the wishes of descendant communities govern the treatment of human remains in our care," a Penn Museum spokesperson said in a statement. "Should ongoing research yield new information about these individuals, we are committed to taking appropriate steps towards repatriation or burial."
The museum did not provide a date when it anticipates returning the remains of the Wabanaki child. The notice, dated Feb. 25 before its publication by the National Park Service on Wednesday, said Penn will be responsible for coordinating with Wabanaki representatives to return the child's remains. The skull has been stored in an access-controlled area of the museum designated for human remains, the museum spokesperson said.
Penn Museum records show the child's remains were collected some time before 1840 by Paul Swift, a Massachusetts doctor who moved his practice to Philadelphia in 1841. Swift gave the remains to Samuel G. Morton, the physician and anatomy lecturer who amassed a collection of more than 1,300 skulls from around the world — including many his associates took from graves and battlefields.
Morton studied cranial measurements, including the skulls of enslaved people, to advance discredited theories of white superiority. He is sometimes called the father of scientific racism for claiming to provide evidence supporting racial stereotypes about brain size and intelligence, which became prevalent in scholarly debate during his era.
Morton kept his vast collection at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, which purchased the skulls in 1953 — two years after Morton's death. The collection was later loaned to Penn Museum in 1966, and it was formally gifted to the museum in 1997.
For years, Penn Museum displayed a portion of Morton's collection and used the skulls for teaching and research purposes. The skulls were placed in storage in 2020 as part of the museum's effort to reexamine its unethical collection practices. At the time, the museum cited civil unrest following the police killing of George Floyd and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement as reasons to move toward repatriation and burial of Morton Collection remains, many of which remain unidentified.
In recent years, a Penn Museum committee and advisory group have worked to research the origins of remains in the collection and make recommendations on their disposition.
In January 2024, Penn Museum buried the remains of 19 Black Philadelphians whose skulls were part of the Morton Collection. The interment, held at Eden Cemetery, a historically Black cemetery in Delaware County, angered some community members and anthropologists who felt the burial was rushed and poorly communicated to the public. Several advocates questioned whether Penn Museum should continue serving as the steward of the collection, arguing that a descendent-led process should instead be undertaken to thoroughly catalog and research remains.
Among other human remains held in storage at Penn Museum, some belonging to victims of the 1985 MOVE bombing in West Philadelphia have been identified in recent years and led to backlash against the museum.
Penn Museum said the Wabanaki child's remains were found to have connections to the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, Mi'kmaq Nation, Passamaquoddy Tribe of Indian Township and Pleasant Point, and Penobscot Nation. The museum said the repatriation of the remains will be carried out based on the wishes of the tribes.
