MAUMEE – The Lucas County Coroner’s Office has confirmed that human remains – including a skull – found
on a Maumee River island Wednesday belong to a Native American gravesite.
“The coroner already has looked at the photos (of the bones) and confirmed that it is an Indian burial,”
said Scott Carpenter of the Toledo Metroparks.
The bones were discovered late Wednesday morning by a fisherman at Audubon Island, a large island in the
Maumee River visible from Orleans Park in Perrysburg. The island is just east of the Perrysburg/Maumee
bridge and is the site of the Audubon Islands Nature Preserve.
Maumee Police Sgt. T. J. Stratton said the fisherman discovered the bones “on the edge of the water” at
the island.
Just after 12 p.m., Maumee Fire personnel, as well as Metroparks rangers, took a boat to the site to
investigate.
Carpenter said that the visible remains included a skull and what appeared to be a shoulder bone, which
were located on a bluff eaten away by water erosion on the east side of the island.
“I can only assume the rest is still attached underneath the ground,” he said.
Carpenter noted the area is “where we had confirmed exposed Indian graves in the past.”
He said that such incidents “happened multiple times in the past.”
“What we’re instructed to do by the (Ohio) Historical Society is to take pictures of them,” and supply
them to both the Historical Society and the Lucas County Coroner’s Office “and if there’s anything they
want us to do, we will.”
These particular bones are to be left in their present situation “as those that buried them intended,”
said Carpenter. However, artifacts found with the remains – including what appeared to be a necklace and
a metal bowl – will be turned over to the Historical Society.
He said that rangers will continue to patrol the area and warning signs will be set up to protect the
site. Carpenter further indicated that “it is a federal offense to remove anything from an Indian burial
site.”
The site, the largest island in the river, was also historically called Col. McKee’s Island and Ewing
Island.
According to a 2009 notice from the National Parks Service, human remains and an associated funerary item
– a raccoon jaw – were found on the island in 2007, and determined by the Lucas County Coroner to be
“possibly Native American.”
“A nearby 18th century Ottawa grave demonstrates that this part of the island may have been occupied and
used as a burial area by the Ottawa until around the time of the 1795 Treaty of Greenville,” the NPS
notice states.