PORT ANGELES — First, eagles circled the site of this ancient Indian village. Then the people started to arrive, by tens, then by hundreds.

Indian, white, from town, from as far as Alaska. And the Lower Elwha Klallam people knew the day of healing they'd hoped for was at hand.

The crowd stood for hours in sleet, rain, snow and wind for a healing ceremony yesterday on the grounds of Tse-whit-zen, an ancient Klallam village inadvertently unearthed by a state construction project.

Begun in August 2003, the construction work disturbed about 315 intact burials and thousands of isolates, or bone fragments, and Tse-whit-zen, parts of which date back 2,700 years.

Surrounded by steel sheet pilings and standing on the asphalt paving of the construction site, tribal members offered prayers and songs for the ancestors taken from this ground, and still beneath it.

The state stopped work at the site — where it had already spent $58 million — after the tribe, in a letter sent last month, asked the Department of Transportation (DOT) to find another site to build pontoons for replacement of the east half of the Hood Canal Bridge.

Construction workers were among those who joined with the tribe yesterday.

"I wanted to offer respect for the Natives I work with; they mean a lot to me, we grew up in the same town, went to the same schools, worked here at the same job," said Dan Starks, 51, of Port Angeles.

"I could see this was hard on them; it would be hard on me."

Sam Hilt of Port Angeles, a heavy-equipment operator, said he was sorry to see the job stop. "I would have liked to have seen the project continue, but I don't want to see a bunch of people angry, and a huge division, and so much racism to come out of the deal; there is too much already."

In recognition of Lower Elwha Klallam tribal ancestors who were buried on the land, members of tribes from throughout the region, state transportation officials, construction-site workers and other Port Angeles residents walk silently around the graving-dock site where work was recently halted.

Tribal members wrapped in Pendletons and hand-crafted button blankets, wearing cedar hats and carrying elk-skin drums, stood in a great circle alongside construction workers in Carhartts and town residents bundled in rain gear. They stood for hours in the rain and cold as tribal leaders from around the region offered prayers and songs of healing.

"How much this means, to have this support," said Dennis Sullivan, vice chairman of the Lower Elwha Tribal Council, "to see the different nationalities and races standing there in support, this is great medicine for the Klallam people; we have suffered and been in such pain."

Doug MacDonald, secretary of the state DOT, standing with tribal leaders, said, "The healing we are embarked on is about the past, the present and the future." His mother, Elinor, watched in the audience, standing for hours alongside tribal elders.

Tribal Chairwoman Frances Charles, wrapped in a blanket, her face marked with sacred red ochre, wept as she gave thanks for the show of support, not just at this ceremony but throughout the ordeal.

"Klallam people are the Strong People. That's our symbol, and we believe that. It's the little ones I battle for; I don't want to see them go through what we went through, and continue to go through."

Tribal members helped the project proceed for months, with many of their members working alongside archaeologists and construction workers to carefully dig their ancestors' remains out of the ground to get them out of harm's way.

"It has been such a painful experience," said tribal member Monica Charles. "To watch our young people dig in the dirt for bits and pieces of our ancestors."

A Transportation Department contractor hired to sample the ground for suitability before construction had found nothing.

But contractors hit shell midden and then human remains nearly from the start. Bones were mistakenly scattered by construction equipment; one skeleton was cut in half, one side left in the ground, the other hauled to the landfill along with dump-truck loads of intact archaeological deposits.

Secretary MacDonald shut the job down less than three weeks after it had started.

Work began again in March 2004 under a multi-agency agreement in which the tribe agreed to let the work continue if its ancestors' remains were recovered. The site was also to be sampled and analyzed by archaeologists.

By May, the tribe was seeking to renegotiate the agreement as more and more burials were discovered and the true size and value of the site became known. But the state, citing time and money constraints, resisted.

Tribal members ultimately could go no further. "Enough is enough," Lower Elwha Klallam elder Bea Charles, 85, said, less than a month before work stopped for good.

Town residents disappointed at the loss of jobs have pushed for restarting construction. Some state legislators are seeking a legislative investigation, with hope of overturning the DOT's decision to leave.

The site is the largest pre-European-contact village site ever found in Washington, according to Larson Anthropological Archaeological Services of Gig Harbor, which is analyzing the site for the DOT.

The site also has yielded bone and antler artifacts from a longer time span than any other single site on the Northwest Coast. It has the largest sample of structures and other features, including cooking pits, drying racks and even areas where sacred red ochre was processed for ceremonial use.

The site also helps tell the story of the evolving land form of the Ediz Hook, and mass graves bear witness to epidemics that swept through the Northwest tribes beginning in the mid-1700s with the arrival of Spanish explorers.

Thousands of artifacts have been recovered, including tools, points, fishhooks, ornamental objects and hundreds of stones etched with sacred teachings.

The future of the state-owned 22-acre site is yet to be decided.

As the cold rain fell, well-wishers formed a long line and walked silently to the beat of a drum around the site, to pay respect to the ancestors.

"I want to put a feather on every one of your heads and a flower for standing here and supporting my tribe," said Jerry Charles Sr., a former tribal chairman and Frances Charles' father.

"It was like having a funeral every day, digging up our people, so heartbreaking to see these people that were our ancestors from thousands of years ago.

"They had everything, the trees, the fish, but then the city of Port Angeles came and grew and we were shoved aside.

"But that was yesterday, and today we have to live in two worlds. ... There is a long canoe and we are all in it. And I have a lot of non-Indian friends and they are getting in, too."

Lynda Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com