“Skeletal Testimony: Repatriating Narratives in the Early Atlantic” argues that like physical exhibits of stolen Indigenous remains, narrative representations of these bodies are another “crypt” comprising an integral strategy of settler colonialism in thelong eighteenth century. Analyzing Anglophone Atlantic World accounts, I contend that colonial writers used formalized conventions of narrative observation to figure Indigenous remains as interchangeable, collectible bones and establish a self-referentialarchive of violence and removal. Through what I call “skeletal testimony,” I identify the tension between these depictions and the care that the living undertook to physically preserve these remains. Tracing the resulting formal ruptures in these accounts, I reframe such texts as reliant on Indigenous knowledge and relations, using “skeletal” as a structural methodology to navigating settler colonial texts.