Repatriation has compromised the opportunity to directly examine skeletons and to apply new diagnostic criteria and techniques. Pre-repatriation approaches to non-metric data acquisition, must make a number of assumptions: (1) Phenomena must be correctly identified and segregated; (2) Criteria for severity must be specific to the phenomena studied; and (3) As criteria for disease recognition may change with time, it is valuable only as long as the raw data is also recorded. As part of data preservation, x-rays and CD-ROM images were recorded for skeletons from Nebraska sites undergoing repatriation. This report concentrates on four of them: 25DK13 and slightly more recent 25DK2B, 25DK10, and 25KX1. 28% of individuals from 25DK13 manifest polyostotic periosteal reaction, and sabre shin reaction was invariably associated with visible surface periosteal reaction. 8-14% of individuals from the other sites also had periosteal reaction. Sabre shin reaction, when present in skeletons from those sites, was associated with such complete remodeling that surface periosteal reaction was no longer visible. The patterns of periosteal reaction in the examined sites were in-distinguishable from those observed on direct examination of skeletons with yaws and syphilis. The Nebraska transition from yaws to syphilis apparently took place approximately 800 years ago