The Davenport Tablets are
three tablets found in mounds near Davenport, Iowa
. The first two were discovered on January
10, 1877 by a local clergyman, the Reverend Jacob Gass, while
engaged in an emergency excavation (due to the imminent transfer of
the access rights) at the site known as Cook's farm. An excavation
a year later (the access rights having been restored) Charles
Harrison, the president of the Davenport Academy of Natural
Sciences, while excavating there with Gass, found a third tablet.
They are often associated in discussions with a pipe found by Gass
and another Lutheran minister, the Reverend Ad Blumer in 1880 in a
separate group of mounds, referred to as the 'elephant pipe' by
Gass. Blumer gave the pipe to the Academy and shortly after his
donation, the Academy acquired a similar pipe from Gass which he
reported had been found by a farmer in Louisa County, Iowa.
University of
Iowa
Professor, Marshall McKusick, now refers to the
find and the circumstances surrounding it as “The Davenport
Conspiracy”.
Charles Putnam wrote the Vindication of the artifacts in 1885.
McKusick suggested that the tablets were modified roof tiles stolen
off a neighboring building of the Davenport Academy museum even
though Gass described finding them in a burial mound on the Cook
family farm.
McKusick suggested that the contextual ambiguity of the tablets –
along with questions of Gass' honesty as an archaeologist, and even
rumors of a plot by envious colleagues to plant the
pseudo-artifacts in an effort to discredit and to expel the
foreign-born Gass from his recently awarded post at the Davenport
Academy – discredit the credibility of the Davenport Tablets.
The Davenport Tablet controversy is occasionally used by
present-day
pseudo-scientists to cite
as “evidence” for alleged
Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic
contact.
Previous interpretations of the Davenport Tablets
Initially,
the authenticity of the Davenport “artifacts” was not questioned,
and even received good reviews from people like Spencer Baird, of the Smithsonian
Institution
, and businessman Charles E. Putnam.
However,
as the debate escalated from the pages of minor scholarly journals
to the foremost news in the journal Science, eventually
the tablets’ authenticity fell under the criticism of the new
Smithsonian
spokesman, Cyrus
Thomas. Thomas lambasted them as
“anomalous waifs,” that had absolutely no supporting, or
contextual, evidence to aide in their authenticity.
In his 1991 book,
The Davenport Conspiracy Revisited,
Professor Marshall McKusick asserts that Gass may have been the
victim of an ill-advised joke played on him by fellow Davenport
Academy members, who were possibly motivated by their jealousy of a
foreign-born outsider in their midst. In 1874 Gass had made
important discoveries of beautiful and complex
Native American art at
the Cook farm, such as copper axes. The level of technical ability
and artistic craftsmanship by ancient
Native Americans was
evident in these artifacts.
Another explanation of the “artifact”'s dubious origins might
involve the credibility of Gass himself. It is believed that
Gass dealt in fake
Native American effigy
pipes, such as the many examples illustrated in
The Davenport
Conspiracy Revisited. Genuine effigy pipes are a testament to
the creative abilities of the ancient
Native American Indians, but their
counterfeits are of poor quality. Made
of shale, clay, and limestone, these frauds were often traded
amongst Gass and his colleagues, many ending up in the Davenport
Academy museum. However, it is possible that
Gass himself was not the perpetrator of these fakes,
but was again under the influence of people who were jealous of his
abilities and luck in selecting excavation sites. This time though,
it was his own relatives, Edwin Gass and Adolph Blumer that
persuaded him to take these fakes seriously and trade them. At a
time when people digging along the
Mississippi River in Iowa and Illinois
were turning up nothing, Gass had the luck of hitting a genuine
archaeological jackpot in 1874. After that date it is questionable
as to what the motives of his academic rivals and relatives
were.
See also
References
- Putnam, Charles E. A
Vindication Of The Authenticity Of The Elephant Pipes And Inscribed
Tablets In The Museum Of The Davenport Academy Of Natural Sciences,
1885. ISBN 054861492X
- Guthrie, James L. "The Blind Men and the Elephants: The
Davenport Relics Reconsidered." NEARA Monograph, 2005.
- Silverberg, Robert (1970).
The Mound Builders. Ohio University Press. ISBN 978-0821408391
- Williams, Stephen. Fantastic Archaeology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1991. ISBN 978-0812282382
- McKusick, Marshall. The Davenport Conspiracy Revisited.
Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1991.
ISBN 978-0813803449
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