[Rarebooks] FS: 1886 Iowa Elephant Pipes Hoax

[Joslin Hall Rare Books]

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Putnam, Charles E.  "Elephant Pipes and Inscribed Tablets in the Museum 
of Academy of Natural Sciences, Davenport, Iowa".  $75

Davenport; Glass & Axtman, printers: 1886. 2nd, enlarged edition.

In the winter of 1877 amateur archeologist Rev. Jacob Gass made a series 
of incredible discoveries while excavating an ancient Indian burial 
mound on a farm in Davenport, Iowa. The relics in question eventually 
included several incised slate plaques, one apparently with a calendar 
and another with writing, and a pair of stone "elephant" pipes.

Controversy over their authenticity raged almost from the moment of 
their discovery, but the Davenport Academy, including a young scholar 
named J. Duncan Putnam, staunchly defended them. When young Putnam died 
at the age of 26 in 1881 his father, Charles E. Putnam, took up the 
cause. A wealthy lawyer, Putnam was one of the major funders of the 
Academy, though not one of its "inner" social set. Putnam published his 
first broadside in defense of the pipes and tablets in 1885, followed a 
year later by this, much expanded edition.

He was shouting into the wind. After a series of disparaging reports by, 
among others, the Smithsonian, Putnam swung into full gear and what 
followed soon began to resemble a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. Critics 
within the Academy were "investigated" and expelled in a witchunt 
resembling the Red Scare of the 1950s; lawsuits for defamation swirled 
around like raindrops, and yet... and yet...  many of the Academy 
members, though evidently not Charles Putnam, knew all along that the 
whole thing was a hoax.

They knew it because they did it.

As it later turned out, many members of the "inner" social circle within 
the Academy were jealous of Gass, an outsider who didn't speak very good 
English, and decided to have some fun with him by burying some hastily 
faked artifacts in a mound they knew he would be digging in over the 
winter. Evidence suggests that Gass himself came to realize this in his 
later years. Whether Putnam ever did will remain an unanswered question, 
but he may have. In June of 1887 his mansion and all his papers burned. 
Charles Putnam died six weeks later at the age of 63.

Softcover. 6”x9", 95 pages, line illustrations. Slight spine loss but 
otherwise fine and clean.  [42968]

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