[Rarebooks] FS: It Was 1877, It Was Iowa, and it was Too Good to be True

[Joslin Hall Books & Ephemera]

 From our recent catalog “19th Century Americana: An Even Dozen”
<http://www.joslinhall.com/Catalog419.pdf>

"Elephant Pipes and Inscribed Tablets in the Museum of Academy of  
Natural Sciences, Davenport, Iowa".

By Charles E. Putnam. 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.  $50

Pictures ->
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