Post by blackcrowheart on Mar 11, 2006 21:01:57 GMT -5
Twin Tomahawks A brazen theft, old ghosts and Portland's place in the
creepy history of Lewis and Clark's Pacific Northwest.
BY ZACH DUNDAS <http://www.wweek.com/author/?author=ZACH DUNDAS> |
zdundas at comcast.net
www.wweek.com/story.php?story=7301
<http://www.wweek.com/story.php?story=7301>
Separated at birth? The Oregon Historical Society's tomahawk (left)
and its supposed bloody fraternal twin that was stolen from the Whitman
Mission Museum last June (right).
A narrow lane off Highway 12 just outside Walla Walla, Wash., leads
though pastures and creek bottoms to the Whitman Mission National
Historic Site. The National Park Service runs this bucolic spread
surrounded by the vineyards that let a dying farm town reinvent itself
as wine country. A plush tasting room overlooks the historic area from
less than a mile away.
The mission itself, in contrast, is a lonely, spooky landscape, and was
nearly deserted on the overcast late autumn day when I visited. In fact,
this is a murder scene: On Nov. 29, 1847, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman,
who settled here to convert the Cayuse Indians to Protestant
Christianity, died in a chaotic massacre, along with about a dozen
others. The killers were mostly Cayuse men, but the event was more riot
than uprising.
The "incident" led to war, executions and Oregon's political birth.
Generations of Northwest kids have absorbed the story in history class.
Today, the Park Service operates a small museum in a boxy 1950s building
overshadowed by a lonely memorial obelisk. On June 4 of last year, the
museum itself became the scene of a brand-new crime, vastly smaller in
scale but resonant and, in a strange way, connected to Portland—a
city recently recommitted to examining its own history through the
massive Lewis & Clark bicentennial exhibit currently at the Oregon
Historical Society.
Thieves paid the Whitman museum's $3 admission charge, then ducked into
its one-room permanent exhibit, a sleepy chamber of native and settler
bric-a-brac. They evidently had cased the target beforehand, and brought
the specific wrench needed to dismantle the artifact display cases.
Steady nerves, too, because they worked just beyond the museum desk's
sightline. Only one thing disappeared: a footlong tomahawk with a 7-inch
blade. Nine months later, the theft remains unsolved.
The tomahawk probably disappeared into the booming illicit trade in
Indian artifacts. While other forms of culture crime—boosted Edvard
Munch masterpieces or looted Iraqi museums—might draw more
attention, the black market in Native American antiquities thrives
despite massive deterrence efforts by tribes, museums and the feds. A
variety of unsavory characters populate the business; Todd Swain, the
National Park Service's leading antiquities-theft investigator, says
cops often find looted native artifacts in methamphetamine labs. But if
this were just any tomahawk, stealing it wouldn't be all that lucrative.
Nineteenth-century trading companies mass-produced such quasi-ceremonial
weapons and many tribes used them; you can get one on eBay for less than
$300.
What recommended it to the thieves' attention? It is thought—or
supposed—that this tomahawk was used in the massacre. Used, in other
words, to crack open Marcus Whitman's skull.
Many, including some of the Cayuse tribe's own experts, doubt the
weapon's connection. The museum itself presented the tomahawk without
explanation. But if a buyer could be convinced of a grisly history, the
tomahawk's underworld value would spike.
"The Whitman folks estimate it could go for, at the high end of the
spectrum, $40,000," says Steve Yu, another NPS investigator. "Did it get
stolen because it was a tomahawk, or because someone knows it's
supposedly connected to the incident? It seems pretty clear that they
knew what they were stealing."
As it happens, the missing tomahawk has a twin. On the third floor of
Portland's Oregon Historical Society, another ax with murky but durable
links to the Whitman killings hangs in a case alongside other mission
artifacts. Though the description carefully reflects doubts about
whether this is an actual murder weapon, the fact that the Portland
tomahawk hangs just a few inches from a preserved lock of Narcissa
Whitman's hair makes for an undeniable chill.
This winter's big-ticket show at OHS is the Lewis & Clark exhibit, a
spectacular bonanza of original artifacts, interpretative films and
sharp explanatory texts gathered by the Missouri Historical Society,
making its only West Coast stop and closing this Saturday, March 11.
The show hammers home just how important physical artifacts are to our
ability to grasp history. The time-stained rough draft of Thomas
Jefferson's instructions to the explorers and the hollowed-out horn
where Meriwether Lewis stashed his tobacco drag a well-worn tale out of
the realm of myth into messy reality. The exhibit uses these raw
materials to reinvent the expedition's dauntingly complicated backdrop
of national, imperial and tribal politics.
And grand as it is, OHS's Lewis & Clark blockbuster is not complete
without a visit to the permanent collection's tomahawk upstairs. Whether
or not it was used to kill the Whitmans, the OHS tomahawk's link to its
stolen twin shows how deeply entwined urbane Portland is with its wilder
Northwest neighbors just a few hours inland. And the two tomahawks' saga
proves that in the West, history is far from settled.
The Whitman killings were one of those incidents in which vast
historical forces converged in mythic bloodshed.
creepy history of Lewis and Clark's Pacific Northwest.
BY ZACH DUNDAS <http://www.wweek.com/author/?author=ZACH DUNDAS> |
zdundas at comcast.net
www.wweek.com/story.php?story=7301
<http://www.wweek.com/story.php?story=7301>
Separated at birth? The Oregon Historical Society's tomahawk (left)
and its supposed bloody fraternal twin that was stolen from the Whitman
Mission Museum last June (right).
A narrow lane off Highway 12 just outside Walla Walla, Wash., leads
though pastures and creek bottoms to the Whitman Mission National
Historic Site. The National Park Service runs this bucolic spread
surrounded by the vineyards that let a dying farm town reinvent itself
as wine country. A plush tasting room overlooks the historic area from
less than a mile away.
The mission itself, in contrast, is a lonely, spooky landscape, and was
nearly deserted on the overcast late autumn day when I visited. In fact,
this is a murder scene: On Nov. 29, 1847, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman,
who settled here to convert the Cayuse Indians to Protestant
Christianity, died in a chaotic massacre, along with about a dozen
others. The killers were mostly Cayuse men, but the event was more riot
than uprising.
The "incident" led to war, executions and Oregon's political birth.
Generations of Northwest kids have absorbed the story in history class.
Today, the Park Service operates a small museum in a boxy 1950s building
overshadowed by a lonely memorial obelisk. On June 4 of last year, the
museum itself became the scene of a brand-new crime, vastly smaller in
scale but resonant and, in a strange way, connected to Portland—a
city recently recommitted to examining its own history through the
massive Lewis & Clark bicentennial exhibit currently at the Oregon
Historical Society.
Thieves paid the Whitman museum's $3 admission charge, then ducked into
its one-room permanent exhibit, a sleepy chamber of native and settler
bric-a-brac. They evidently had cased the target beforehand, and brought
the specific wrench needed to dismantle the artifact display cases.
Steady nerves, too, because they worked just beyond the museum desk's
sightline. Only one thing disappeared: a footlong tomahawk with a 7-inch
blade. Nine months later, the theft remains unsolved.
The tomahawk probably disappeared into the booming illicit trade in
Indian artifacts. While other forms of culture crime—boosted Edvard
Munch masterpieces or looted Iraqi museums—might draw more
attention, the black market in Native American antiquities thrives
despite massive deterrence efforts by tribes, museums and the feds. A
variety of unsavory characters populate the business; Todd Swain, the
National Park Service's leading antiquities-theft investigator, says
cops often find looted native artifacts in methamphetamine labs. But if
this were just any tomahawk, stealing it wouldn't be all that lucrative.
Nineteenth-century trading companies mass-produced such quasi-ceremonial
weapons and many tribes used them; you can get one on eBay for less than
$300.
What recommended it to the thieves' attention? It is thought—or
supposed—that this tomahawk was used in the massacre. Used, in other
words, to crack open Marcus Whitman's skull.
Many, including some of the Cayuse tribe's own experts, doubt the
weapon's connection. The museum itself presented the tomahawk without
explanation. But if a buyer could be convinced of a grisly history, the
tomahawk's underworld value would spike.
"The Whitman folks estimate it could go for, at the high end of the
spectrum, $40,000," says Steve Yu, another NPS investigator. "Did it get
stolen because it was a tomahawk, or because someone knows it's
supposedly connected to the incident? It seems pretty clear that they
knew what they were stealing."
As it happens, the missing tomahawk has a twin. On the third floor of
Portland's Oregon Historical Society, another ax with murky but durable
links to the Whitman killings hangs in a case alongside other mission
artifacts. Though the description carefully reflects doubts about
whether this is an actual murder weapon, the fact that the Portland
tomahawk hangs just a few inches from a preserved lock of Narcissa
Whitman's hair makes for an undeniable chill.
This winter's big-ticket show at OHS is the Lewis & Clark exhibit, a
spectacular bonanza of original artifacts, interpretative films and
sharp explanatory texts gathered by the Missouri Historical Society,
making its only West Coast stop and closing this Saturday, March 11.
The show hammers home just how important physical artifacts are to our
ability to grasp history. The time-stained rough draft of Thomas
Jefferson's instructions to the explorers and the hollowed-out horn
where Meriwether Lewis stashed his tobacco drag a well-worn tale out of
the realm of myth into messy reality. The exhibit uses these raw
materials to reinvent the expedition's dauntingly complicated backdrop
of national, imperial and tribal politics.
And grand as it is, OHS's Lewis & Clark blockbuster is not complete
without a visit to the permanent collection's tomahawk upstairs. Whether
or not it was used to kill the Whitmans, the OHS tomahawk's link to its
stolen twin shows how deeply entwined urbane Portland is with its wilder
Northwest neighbors just a few hours inland. And the two tomahawks' saga
proves that in the West, history is far from settled.
The Whitman killings were one of those incidents in which vast
historical forces converged in mythic bloodshed.