Smithsonian's 1883 Emmert investigation of Mount Pisgah relics documents shift to bogus. Site 31HW1 includes Garden Creek site in western North Carolina Spring 1883: John Emmert sent to western North Carolina with federal money to investigate Emmert was an ethnologic assistant stationed in Bristol, Tennessee, paid $75 per month

In spring 1883, Smithsonian ethnologic assistant John Emmert traveled to western North Carolina, purchasing carved images, pipes, and soapstone specimens from a seller named Bernett near the Pisgah phase Garden Creek Mound (Site 31HW1). Items were first labeled "ethnologic specimens" but by 1894, Cyrus Thomas's mound exploration report reclassified the Haywood County carvings as "bogus articles." Bernett claimed he neither made nor could read the carvings. The shift occurred the same year the Code of Indian Offenses criminalized traditional medicine man practices.

Key Facts

  • Site 31HW1 includes Garden Creek site in western North Carolina
  • Spring 1883: John Emmert sent to western North Carolina with federal money to investigate
  • Emmert was an ethnologic assistant stationed in Bristol, Tennessee, paid $75 per month
  • April 24, 1883: Emmert paid $28.50 to Bernett in Asheville for carved images, animals, pipes, pots, and birds
  • May 21: Emmert paid $22 for 15 soapstone specimens to the same seller
  • Items initially labeled as 'ethnologic specimens' in disbursing records
  • 1886: Manly Valentine in Richmond, Virginia investigated the same carvings
  • Seller Merritt Bernett stated he did not make the carvings and could not read or write
  • Smithsonian 1883 report stated Emmert was investigating 'manufacturers of imitations of ancient relics'
  • Emmert became the best customer of the counterfeit antiquities trade
  • 1894: Cyrus Thomas's mound exploration report reclassified the Haywood County carvings as 'bogus articles'
  • Figure 225 captioned 'bogus article, Haywood County, North Carolina'
  • Spring 1883: Code of Indian Offenses made practicing medicine man and holding old dances punishable
  • Garden Creek belongs to the Pisgah phase, deep ancestry of the historic Cherokee
  • Square ground and renewal ceremony survives today among Muscogi (Creek) and Yuchi in Oklahoma after the Trail of Tears

Related site: Garden Creek site — view location, images, and history on the Ancient Nerds map.

Source: The Roundtable Chronicles - Ep. 26 by Institute for Natural Philosophy