The Saint Louis Science Center and the Case of the Missing Eagle Feathers

[GopherDaGold]

On a winter's night late in 1973, a band of thugs broke into Thomas Airis' home in Wellston. When Thomas' grandson Kevin Airis arrived at the scene, he found the 82-year-old man lying in the middle of the floor badly beaten and surrounded by the wreckage of his prized collection of Native American artifacts. The beaded belts and Kachina dolls were covered with blood and urine...

http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2010...ssing-native-american-artifacts-airis-family/

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Diving for Pleasure and Treasure - Grab it through Amazon!

[Tnmountains]

I was hopeing for a good ending here. This should once again tell collectors to never entrust their collections to musuem's. It has happened time after time. It is the same with University's that dig artifacts where boxes are stored in basements to be looted over years by staff.
If you do entrust your collection to musuems do so with banks of lawyers and legal aggreements.
Take the Jamestown collection of Americas first setlement artifacts. They lost 10 million dollars worth due to flooding.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1004575/posts

Thanks GopherDaGold for the link
TnMtns

 

[joshuaream]

I agree Tn, I was hoping for a happy ending.

I'm not blaming the family at all, but that almost reads like a "How not to deal with Museums" guide. I've loaned a lot of my paleo pieces out for study over the years, but I always have a very specifically worded & signed agreement with pictures of the relics involved, a detailed time-line for return (weeks or months, not years), what things can and can't be done to them (casting is cool, destructive tests are not), etc. I encourage collectors to share their relics for professional studies when appropriate, but you should never just hand things over and trust that the best will happen.

 

[GopherDaGold]

The ending was truly a heart breaker and I am saddened that this mess happened in my home town.

 

[jeff a]

my local historical museum had an auction a few yrs ago to get rid of stuff that wasnt displayed, turned out more than half were artifact collections that had been donated since the early fiftys

 

[Th3rty7]

Just awful, I had a bad feeling it would end like that because stories like this have become all too common. The good news in this imo is that the story has been exposed and hopefully others will get behind this and justice will be served.

 

[Tnmountains]

my local historical museum had an auction a few yrs ago to get rid of stuff that wasnt displayed, turned out more than half were artifact collections that had been donated since the early fiftys

There is an appreciation for an artifact in museum displays. But when they have many examples of the same things over and over again the interest is lost. Same way with Indian sites. Excavate several graves and it's the same ole same ole Mississipian site with nothing that has not been seen before so let the building begin. No new knowledge or anything of importance to be had. Happens all the time.
Progress can be measured in how quick we bury our past it seems.

 

[The Grim Reaper]

What a shame. This is the exact reason I always tell people to never donate or loan anything to a museum. They more then likely already have boxes and boxes of very similar items and yours just don't mean a thing to them.