Several years ago I have exhausted countless hours addressing the Smithsonian Indian Museum in NYC. Specifically with requesting the XRF testing data that I was willing to pay for the information that is supposed to be FREE!
I spent so much time trying cut through the 501c3 not for profit red tape. Having direct contact with the curator and lady responsible for doing the XRF testing. After months of phone tag, they refused by legal law to give the data! Their excuse was that they had an Indian council who had to vote and give me permission to have the XRF data that would have aided my research on setting the standard of how these medals were made.
How do you like that? The Smithsonian denied me information that by 501c3 laws had to give me the information. So here tax payers pay for the millions of dollars a year in grant money, they want to charge people to enter their museums and now they take it upon themselves to be in the control of relic information business for financial gain and or for control to prevent others outside of the socialist academic realm to be road blocked with private research studies.
I’m bewildered by such actions and this is what’s been going on with most museums that house such medals and this happened with the Gilcrease museum also. The Gilcrease housed Chief Piamingos medal of the Chickasaw Nation illegally! Which is against the law to do so with burial relics and receive federal grant money! Did they know about that when the famous collector named Patrick purchased the medal and kept it on loan with three other medals? Who knows but someone knew!
Here is the basic finding that the Smithsonian can’t hide from the public with regards to their said Joseph Wright 1792 medal that has no makers mark punch. Why no punch? Because Joseph Wright had the right to do so, as he punched medals like on the woolaroc and the JW 1792 NY specimen because he was the first official engraver of the mint with the right to do so! Look at the bezel and edge of the medal that shows vast flaking of the plated silver! My response to all the time wasted with being respectful to the Smithsonian who denies the information can go pound sand!
Now when you read the Smithsonian information on the medal. The origins go back to Ohio and is said used by the Wyandotte tribe! Well, well, well, look who fell in the well? I realized this could be the missing Little Turtle 1792 medal that was not buried with him and the 1795s medal he received! Has been identified by David Fegley that it was sold in the 1980s by Stacks and Bowers.
Why would the Indians who run the council for the NYC Indian museum, not have contacted the tribe in Oklahoma, who it belongs too? Well, I sent them an email, let’s see what transpires….
American Relic Hysteries 