In a recent post about the mounds and mound-builders of the United States, a culture that flourished in the Midwest and Eastern USA from ~3,500 BC to 1,500 AD, I mentioned the famous Davenport Tablets. Today's post will explore them and their significance.
The tablets can be seen online, in zoomable images at the Peabody Museum website. Below is the tablet that has the engraving of a "mammoth" (marked by the black arrow).
Davenport Iowa and its Academy of Natural Sciences
Charles Edwin Putnam, lived in the town of Davenport, Iowa, on the Mississippi River. He was one of the town's most important citizens, a successful lawyer, president of the local bank, and wealthy. He established a local scientific academy, and with his family, supported it. Nowadays known as The Putnam Museum and Science Center, the institution was originally established on December 14, 1867, as the Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences. You can visit the museum, which houses the tablets, in Davenport: 1717 W. 12th St. Davenport, Iowa. Website.
The Academy published a journal with the discoveries of local and regional amateur scientists who reported their findings. Among them was Reverend Jacob Gass, a member of the Academy, who collected native artifacts and dug (with the unscientific methods of the 1870s) into the Indian Mounds looking for human burials and objects.
Gass had recovered two dark slate tablets covered with engravings from a site with several mounds very close to Davenport. One of them had what appeared to be "text" and the other had depictions of people and animals, including a large, stout one that looks like a mammoth or an elephant. The discovery was published in the Davenport Academy's journal and generated quite a controversy regarding the mound-builders and their advanced civilization, that was also ancient, because it co-existed with mammoths.
For most of the 19th century, scholars considered the contemporary Native Americans as inferior, lacking writing, and metal-working skills, they were considered a late arrival on the American scene. People that couldn't have created the sophisticated engineering works like the mounds. These were the work of an advanced civilization, and the tablets with symbols and text were proof that backed this notion.
The tablets were controversial, with many formal scholars considering them a hoax, while others, and the general population deeming them genuine. Nowadays we know that Native Americans built the mounds, and that the tablets are a forgery. It seems that some members of the Davenport Academy, unknown to Putnam and Gass, planted the tablets in a mound to pull a prank on the arrogant German reverend.
The Tablets
The Bureau of Ethnology, led by Cyrus Thomas, attacked the tablets, ridiculing the local amateur archaeologists and their Academy. Note that Thomas was part of a Federal funded institution, and as such was in a power struggle with local, state based competitors. In 1884 Henry Henshaw published hsi work, Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley reached the Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences. Its author, Henry Henshaw, cast doubt on the authenticity of artifacts discovered by Gass, including the elephant pipes and questions them politely: "Bearing in mind the many attempts at archaeological frauds that recent years have brought to light, archaeologists have a right to demand that objects which afford a basis for such important deductions as the coeval life of the Mound-Builder and the mastodon, should be above the slightest suspicion not only in respect to their resemblances, but as regards the circumstances of discovery. If they are not above suspicion, the science of archaeology can better afford to wait for further and more certain evidence than to commit itself to theories which may prove stumbling-blocks to truth until that indefinite time when future investigations shall show their illusory nature."
Charles Putnam felt that his Academy was under attack and wrote a short book, published in 1885 "A vindication of the authenticity of the elephant pipes and inscribed tablets in the museum of the Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences, from the accusations of the Bureau of Ethnology, of the Smithsonian Institution" he describes the discovery of the tablets, and supports their authenticity as well as the integrity and honor of the local, amateur archaeologists:
"...the first two were found in what is known as Mound No. 3, on the Cook farm, adjoining the city of Davenport. The principal discoverer was Rev. Jacob Cass, a Lutheran clergyman, then settled over a congregation in Davenport. In this exploration Mr. Gass was assisted by L. H. Willrodt and H. S. Stoltzenau, with five other persons who were accidentally present during the opening of the mound. The discovery was made on January 10th, 1877
...
The third inscribed tablet was found on January 30th, 1878, in Mound No. 11, in the group of mounds on Cook’s farm, in the suburbs of Davenport, and in close proximity to the mound wherein the other tablets were discovered. That indefatigable explorer. Rev. J. Gass, was also present during these further researches, and had for his assistants John Hume and Charles E. Harrison, both members of the Academy, and well and favorably known in this community. The circumstances of this discovery, as narrated by Mr. Harrison, are published in the Proceedings of the No suspicions whatever attach to this discovery, and the well-attested facts connected therewith estab¬ lish beyond reasonable doubt, that, whether more or less ancient, the tablet was deposited at the making of the mound..."
Putnam was honestly defending his Academy and vouching for the integrity of its members.
Below is the layout of the Davenport site, mounds and an engraving of a tablet:
The Tablets
A good description of the Davenport Tablets can be found in the work of Stephen Peet, 1892, The Mound Builders: Their Works and Relics, where on page 45 he describes the tablets as follows:
"The large tablet is twelve inches long, from eight to ten inches wide, and was made of dark coal slate. Fig. 22. The smaller tablet was about square, seven inches in length, and had holes bored in the upper corners, and is called the calendar stone, as it contained twelve signs with three concentric circles, though the signs do not in the least resemble the Mexican or Maya cal endars. The larger tablet contained a picture on either side, one representing a cremation scene, the other a hunting scene. The cremation scene "suggests human sacrifices." A number of bodies are represented as lying upon the back, and the fire is burning upon the summit of the mound, while the so-called Mound-builders are gathered in a ring around the mound. Above the cremation scene is an arch formed by three crescent lines, representing the horizon, and in the crescent and above it are hieroglyphics, some of which resemble the common figures and numbers, and the various letters of the alphabet; there are nintyeight figures, twenty-four in one, twenty in the other, and fiftyfour above the lines. The peculiar features of this picture are these : A rude class of Mound-builders are practicing human sacrifice, while the images of the sun and moon are both in the sky, one containing a face, the other circles and rays. Above these is the arch of the heavens, with Roman numerals and Arabic figures scattered through and above it. The figure eight is repeated three times, the letter O repeated seven times. With these familiar characters are ethers which resemble letters of ancient alphabets, either Phoenician or Hebrew, and only a few characters such as the natives generally used. The hunting scene is the one which is supposed to contain the mastodon. In this picture there is a large tree which occupies the foreground, beneath the tree are animals, human beings and fishes scattered indiscriminately about, a few skeletons of trees in the back ground. One of the human figures has a hat on, which resembles a modern hat, for it has a rim. "Of the animal kingdom thirty individuals are represented, divided as follows, viz: Man, eight: bison, four; deer, four; birds, three; hares, three; big horn or Rocky Mountain goat, one; fish, one; prairie wolf, one; nondescript animals, three. Of these latter one defies recognition, but the other two, apparently of the same species, are the most interesting figures of the whole group. These animals are supposed by different critics to represent the moose, tapers or mastodons." The trunk and tusks are omitted from this animal, and even the shape hardly resembles the elephant, certainly not enough to prove that the Mound-builders were contemporaneous with the mastodon.* The third discovery is the one the most relied upon. This discovery was also made by the Rev. Mr. Gass, in the spring of 1880, several years after the discovery of the tablets.
* Another tablet was found by Mr. Charles Harrison in 1878, who is president of the society, in mound No. 11 of the some group. In the mound was a pile of stones two and one-half by three feet in size, which might be called an altar, about three feet below the surface; the slab fourteen inches square, and beneath the slab was a vault, and in the vault was the tablet, with four flint arrows on the tablet; a shell and a quartz crystal. The figures on this tablet were a circle which represented the sun, a it representing the moon, and a human figure astride the circle, colored bright ochre red, all of them very rudely drawn. The figure is supposed to represent the sun god. The figure eight and other hierooglyphics are upon this tablet. Above the hieroglyphics was a bird and an animal, and between them a copper axe. This tablet is as curious as the one discovered by Mr. Gass.
The third tablet described above is shown below (Source):
In an exchange published in the scientific journal Science, Cyrus Thomas lambasted the tablets (see The Davenport Tablets, Science vol.7, No. 160 (Feb. 26, 1886), pp. 189-190) as an example he cites other critics, like the Rev. J. P. MacLean who pointed out that the symbols were forgeries: "among the cabalistic characters, the word 'town' stands out in bold lines, and the figare '8' appears in rude shape among other marks. The picture of a face occurs in the sun, resembling the face of a European. The artist has overdone his work: it needs no further investigation."
Eventually Thomas prevailed and the tablets were classified as a forgery.
Marshall McKusick published his research in a book, Pipes and Tablets: The Davenport Conspiracy in 1970. He reports that some Academy members were suspicious and the rumor was that these objects were produced in the basement of the Academy building. They were made as a practical joke, a hoax, aimed at Rev. Gass. According to McKusick, Putnam, the Academy's persiden was unaware of this, and he, single handedly fought to protect the reputation of the institution. In a second publication in 1991 (Tge Davenport conspiracy Revisited), McKusick interviewed a member of the Academy, James Willis Bollinger who had said that "We had no respect for Reverend Gass because he was the biggest windjammer and liar and everyone knew he was. We wanted to shut him up once and for all." Among those involved were Edwin, the brother of Jacob Gass. Alfred Blumer, Jacob's brother-in-law was also part of it. The three of them also sold the artifacts they unearthed so there was a monetary reason for forging mound objects. One of the elephant-pipes is said to have been carved by John Gaham, the janitor of the Academy!
However, even as late as 1910, the locals defended the tablets. The History of Davenport and Scott County, Iowa by Harry E. Downer describes the controversy as a "round-the-world discussion of a quarter of a century ago" and goes on to describe the pipes and the "four inscribed tablets" housed in the Academy museum.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall ©
