Gore Pal To Donate Headdress To Museum Fund-Raiser’s Relic, With Eagle Feathers, Sparked Federal Feud

Rather than force a legal showdown with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Montgomery County, Md., developer Nathan Landow said Tuesday that he plans to donate a feathered Sioux Indian war bonnet to a Wyoming museum.

Landow, a major fund-raiser for Vice President Al Gore, had fallen under Fish and Wildlife Service scrutiny because the headdress is adorned with about 30 feathers of federally protected eagles. He said the bonnet, passed down to him by his father, predated federal laws and therefore was legal to possess.

However, Landow said, the only way to prove his assertion would be to sue the federal government, which he said had been trying to confiscate the headdress to have it authenticated and dated.

“I rather have chosen to donate this war bonnet and other valuable American Indian artifacts to the Buffalo Bill Historical (Center) in Cody, Wyo., for all people to observe and enjoy,” Landow said.

Although they won’t call the case closed, Fish and Wildlife officials also made conciliatory noises Tuesday.

“If it is put in a public institution for all people to view, then I think justice is met in that situation,” said G. Adam O’Hara, special agent in charge of Northeastern law enforcement for the service.

Late last year, Landow met in his Bethesda, Md., office with a delegation from the Cheyenne-Arapaho tribe of northwest Oklahoma. According to the Indians, he offered to help them get the return of disputed tribal land in exchange for a share of valuable gas and oil rights there. The delegation saw a display of Native American artifacts in Landow’s office lobby.

When federal investigators early this year were looking into campaign contributions Democrats solicited from Native American tribes, Archie Hoffman, the Cheyenne-Arapaho tribal business council secretary, mentioned the eagle-feather war bonnet to them.

The Fish and Wildlife Service then began investigating whether the feathers were legally possessed. Landow’s experts told him last month that the feathers came from an adult golden eagle and the headdress probably dated from the 1930s. The service, though, wanted ts experts to have a look.

Instead of engaging in a court fight, Landow said he contacted the Plains Indian Museum at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Wyoming.

Landow said he didn’t know whether he could claim a charitable tax deduction for donating parts of his collection to a museum.

But Emma I. Hansen, curator of the Wyoming museum, said Landow is sending her a photograph of the headdress so she can see whether it fits with the collection. “We haven’t decided whether to accept,” Hansen said.

Hoffman said he had an obligation as a tribal official to report the possession of eagle feathers, which are considered sacred to many Native Americans and are so rare that the government keeps a waiting list for dispersal of feathers recovered from eagles killed in accidents.

Hoffman remained skeptical about Landow’s intention to donate the artifacts to a museum. “We’ll see,” he said.