Oregon Tribe Seeking $500,000 By Summer To Buy Artifacts Pennsylvania Banker Began Collection In 1800s

The Klamath Tribe is trying to raise $500,000 to buy a collection of nearly 8,000 Klamath and Modoc Indian artifacts.

Tribal Chairman Jeff C. Mitchell said it is the largest collection of Modoc and Klamath artifacts in the world - far bigger than that held at the Smithsonian Institution or the roughly 100 pieces owned by the tribe.

It includes a 10,000-year-old sandal found at Fort Rock in the heart of the tribe’s aboriginal lands to a hand-carved message stone used to call another tribe to war, arrows and spent cartridges used in the Modoc War of the 1870s, and the diaries and drawings of U.S. Cavalry soldiers fighting in that war.

Each piece is meticulously catalogued, documenting where it came from, who made it and how.

Mitchell stumbled on the collection last summer thanks to a tip from the Shaw Historical Library in Klamath Falls.

“It was an experience and feeling I have never had before,” he said. “I found myself surrounded by the most beautiful art I had ever seen.”

The tribe launched a fund-raising effort Tuesday with an anonymous donation of $110,000. The donation came in the form of three matching grants and a check for $10,000.

The grants will match contributions of up to $50,000 from Oregon corporations, $30,000 from Oregon citizens and $20,000 from school groups everywhere. So far, the tribe has raised about $50,000.

The tribe has until July 31 to raise the remaining money.

Most of the McLeod-Rutenic collection, as it is known, was gathered in the 19th and early 20th centuries by three families, Mitchell said. It was begun about 1869 or 1870 by a Pennsylvania banker named Amos Gotshall, who traveled throughout the West collecting Native American baskets and art. His collection later was purchased by the McLeod family. The collection was greatly expanded by Edith Rutenic and her husband, Kenneth McLeod, of Klamath Falls, who were avid collectors of Modoc and Klamath art and artifacts.

Mitchell said descendants of the McLeods recently decided to sell the collection and shipped it to a LaConner, Wash., archaeologist for appraisal. It was said to be worth $415,000. The rest of the price would cover packaging, transportation, insurance and restoration of the collection.

When Mitchell heard about the collection this summer, private collectors and wholesalers already were examining it.

Mitchell said he met with the family and persuaded them to give him time to raise the purchase price. He told them the collection demonstrated their grandparents’ deep commitment to the tribe’s history.

“I met with the family and told them … it is very important that it come back here and not be pieced out.”

Mitchell said he saw a drawing of a gallows, done by a U.S. soldier, showing where Mitchell’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, known as Spokane Ike, was to be hanged the next day.

“I was a part of my own family I was looking at,” he said. “It was very, very moving for me.”