Richmond Press, Inc.                          Richmond, VA                          1938

Indian Mound Hoax

In the summer of 1877, or 1878, the writer of these fugitive leaves, in company with his elder brother, Jeff, had made a beginning of the digging of a cave, which was to be large enough for the Forty Gangsters of old Ali Baba's day. The digging was in the vegetable garden of the old house at Eleventh and McDonough Streets in Manchester (since incorporated with Richmond--to be copied in recent days by Hitler's anschluss of Austria).

The lot was a large one, almost a farm, and we had plenty of room.

The digging had scarcely been begun when a diabolical idea formed in the small brain of the younger kid and which was agreed to by his elder brother, to-wit: To make an Indian mound and "salt" it, and then lead the old gentleman to it.

He, be it remembered, was a devoted archaeologist, and possessed a large collection (which is now in American Museum of Natural History at New York). And consequently the miniature Mephistopheles knew all about the subject, and had, too, quite a collection of his own.

We took several small and discarded willow baskets, plastered them inside with mud from brick clay, sundried them and, making a fire in the garden, baked them. The fire, at the same time, burned the basket-work off.

With his Barlow, he carved from a block of pipe clay a small vase, or urn, which was baked at the same time. This was rubbed all over with black paint--the dry powder--and the little urn was then filled with the same black powder. It was placed in the grave, resting on one thick cake of mica and with another mica cake on top.

Many tomahawks, spearheads and arrowheads were "planted," along with the pottery. (Those pots would have fooled Opechancanough himself!) And the dirt was put back in the excavation by degrees, sprayed with water and rammed hard with a pick handle. It was a little boy-size pick.

The excavation had been made in the side, or bank, of the digging, so that the top soil was untouched and genuine. A small section of an edge of one pot was left just showing above the floor and next to the bank.

Then, with a grave face, Mephisto went and asked Charles M., Senior, to come and take a look, and see if it might be an Indian pot.

Carefully, then, the old gentleman dug around it, little by little, and unearthed it, with trembling hands. Others followed, with stone implements and beads, until the entire "plant" had been recovered. His hair, meanwhile, in excitement, was standing up on his scalp; and when everything had been unearthed, he still continued to search, spading up a wide area, and working like a demon (just as he might have done as a young man when placer mining for gold on Solomon's Gulch in California in '49).

And so at length, finding nothing more, he desisted.

Then all the distinguished archaeologists came, Mr. Mann S. Valentine leading, and viewed the find, inspected the site, with the utmost gravity, and solemnly pronounced it a rare find. In other words, they were as badly fooled as Charlie's father.

What attracted their attention, in especial, was the little black mourning vase between the two mica cakes. That was absolutely astounding!

But next day we decided that the joke had gone far enough and sadly we told our dear father what wretches we had been. Mirabile dictu! He refused to believe us! We had done our work too well. At last, however, we convinced him; and then came great sorrow to us, for he was so disappointed and tried so bravely to hide his disappointment with embarrassed smiles.

It got into the papers, too, and made a big sensation. Willie Ryan, then reporting for the "State," wrote it up, with embellishments. It has re-appeared, from time to time, in the papers.

I remember one write-up by the Idle Reporter (nom de plume of Evan R. Chesterman) and quite recently our dear old friend, Herbert Ezekiel, revived it; and we had to make a rejoinder, which is given below. Herbert took it, smiling. Being an historian himself, he realized that an eternal truth of history is not always set out correctly in the first account, but must be subject to revision.

I quote:

As to Herbert Ezekiel's story about my "plant" of Indian relics and the hoaxing of my revered father, some mild corrections may be pertinent. Not but that Herbert had some foundation in fact, but he is sadly amiss in his geography.

In the first place, our family never lived in Pratt's Castle. We lived in the old Gamble mansion, which occupied the lot that ran along Third Street from Byrd to Arch. In the second place, the "plant" was not made on Gamble's Hill, but on the other side of the river in old Manchester, as many old residents might testify.

Of course, Herbert followed the "artistic tradition" that has been followed by all newspaper writers who have referred to the incident, and wound up his story with the striking account of the punishment supposed to have been awarded to the little hellions by an irate parent. But justice to that best of men and gentlest of fathers requires that the story should be told straight: We did not even get a reproof, not even an unpleasant look. Not that I would have cared a cent for my part of it, for the fun would have been worth a licking. But the old gentleman was too just and too mild a father for that. He accepted the worst of the joke, sat around and smiled, and behaved in every respect like a dead game sport.