c. 1999 Religion News Service

PORTLAND, Ore. _ The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde want to bring the storied Willamette Meteorite _ the largest ever found in the United States _ home from a New York museum that has had it on display for nearly 100 years.

The Oregon tribes are claiming the 16-ton iron meteorite as a sacred object under a federal repatriation law intended to help tribes reclaim human remains and important cultural and religious objects.

Rainwater that collected in the deeply eroded, pocked surface of the meteorite was used by native doctors to heal people throughout the Willamette Valley, Grand Ronde tribal officials say. Hunters purified their arrowheads in the water, and young people visited the meteorite on spiritual quests as part of their rite of passage into adulthood.

“It’s an extremely important sacred object to us,” said June Olson, cultural resource manager for the Western Oregon tribes, best known for their Spirit Mountain Casino. “It is a link from our tribal people today to our ancestors in traditional beliefs. It’s a connection that we’re all kind of looking for, and there isn’t a lot of them left.”

The American Museum of Natural History, which has displayed the geologic relic since 1906, is building a $210 million Center for Earth and Space, which includes an exhibit hall featuring the meteorite.

Joe Boesenberg, scientific assistant for the meteorite collection at the museum, said he could not comment on the claim but that the meteorite was an important part of the museum’s collection.

“It’s an unusual meteor,” Boesenberg said. “Chemically, it’s been completely crystallized, then completed reheated. It’s the only meteorite like that in the world.”

If the museum disputes the Grand Ronde’s claim, it could lead to a long legal battle that probably would attract national and international attention, observers said.

Oregonians have attempted several times to get the meteorite returned to the state. A group of schoolchildren from Lake Oswego nearly succeeded 10 years ago, persuading the Oregon Senate as well as former U.S. Sen. Bob Packwood and former U.S. Rep. Les AuCoin to champion their cause. Their attempts got the children onto “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson.

But this is the first time a Native American tribe has stepped forward to claim the meteorite as its own.

Tim McKeown of the National Park Service, which oversees implementation of the federal repatriation law, said the tribes must show the museum that the object is sacred and needed by Grand Ronde leaders for the practice of traditional religion. They also must show a connection between themselves and the object.

The tribes’ evidence in support of their claim includes testimony from a 1905 Oregon Supreme Court case. The tribes have until Nov. 30 to present their case. The tribes are hoping for an answer from the museum by the end of the year.

In the late 19th century, tribal members were confined to a reservation away from the meteorite, and use of it as a sacred object fell off, said Ryan Heavy Head, a Blackfoot Indian who is consultant to the Grand Ronde tribes on repatriation issues.

But the knowledge of how to take care of the meteorite _ known as “tomanowos,” or Sky Person _ was kept alive among tribal elders to the present, he said. With the hollows of rainwater and air, the meteorite represents all three elements in native religion: air, water and earth, Heavy Head said.

In the 1905 legal dispute over the meteorite, a Klickitat Indian named Susap testified that medicine men said it came from the moon, and it was used to purify Clackamas Indians for war. The Clackamas are a part of the Grand Ronde.

“If it wasn’t really important to the religion and to the people, then with the 100 years that have gone by, we still wouldn’t be talking about it, songs wouldn’t be remembered about it, people wouldn’t be trained to take care of it in case it came back,” Heavy Head said.

The Willamette Meteorite probably formed about 4.5 billion to 4.6 billion years ago, landed somewhere in Canada or Washington state and traveled in glacial ice more than 10,000 years ago to the spot where a onetime miner named Ellis G. Hughes found it in 1902.

Hughes’ find was on former Indian land near West Linn owned by Oregon Iron and Steel Co. He managed to drag it to his property, where he let people look at it for 25 cents.

Oregon Iron sued Hughes, leading to the 1905 Supreme Court decision giving Oregon Iron ownership. The company displayed the chunk at the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland, then sold it for $20,600 to a New York woman, who donated it to the New York museum.

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McKeown, of the park service, said he knew of one other massive stone claimed under the federal law: the Wallula Stone, a 10-ton basalt boulder that the city of Portland returned to the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla in 1996.

If the Grand Ronde succeed in obtaining the meteorite, Olson said the tribes probably would return it to their reservation. She hopes the tribes will build a garden for it and other objects, so the tribes can both protect the meteorite from vandalism and allow traditional religious people to worship using it. The meteorite also would be available for viewing by tribal members and the public.

“I know the stone is important to nontribal people, to Oregonians, and people around the world,” Olson said. “We are aware of the need to provide access to these folks as well.”

IR END THOMPSON