This is one of tens of thousands of aritifacts found in North America. See SIA3883 and SIA3884.

This section of ScienceViews is dedicated to one of the greatest tragedies in American archeology — the wanton destruction and neglect of some of the most important Native American archeological treasures. What we are about to present is not new, but most likely will be new to you. You may wonder why you have not heard of this before. It will be shown that because of political, religious, and scientific agendas it was forgotten but in the last few years has been reawakened.

I personally want to give tribute to the rich cultural origins of the Native American people. To a certain extent I feel like an outsider looking in. Why should I be writing about this? Perhaps it is because I have a love of the Native American culture—a love that my father engendered in me. I honor and respect who you are.

My desire is to help bring out of obscurity the artifacts such as the one pictures here. Those that were not destroyed usually ended up in private collections. If you know of any of these collections, I would love to photograph them and make them available for all to see and to research. If you can help in locating these, please let me know.

Calvin Hamilton

	Engravings of Prehistoric Specimens from Michigan This book published by Rudolph Etzenhouser gives a sampling of some of the Michigan artifacts.
	The Prehistoric Finds of Michigan This publication by James Savage gives an excellent account of the first discovery of the Michigan artifacts.
	The Lost Civilization of North America - as shown on Glenn Beck! This is one of the most thought provoking new DVD documentary films that provides many of the answers as to why Americans have never heard about the Michigan Tablets and other archaeological evidences of a highly advanced civilization that existed anciently in North American. It discusses how their legacy was wantonly destroyed by scientific and political agendas. View the trailer and Glenn Beck's discussion of the documentary.
	On Limitations to the Use of Some Anthropologic data, by J.W. Powell In order to understand why the Michigan Tablets and many other artifacts have been ignored all these years, it is important to understand the political environment during the 1800's. Both Manifest Destiny and the developing theories of cultural evolution were foremost in shaping what was acceptable and what was not. This article illustrates the general attitude towards the Indians. John Wesley Powell was one of the most most powerful men in the scientific community. He was a respected war hero and then became the first director of the USGS followed by establishing the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian. This publication was the first report by the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. It sets forth how archaeological data can be used. Powell states that if the archaeological data is pictographic in nature and older than Columbus then the evidence should be discarded. Effectively, this discredits all of the tablets and stones that have hints of European origin.