Some objects that probably belong in tribal hands or a museum are being auctioned off. Evidently the Rathbun family of Colorado has been holding on to a quite a few tribal artifacts, and guns, including a few collected from the Wounded Knee battle site, immediately after the battle.
Via the Indian Country Today Media Network:
“I’m just a regular person; I don’t have a vault or really I guess I don’t have the means to care for it the way it should be,” Rathbun told the AP. “And there’s, of course, a bit of an economic factor.”
Among beaded and quilled moccasins, pipe and tobacco bags and dresses and shirts, all ranging from $24 to $3,200 for starting bids, three guns used by the 7th Cavalry during the Wounded Knee Massacre are being auctioned off at $5,000 each. All three guns are described as “wonderful Indian guns” in the auction lot directory, and all three descriptions specifically mention the guns were gathered from the site of the massacre.
The lot also includes a pipe belonging to Chief Red Cloud, Oglala Lakota, which is set to open at $7,500, and another belonging to Chief Spotted Elk, Mniconjou Lakota, who died at Wounded Knee, opening at $5,000.
According to the Gazette, Rathbun’s great-grandmother and his then-teenaged grandfather “salvaged the three guns after they arrived at the site of the Wounded Knee massacre and found many of their Native American friends dead.” Rathbun also told the AP that his grandfather had befriended Chief Red Cloud, who had given him the pipe as a gift.
“I would object to the sale,” Trina Lone Hill, the historic preservation officer for the Oglala Sioux, told the AP. “It would be like me selling any item of the pope, any possession of his or anything from the church. They would say it is a heresy.”
Lone Hill also said the tribe is speaking with attorneys to seek a way to prevent the sale.
Also of interest, but not connected, is that the auction house, Heritage Auctions, has a 2 letter domain name, HA.com.