Michigan Relics

Michigan Relics, clay tablets and casket.

By Jacob McCormick

The Michigan Relics (also known as the Scotford Frauds, the Soper Frauds, or the Scotford-Soper Frauds) are a large grouping of pseudoarchaeological prehistoric artifacts "discovered" throughout the state of Michigan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many of the relics were inscribed with fraudulent hieroglyphs and cuneiform and were originally believed to be proof of pre-Columbian contact with the Americas. The Michigan Relics are considered, for many reasons, to be one of the most elaborate and extensive archaeological hoaxes ever perpetrated in American history.

The Relics in the 1890s

Early examples of the Michigan Relics made of clay.

The first discovery of the relics in Michigan occurred in October 1890 when James O. Scotford found a small clay cup while digging post holes in a field in Wyman, Montcalm County, Michigan. Scotford was a well-known digger and sign painter in the area of Wyman. Shortly after that initial discovery in Wyman, many other more elaborate discoveries were made in a three or four mile diameter around the village. Most of the artifacts were authenticated by the prominent locals who witnessed their discovery. Scores of "remarkable objects" were unearthed anywhere from one to four feet into the surface undulations and mounds. Among the objects uncovered were small caskets, tablets, ornaments, weapons, tools, smoking pipes, and pottery vessels made of copper and baked and unbaked clay of varying colors. Within the first year of Scotford's initial discovery a syndicate was formed in Montcalm County of interested parties. The syndicate purchased many of the artifacts and attempted to exploit the finds financially for the region.

First Debunked in 1891

Scotford's "Michigan Relics" were quickly debunked by academics who found problems with the discoveries. Professor F.W. Putnam, curator of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University from 1874 to 1909, was sent photographs of the discoveries. Professor Alfred Emerson, an archaeologist at Lake Forest College (who later moved to Cornell University), reviewed the "relics" in June 1891. Following his visit, Emerson wrote "The articles were bad enough in the photograph... an examination proved them to be humbugs of the first water." Emerson's evaluation of the objects was swift and decisive, the Michigan Relics were archaeological forgeries.

In 1892, Professor Francis W. Kelsey, professor of Latin and Literature at the University of Michigan, along with Professor Morris Jastrow, Jr., librarian and professor of Semitic languages at the University of Pennsylvania, joined Emerson in calling the Michigan Relics frauds. Kelsey and Jastrow primarily evaluated the linguistics on the objects, calling the relics a "horrible mixture" of jumbled ancient scripts. Both professors agreed that the finds were fraudulent and were produced by someone with no knowledge of linguistics or the ancient languages they attempted to replicate on the objects. Even with no archaeological training, Kelsey concurred with Emerson's evaluation of the flaws of the objects, he outlined some specific observations in his publication on the topic:

Professor Francis W. Kelsey

• The hieroglyphs were stamped cuneiform characters in random order.
• The figures on some of the discoveries included lions with no tails, an omission which would not have occurred by "primative" artists.
• The clay items were dried on a machine-sawed board.
• The objects disintegrated in water, indicating that they could not have been buried in the ground for very long.

Despite the Michigan Relics being thoroughly debunked by several academics across the United States, Scotford persisted in promoting the artifacts. With the consensus in the academic community on the relics, the syndicate in Montcolm County that was formed in support of the relics was disbanded. In 1893, Walter Wyman, head archaeologist of the Chicago World's Fair, turned away Scotford's submission of a stone casket to the fair and concurred with prior assessments that the Michigan Relics were fraudulent.

The University of Michigan

In 1898, the University of Michigan was presented with the opportunity to purchase a collection of the relics for the University museum. The batch that was offered had travelled the country as an exhibit, advertised as "The Finest Collection of Pre-Historic Relics Ever Exhibited in the United States." The original price asked was one thousand dollars which was quickly lowered to one hundred dollars. The University had been involved in the matter several years prior, in 1892, when Professor Frank Kelsey evaluated the Scotford finds as archaeological forgeries. The curator of the museum declined the offer to purchase the material, which was still deemed fraudulent and denounced by academics. However, the University obliged when asked to store the collection. In an effort to keep the bogus relics off the market, the University of Michigan stored the crates for several decades with the understanding that the owner would eventually retrieve the fake artifacts - they never did.

The pieces in this collection of the Michigan Relics were different than the earlier pieces that had been found and evaluated. The clay was baked more thoroughly and the craftsmanship of the pieces was better all around. The academic assessments of the relics in the early 1890s had provided a framework for the pieces to be made more convincingly. Though the Michigan Relics were deemed fraudulent by countless academics throughout the decade, Scotford persisted in promoting and selling the pieces that he continued to uncover, seemingly endlessly, throughout the state.

The Relics in the Twentieth Century

James O. Scotford, left, and Daniel E. Soper, circa 1911, with some examples of the Michigan Relics they had just uncovered.

The Michigan Relics remained a topic of discussion for many years because, as many academics had assumed, the archaeological forgeries did not go away after being assessed in the 1890s. Rather, Scotford, who had moved to the Detroit area, persisted through the turn of the twentieth century and even assembled a team to help him promote the Michigan Relics, which were still being "discovered" into the 1910s. The key individual that became involved with James O. Scotford was Daniel E. Soper. Soper was the Secretary of State for the State of Michigan in 1891 under Governor Edwin Winans. Soper was, however, accused of embezzlement and was forced to resign after a single year in office. Soper had previously emassed a large collection of genuine artifacts of North American mounds. In 1907, Soper began his relationship with Scotford in relation to the Michigan Relics.

Daniel E. Soper.

Soper had a questionable past. Besides being a disgraced former Secretary of State, Soper had fled the state of Michigan to escape any backlash or repercussions from the embezzlement allegations. He moved to Arizona, where he attempted to fool local archaeologists by planting and then "discovering" Native American artifacts. The scholars in Arizona were not easily fooled and exposed Soper as a fraud. He then returned to Michigan, fleeing the trouble he had gotten into in Arizona. With a not-so-clean past, Soper became a main promoter of the relics that were continually being uncovered throughout Michigan. Soper's motivations for becoming involved was likely entirely financial. Scotford was still making money off the fraudulent relics and Soper, with his unscrupulous past, saw an opportunity to join him in making money.

As Scotford and Soper persisted with the Michigan Relics, so too did academics and the media. In 1907, the Detroit News called the frauds “the most colossal hoax of a century." The News, in addition to reviving some of the original observations about the pieces, pointed out that no discoveries had been made without James Scotford or Daniel Soper. This public deconstruction of the Michigan Relics as frauds silenced Scotford and Soper for a few years, but by 1911 they were back at it.

Perhaps the biggest supporter of Scotford and Soper was James Savage. Savage was pastor of the Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church and dean of the Western Detroit Diocese. Soper, who had a genuine collection of Native American artifacts that he had collected for several decades, grew into a firm believer that the Michigan Relics were genuine. Soper and Scotford took advantage of Savage's interest and sold him a large collection of the archaeological forgeries. Savage joined Soper in excavating and discovering more artifacts. Savage believed in several different explanations for the artifacts' presence in Michigan. First, he believed that Pre-Columbian Norsemen created the artifacts, then attributed their origins to the Lost Tribes of Israel, and eventually tied them to a colony of ancient Jewish settlers, who he said were killed by Native Americans. Genuine archaeology does not support any of the claims. Savage simply used the religious inscriptions on the fake relics to determine their origins.

In 1911, James Scotford's stepdaughter Etta Riley signed an affidavid that she saw her stepfather making the relics and had interacted with Scotford, Soper, and Savage regarding the validity of them. Scotford and Soper reportedly threatened her life when she questioned the fraudulent relics. While Scotford never confessed to the hoax, his unending involvement with the relics and because no artifacts were ever found without his knowledge or presence, indicates that Scotford is the most likely perpetrator of the fraudulent archaeology. Both Scotford and Soper continued their work on the hoax until their deaths in the 1920s. Put simply, Scotford was the craftsman and Soper was the salesman in the great scheme of the Michigan Relics. Because of the vast number of objects produced, the relics did not die with their perpetrators. James Savage was likely a victim of Scotford and Soper's hoax and they probably used his position and love of collecting to add validity to their already-debunked and longlasting hoax. Savage died in 1927 and bequeathed his vast collection of the Michigan Relics to the University of Notre Dame.

Supporters of the Relics

A 1996 publication titled "Mystic Michigan" by Mark Jager, which outlines 49 sites and artifacts relating to the state of Michigan, refers to the Michigan Relics as the "Ancient Michigan Tablets." Jager gives a brief history, albeit not entirely correct, of the "tablets" and notes a "controversy" over the "validity" of them. Jager cites "archaeological researcher" Lois Benedict of Boon, Michigan, who concluded that the "tablets," which she deemd were a mixture of genuine and fake, did contain religious inscriptions.

Pseudoarchaeology

Michigan Relics, clay tablet and cup.

With the rhetoric in which they were originally presented, the Michigan Relics supported pseduoarchaeological narratives, primarily pre-Columbian contact. With their hieroglyphic inscriptions, the discoveries supported the idea that the state of Michigan and North American in general were inhabited, or visited, by European peoples before the existence of Native American tribes in the region and before the popularly-believed discovery of the North American continent by Europeans. In 1891, when a portion of the Michigan Relics were presented to the University of Michigan, the "jumble" of inscriptions was explained as having its origins in a colony occupied by peoples from Egypt, Phoenicia, and Assyria. Another explanation as to why they were found in Michigan is that the relics made their way from the Tigris and Euphrates, across the Atlantic, through the St. Lawrence River, and into the Great Lakes and Michigan.

The inscriptions found on the clay and copper discoveries were considered similar in appearance to the the Egyptian, Greek, Assyrian, Phoenician, and Hebrew alphabets, which was considered proof of an advanced "composite" civilization that existed in the region before or besides Native Americans. The inscriptions were also considered religious in nature and therefore were seen as proof that the advanced civilization had knowledge of the Old Testament. This rhetoric surrounding pre-Columbian contact has major problems because it is ethnocentric and racist at its core and degrades Native Americans. The Michigan Relics and the rhetoric behind them also subverts real archaeology by presenting fraudulent artifacts as real with a supposed archaeological and historical background, and eventually discrediting archaeologists and scholars in their stances against the validity of the relics.

Motives

The motives...

References

---

James O. Scotford was a well-known digger and sign painter in the area of Wyman, Michigan where the relics were originally found. Throughout the 1890s, Scotford moved to the Detroit area and was directly involved in the sale of the relics to collectors and institutions. Most all of the "discoveries" of the Michigan Relics were made by James Scotford and his son-in-law Scoby. As word of the relics spread across the nation, Scotford was the person who led most all parties to make new finds in digging for the relics. Scotford, his sons, and son-in-law are responsible for the manufacture of hundreds of fradulent artifacts, their placement in the ground in Montcalm County, and leading groups to their "discovery."

Daniel E. Soper was the Secretary of State for the State of Michigan in 1891 under Governor Edwin Winans. Soper was, however, accused of embezzlement and was forced to resign after a single year in office. Not much is known about Soper as a person, but there are conflicting accounts as to his reputation and character that have been published in accounts in relation to these "relics" that often bear his name. After Soper's resignation from state government he began promoting the relics that were uncovered in Montcalm County.