Welland Tribune e-edition

Missouri cave with Indigenous wall art sold for $2.2M

Anonymous buyer outbids tribe looking to safeguard ‘sacred site’

ISABELLA GRULLÓN PAZ

A Missouri cave considered to be the most important rock-art site in North America was sold at auction Tuesday to a private buyer, devastating leaders of the Osage Nation tribe who had hoped to buy the cave to “protect and preserve our most sacred site.”

The anonymous buyer agreed to purchase what is known to historians as the Picture Cave, along with 17.4 hectares of hilly surrounding land, for $2.2 million (U.S.), outbidding tribal representatives who were present at the auction.

“Picture Cave is our most sacred site,” Andrea Hunter, director and tribal historic preservation officer for the Osage Nation, said in a statement. “It is a burial site, and it is a sacred ritual site. Picture Cave is invaluable and irreplaceable.”

The cave is a “subterranean masterpiece,” according to Selkirk Auctioneers & Appraisers, the St. Louis-based firm handling the auction. It contains approximately 290 glyphs, some of which are about 1,000 years old, the firm said, making it the largest collection of Native American polychrome paintings in Missouri. The land it sits on, which was used by the previous owners as hunting grounds, is about 80 kilometres west of St. Louis.

“It was really heartbreaking going through this process,” Hunter said. “We’ve been trying to work with the landowners for many months. It was just unfortunate that they decided to take this to auction and try to get as much money for it as they could.”

Bryan Laughlin, executive director at Selkirk, said all the bidders had been vetted to participate in the auction. No conditions were set to be able to purchase the site, but a Missouri statute threatening a felony charge to anyone who “knowingly disturbs, destroys, vandalizes or damages a marked or unmarked human burial site” was read aloud before the bidding began, he said.

The previous owners were concerned with the protection and preservation of the cave, and they wanted to ensure that the next “steward” was someone with the financial means to establish further research of the site, Laughlin said.

He added that although he could not share the buyer’s identity, he knew that the person was a “cave conservator” who owned a vast collection of caves and actively worked to preserve them.

CANADA & WORLD

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2021-09-17T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-17T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://wellandtribune.pressreader.com/article/281736977586036

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