The Tale of the Tunica Treasure

A Cajun treasure hunter, a righteous Southern lawyer, a group of feuding heirs, a Harvard scholar named Dr. Brain and a tribe of Indians become embroiled in a dispute over relics excavated from a forgotten Indian village. No less than four lawsuits result.

This is the tale that surrounds the so-called "Tunica Treasure," perhaps the most important archeological find made in recent times.

"Sometimes you just wanted to shake your head or cover your face and pretend it would go away," says Jeffrey P. Brain, a curator at the Peabody Museum, recalling his experiences with the relics. The find spurred a court battle about legal ownership of the Indian artifacts that has already lasted nine years. For most of that time, the Tunica collection was stored at Harvard's Peabody Museum.

Despite his misgivings, Brain is thankful for his connection with the discovery. "I wouldn't trade the experience for anything," he says quickly. "It's the sort of archeological find that comes along once a generation." He adds as an afterthought. "Perhaps even once a century or once a country."

The Tunica find is the largest collection of 18th-century Indian relics ever discovered. The artifacts include musket parts, iron tools, jewelry, French and tribal pottery, and over 200,000 European trade beads--more than all the beads ever found in the southeastern United States put together.

The collection has allowed archeologists to study how the Tunica Indians survived--and even profited from--their contact with the French, a good fortune which Brain says was shared by few other tribes. Before the discovery, researchers did not even know the exact location of the Tunica tribe. Now they have a wealth of information about the aboriginal Indians, including clues showing that the Tunica were trade intermediaries between the French and other Indian tribes.

It was not a team of Harvard scholars of any other professional archeologists who unearthed this academic treasure, but a Louisiana state penitentiary guard with little more than a high school education. Leonard J. Charrier, a Cajun from Avoyelles Parish, La. says he figured out the location of the Tunica settlement by checking historical documents and taking into account changes in the meander of the Mississippi River.

Charrier's early "scavenger hunts were sparked by a general interest in early Louisiana history. Why the Tunica settlement? "I guess because I knew it existed," he says simply.

Beginning in 1968, Charrier--who was then only 26 years old--excavated the village and an accompanying burial ground almost single-handedly. Since he had no place to keep the finds, he stored the relics in every available space in his home while he looked for a buyer.

At the same time Charrier was trying to sell his goods, the Peabody Museum's Lower Mississippi Survey Group began a study of the southern part of the Mississippi River Valley. Alerted to Charrier's find by a local archeologist. Brain traveled to Louisiana to examine the collection that describes the scene at Charrier's home in a book he wrote about the artifacts.

It was like Christmas morning. Artifacts were everywhere. On every piece of furniture and covering the floor--except for narrow pathways--under beds, in every nook and cranny, and closets.... I especially remember one large walk-in closet... which was filled to the height of 3 or 4 feet with a vast tangle of metal: dozens of kettles, musket barrels, wire, every conceivable type of iron artifact.

Charrier did not accept Harvard's offer for the collection, but did agree to lease the artifacts to the University while he continued negotiations with Harvard. The talks became complicated when Harvard lawyers asked Charrier for a legal document from the owner of the land he had excavated renouncing any claim to the Tunica collection. First Charrier refused to disclose the excavation site, claiming the landowner did not want it known he had allowed Charrier to open Indian graves. Later he admitted he had no such document.

To make matters worse, the land turned out to be jointly owned by six heirs that had divided into two quarreling camps. The heirs could barely agree to let Brain survey their land, let alone decide what to do with the Tunica collection.

After the heirs squabbled over the ownership of the relics for two years without coming to a solution. Charrier jumped back into the fight. In 1974, he filed suit asking a Louisiana state district court to declare him the owner of the treasure.

Over nine years later, the came has still not been decided and, because of the legal complications, the treasure has never been displayed publicly. The defendants are the longer the heirs, but the state Archeological Survey and Antiquities commission which subsequently bought the land. The state has been joined in its case by the Tunica Biloxi Indian tribe, the modern descendents of the Tunica. If the state Wins the case it has agreed to turn the relics over to the Tunica-Biloxi.

In addition to the main lawsuit. Charrier has sued Harvard for return of the relies, which the University had decided to keep until the legal owner was decided. Harvard countersued, and the collection was recently transferred to the Louisiana State Museum because of renovations at the Peabody. The Tunica-Biloxi have also filed a federal suit asserting that they own the relics by right of their ancestry. All these claims have been set aside until the original suit is settled. The original suit itself has become so complicated that the state district court could not handle it and Judge D. Lenton Surtain Jr. has been taken out of retirement to hear the case.

The suit finally came to trial this spring and lawyers recently finished filing papers. The case has now gone to Sartain for a ruling, and Charrier expects a decision "any day now." But whatever the district court decides, the legal battle will probably continue; both sides have said they will appeal the case if Sartain rules against them.

The lawsuit has raised a number of complex issues including whether the find is legally "a treasure trove" or "property embedded in the earth"; what effect the fact that some artifacts are grave goods should have on ownership; and whether the Louisiana's Purchase treaty negated tribal claims to the treasure. The case is further complicated by Louisiana's legal system: it is the only system in the United States that is not based on English common law alone, but draws jointly on the French Napoleonic Code and common law. Because of this unique system, it is difficult to use court decisions from other states as precedent in lower courts.

One of the moving forces behind the states involvement in the case is Frederick G. Benton, a member of the antiquities commission who has represented the state in court free of charge. "Benton has always been there to always make the law come down as hard as possible on Charrier." Brain observes Benton has blocked settlement with Charrier, preferring instead to press his case in the courts.

An amateur archeologist himself. Benton explains that he wants to discourage future relic-hunters from destroying archeological information "We're not going to reward anyone who goes out and finds a treasure of the United States and digs it up himself," he says. "What we're talking about is a crude digger who has no respect: the net result is he probably destroys more than he saves," Benton adds.

Brain estimates that researchers have lost about half of the information they could have gained from the discovery. This is because Charrier did not keep records on the precise locations or positions in which the relies were found information which is as important as the relies themselves.

Brain says scientists could, for example, determine when the Tunicas converted to Catholicism by examining whether Indians from different time periods were buried in a Christian manner. He adds that archeologists could get a better idea of the Tunica's wealth if they knew where household goods were found: if artifacts in relatively good condition were found in trash pits rather than in homes, it would indicate the Indians were wealthy at that time.

Charrier admits that his excavation of the artifacts lost some of the information professional archeologists could have acquired from the site. But he defends himself by pointing out that he did preserve the collection as a whole, and did lend it to Harvard for a scholarly study.

Charrier contends that Benton's vigorous prosecution of the state's case will wind up hurting the cause of professional archeology. In the future, relic-hunters may avoid officials entirely and sell their finds piece-by-piece on the open market, he says. "Several sites may be found and nobody's going to find out about it--not LSU [Louisiana State University], not Harvard, not anybody."

Charrier is bitter about Benton's no-compromise position in the case and considers himself the badgered underdog in the battle for the relics "Fred Benton has nothing better to do than pick on a little man," he claims.

Brain notes that the lawsuit has frustrated not only Charrier's desire for money, but also his hope for some positive public recognition. Most of the media coverage of the case has portrayed Charrier in a negative light. Brain says, adding that he him self has generally avoided mentioning Charrier in his scientific publications on the Tunica became of the lawsuit.

But Charrier's experiences with the Tunica treasure have not discouraged him from searching for other artifacts. Currently, the trader is investigating several paddle wheelers that sunk in the 1800s and are now in dry channels. During a recent telephone interview Charrier remarked. "I'm just polishing up one of my current discoveries right now."