One day in 1680, The Reverend John Danforth, a recent graduate of Harvard, was walking along the shoreline of Assonet Neck, just across the Taunton river from the town of Dighton, Massachusetts. The high tide had swelled the river, swallowing some rocks that stood sentry beside the waters, but one great reddish-brown sandstone boulder drew his eye, only half submerged in the tide. Upon closer inspection, Danforth saw strange markings on this rock. Were they letters? Glyphs of some sort? Fascinated, he made a drawing of what he saw. His was to be the first of many sketches, rubbings, and photographs of Dighton Rock, or as it would become known, the “Writing Rock,” and Danforth’s drawing only showed the uppermost of the markings. There were more beneath the rising waters. Ten years later, Cotton Mather, the Puritan minister who exerted such a strong influence on the Salem Witchcraft Trials, made the rock famous in his book, The Wonderful Works of God Commemorated. The natural assumption was that Native Americans, specifically the local Wampanoag, had inscribed the stone, but years later, after much staring at the strange markings, some began to suggest they were the product of other cultures and to argue that the “Writing Rock” stood as evidence of pre-Columbian transoceanic contact, and more specifically, in some theories, Semitic contact. The theory of the Hebraic origins of Native Americans had been around among the Spanish for more than a hundred years when the Dighton “Writing Rock” became famous, but as I discussed in the second part of my series on the Lost Tribes myth, it didn’t reach its height in the English-speaking world until about a hundred years after Mather wrote about the rock. It was then, in the 1760s, that we see Ezra Stiles, who would later become the President of Yale College, and Count Antoine Court de Gebelin of the French Academy both expressing a view that the rock was inscribed with ancient Phoenician characters, suggesting that it was left by explorers from Carthage. From there, it was only a short leap to suggest it was actually written in Hebrew, since both Phoenician and paleo-Hebrew developed after the Bronze Age collapse to represent formerly indistinguishable languages, and thus bear marked similarities. In fact, Harvard scholar Samuel Harris Jr. asserted in 1807 that he had been able to translate specific Hebrew words on the Dighton Rock: “idol,” “king,” and “priest.” And this would not be the last inscribed stone found in the U.S. that supposedly bore Hebrew writing. You may be guessing already, though, based on what I said in the previous edition and just from knowing how this usually goes, that there is strong reason to consider nearly all of them to be frauds.

As Dighton Rock shows us, not all of the inscribed rocks used to support pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact theories can be dismissed as modern hoaxes. The Dighton Writing Rock was present in Massachusetts a little less than a hundred years after the beginning of English colonial settlement in America at Roanoke Island, and even then it appeared ancient to those who studied it. Dighton Rock also demonstrates that there were myriad other theories of pre-Columbian contact besides the theory of the Lost Tribes of Israel in America. In fact, not even all the theories of Semitic contact with the New World were the same. Some believed Native Americans were descended from Noah’s son Japheth rather than Shem, making them not “Semitic” as such, and not necessarily descended from the Lost Tribes. A Maryland schoolteacher names Ira Hill would suggest in 1831 that the writing on Dighton Rock had been left by an expedition of Jews from the time of King Solomon’s reign, making it again not a theory of Native American shared ancestry with the Lost Tribes. In 1837, Carl Christian Rafn, a Danish scholar, became convinced that the markings on Dighton Rock depicted the well-known story of Norse contact with the New World. This translation seems to have been disproven in 1916 by Brown University professor Edmund Dellabarre, who demonstrated that Rafn had doctored depictions of the markings to better support his view. Then Dellabarre himself declared that he could discern Latin on the rock, finding a year, 1511, and a name, Miguel Cortereal. This developed into the theory that a lost Portueguese expedition had left the markings. Today, Dighton Rock has been removed from the tidal waters and placed in a museum, where all the theories of its script are explained and accompanied by pictures showing how different elements of its inscriptions are emphasized by each. Is it Phoenician, Norse, Portuguese, or is it, simply Native American? When shown drawings of its markings, it’s said that George Washington laughed and said they were certainly just doodles made by American Indians, and that he had seen similar markings frequently on trees and believed them to be largely meaningless. Indeed, before hi Portuguese theory, Professor Edmund Dellabarre seems to have shared the opinion that they were meaningless, for after staring at it a long time, he declared, “After prolonged and close searching, I got so that I could find any given figure almost anywhere.” Thus he dismissed all the different interpretations of the markings as “psychic projection”… and ironically went on to insist he could read Latin on the stone clear as day. But perhaps that’s one of the reasons inscribed stones like these have exerted such an influence on the minds of so many, because we can see what we want to see in their vague markings. In the case of Dighton Rock, it certainly doesn’t help that some inscriptions on the stone appear to have been made at different times, engraved over existing markings, making it a kind of palimpsest of indecipherable figures and shapes… much like history itself after a great deal of study.

Dighton Rock, displayed with pictures emphasizing elements of its inscription interpreted to support different theories of its origin. Photo by Kenneth C. Zirkel, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license … — Dighton Rock, displayed with pictures emphasizing elements of its inscription interpreted to support different theories of its origin. Photo by Kenneth C. Zirkel, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0)

There was nothing quite so mysterious about the artifact found in the summer of 1815 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, only about 117 miles west-northwest of Dighton Rock. Innkeeper Joseph Merrick had purchased land that many years earlier had been a settlement of the Mohegan tribe, and that summer, he had hired a farmhand to clear the yard near his house. The plough the boy used to clear the debris turned up a black leather strap attached to a leather box, which Merrick cut open. Inside, he found four pieces of yellowed parchment, which had been written on in a script he did not recognize. Thinking it of such an age as to possibly be worth something, Merrick says he invited people to see it, including some neighbors, who in their clamor to examine the items, “tore one of the pieces to atoms.” After that, he was more careful with them, showing them only to local ministers and men of high character, who almost all agreed that it was a phylactery, an object housing Hebrew texts traditionally strapped onto the arm or head by Jews during prayer. Most of these local clergymen agreed that it was of great antiquity and must certainly prove that the natives of the region were descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel. In order to obtain some support for this thesis, the phylactery was thereafter sent to a former student of the aforementioned Ezra Stiles in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and thereafter to the American Antiquarian society. However, nothing came of it, perhaps because it was not taken seriously. After all, even among the locals, there had been some doubt.

It seems the most knowledgeable of the local ministers who first examined the Pittsfield phylactery did not believe it was ancient. Congregational minister William Allen, who could read Hebrew and therefore translated the texts within the phylactery, identified them as verses from Deuteronomy and Exodus. He pointed out that the phylactery had been discovered among dirt and chips of wood on the surface, and was not excavated from any great depth. Moreover, he observed that it was well-preserved, and thus he proposed that it had been dropped on that land in recent years by some wandering Jew, as it were. Or, some years earlier, as Allen recalled, Merrick had employed some British and German prisoners of the War of 1812 to work on his property. Perhaps one of these had secretly been a Jew and had lost the item during his labors. What Allen did not realize, however, was that the mere fact he was able to decipher the text would seem to indicate that it was not written in the paleo-Hebrew that the Lost Tribes would have used, as knowledge of that script did not develop until the 1850s. When the Antiquarian Society appeared to have no interest in the phylactery, those from Pittsfield who believed it proved the Hebraic origins of Native Americans reacquired it and sent it instead to Elias Boudinot, the Cherokee writer who would go on to compose A Star in the West, arguing that North American native peoples were descended from the Lost Tribes. However, the book does not mention the Pittsfield phylactery. It is unknown if the artifact made its way into Boudinot’s possession, and if so, what became of it afterward. It simply disappeared. But it was not forgotten. In 1823, a Vermont minister named Ethan Smith described it in his book with the self-explanatory title View of the Hebrews: The Lost Tribes of Israel in America. Ten years later, Josiah Priest cited the Pittsfield phylactery as evidence in his book American Antiquities, which argued that Native American earthworks in Ohio and New York, so-called “mounds,” were actually created by some lost race, likely the Lost Tribes. And about ten years after that, in his newspaper the Times and Seasons, Joseph Smith, the prophet of Mormonism, was telling the story again as support for the Book of Mormon’s version of American prehistory and quoting from both Ethan Smith and Josiah Priest.

The Mormons would soon be given good reason not to trust in such dubious archaeological finds to support their beliefs. A year after Smith’s newspaper published an article about the Pittsfield Phylactery, a man named Robert Wiley, living near the Mormon city of Nauvoo, Illinois, said that he had been having recurring dreams of a treasure hidden in an Indian mound in Kinderhook. In April of 1843, acting on those premonitions, he gathered a group to excavate, including one Wilbur Fugate and a couple of Mormons they knew. Sure enough, they discovered some bones and some ancient-looking brass plates, cut in the shape of a bell and bound together by a rusted iron ring. These plates bore strange markings, and the Mormons among them immediately rejoiced and insisted that the plates be taken to Joseph Smith, who they were sure could translate them. Now, even if Smith really was a fanatic who truly believed his own claims about angelic visitation and inscribed golden plates, and not merely a hoaxer and cult leader, he seemed to show some restraint when it came to the Kinderhook plates, preparing facsimiles and not immediately declaring that he had translated them by revelation, as he supposedly had the gold plates from which he derived the Book of Mormon. The obvious explanation for this, assuming reason and cunning on the part of Joseph Smith, was that others had seen the Kinderhook Plates, unlike his gold plates, which he said he was forbidden to display, and since these brass, bell-shaped plates might have been genuine, or might even have been a trap, he had to tread carefully. An inaccurate translation or a revelation declaring the plates authentic when they were actually a hoax would have revealed Smith to be a fraud. Nevertheless, he did declare that the writing on them was similar to the “reformed Egyptian” of the gold plates. Within a year, Joseph Smith was dead, and his followers soon after removed to Utah, where in a Church history of Smith it was revealed that Smith had indeed been translating the Kinderhook Plates, revealing that they told the story of a descendant of Ham in America. At around the same time, though, the plates discoverers, Robert Wiley and Wilbur Fugate, were swearing out affidavits that the Kinderhook Plates had been a prank on the Mormons after all. Mormons, meanwhile, did not want to hear it, insisting the plates were real. Only in the later 20th century did testing reveal that they had been etched with acid, a modern technique, and that within the inscription was a hidden message: “Fugate Fakes,” the deciphered inscription reads, “April Fools Day 1843 for Joseph Smith.”

Facsimiles of the Kinderhook Plates. Public Domain.

Just as it was very convenient that some Mormons were present for the unearthing of the planted Kinderhook Plates in 1843, so it also appears quite convenient, perhaps even planned, that in Newark, Ohio, in 1860, when local surveyor David Wyrick went running through the town to announce his discovery of an unusual artifact at the local Indian earthworks, he just happened to run into Colonel Charles Whittlesey, the foremost authority on the Mound Builders of Ohio, who happened to be in town on unrelated business. Wyrick must have presented a pathetic figure lurching through town that day, for it was said he was so afflicted with rheumatism that his hands and feet were swollen to grotesque proportions. He was a sympathetic character in Newark. Having failed as a newspaperman, he had devoted himself to surveying the earthworks of Newark, fantasizing that he might one day be able to prove his theories about the Mound Builders. These were much the same as Colonel Whittlesey’s own theories, and Josiah Priest’s aforementioned claims in the book American Antiquities, a notion today called the “mound builder myth,” the overtly racist view that Native Americans could not possibly be responsible for the construction of the impressive earthen mounds found in the New World, and thus there must have been some precursor race, such as the Lost Tribes of Israel. And it certainly seemed like David Wyrick had discovered proof of this when he unearthed the “Holy Stone,” an arrowhead-shaped stone inscribed with Hebrew phrases on each side. This artifact would come to be known as the Keystone when, later that year, his excavation uncovered another “Holy Stone,” a limestone carving of a robed figure with a Hebrew inscription of the Ten Commandments that would be named the Decalogue Stone. Wyrick finally died in 1864, but the story did not end with him. A year later, from a mound east of Newark, two far more strange stones were discovered, an inscribed sculpture of a head and another inscribed sculpture that resembled an animal on one side and faces on other sides. And finally, three years after that, another stone, this one shaped more like the Keystone and inscribed with the Ten Commandments like the Decalogue Stone, was found nearer the original mound of one of Wyrick’s discoveries. Was Wyrick’s discovery too good to be true? And what of the others that followed?

One of the earliest theories about the first Newark Holy Stone, the Keystone, put forth by a local Masonic expert, was that it was an artifact of ancient Freemasonry, originating some time after the building of the Second Temple in the 6th century BCE. This led to speculation that the ancient Jews who had come to America were Masons, and in their famous earthworks could be discerned geometric Masonic symbolism. This theory shows the bias of its proponents, though, for only a Freemason would believe in the Judaic origin of Freemasonry, going all the way back to Solomon’s Temple, or as Masonic lore likes to claim, back to the Tower of Babel, or even to Enoch preserving sacred geometrical knowledge from the deluge. In that way, the pseudohistory of Freemasons has a lot in common with the legend of Hermes Trismegistus and the preservation of alchemical knowledge. But in reality, this fraternal order can only trace its origins back to 14th century stonemason trade guilds. So that would seem to put the Masonic theory in the ground, as it were. What remains is the more common notion that the Keystone proves the Lost Tribes theory of Native American origins. But this too was quashed at the time, very shortly after the story became national, when a series of attack pieces against the Keystone’s discoverer, David Wyrick, appeared in Ohio newspapers, and then in the New York Times and Harper’s Weekly. First, it was suggested that Wyrick was profiting from the display of the Keystone, giving him a pecuniary motive for producing such a find beyond the academic motive of promoting the Lost Tribes theory. Then the stone’s authenticity was challenged. It was too polished and showed none of the signs of weathering to be expected from an artifact of great antiquity. And it had been discovered too near the surface to be considered very ancient. Moreover, experts in Hebrew recognized that the characters on the Keystone were modern Hebrew, an alphabet that appeared in contemporary Hebrew Bibles and had only been in use a few hundred years, and they were inexpertly chiseled at that. Thus, Wyrick became a laughingstock to those who didn’t know him, and even those who sympathized with him reserved their judgement about his finds. When later that year he excavated in another nearby mound where some bones had been discovered and turned up a wooden platform of seeming antiquity, he was mocked for having dug up an old horse trough. Undeterred, though, he continued digging, and beneath that platform, he discovered the Decalogue Stone. But this was too great a coincidence for most to believe. The inscription on the Decalogue Stone appeared to be in a far more ancient form of Hebrew, so it seemed Wyrick was simply trying to address the objections his critics had to the Keystone, and closer examination showed that this was still not the paleo-Hebrew of the Lost Tribes but rather a post-Exilic script, and that it still showed similarities with the modern Hebrew form of characters, as if the engraver had first learned the modern script and then afterward taught himself the more ancient version.

Photos of David Wyrick’s “Holy Stones,” Image courtesy of the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum

While at the time, all signs seemed to point to Wyrick being a hoaxer, those who knew him best refused to believe it. And with further hindsight, it appears he may have been unfairly maligned. Only a few short years after his discoveries, he had fallen into financial ruin, so if he had perpetrated a hoax to make money, it did not work, and still he remained devoted to his efforts, trying for years to organize further excavations. In 1864, in penury and probably still suffering from his rheumatism, he committed suicide. Some newspapers, still intent on sullying his name, reported that an old Hebrew Bible and other evidence of his manufacture of the items was found in his residence, but these claims were unsupported. Only a year after he was gone would his name be cleared in the eyes of many, after the inscribed head and three-sided carving were discovered at a farm east of Newark, each with Hebrew lettering. But these finds did not prove Wyrick right in the way you may think. Instead, they seemed to prove that someone else was responsible for the frauds. One of his former collaborators, an area dentist named John. H. Nicol, who had been with Wyrick at the excavation of the Decalogue Stone and afterward had declared the find a fraud, was also present at the discovery of the inscribed head, and afterward declared that he had inscribed these latest finds himself, buried them, and arranged for their discovery. Afterwards, decipherment of the Hebrew on the inscribed head showed that it was actually the letters J, H, N, C, and L—a signature of the forger, John H. Nicol. It seems Nicol was asserting that he had faked these two later stones for the sole purpose of proving that Wyrick’s Holy Stones were also fakes, but since he had been present at the Decalogue’s unearthing, many then and today presume that he had actually forged all of the stones. Then there are alternative suspects, such as a local Episcopalian minister who perhaps too easily was able to decipher the peculiar variation of poorly engraved Hebrew on the Holy Stones, or a local stonecutter whose work on gravestones bore some superficial similarities to the finds. However, the discovery of yet another stone three years later further confuses the matter. The so-called Johnson Stone bore the same general tapering shape as the Keystone but was inscribed with the same style of Hebrew lettering as the Decalogue Stone. It was dug up in the same group of mounds where Wyrick and Nicol had unearthed the Decalogue Stone but by reputable individuals, with apparently none of our suspects involved. How to explain this? If Nicol or Wyrick or whoever had made the Holy Stones had buried yet another fraud, why hadn’t they “arranged” for its discovery? Had they lost track of where they’d buried it? Or had they actually just buried it hoping that it would eventually be turned up independently and thus corroborate their frauds? We may never know, for further study of the Johnson stone is impossible. Like the hoaxes claimed by John Nicol, and like the Pittsfield phylactery before them, the Johnson Stone has been lost.

A major argument against all of these Hebrew-inscribed artifacts being genuine was the general lack of Hebraic artifacts to be found at Native American sites across the country. This argument received a blow a few decades after the affair of the Newark Holy Stones when another rash of artifact discoveries occurred, this time all over Michigan, and instead of just a few inscribed stones, thousands were unearthed over the course of 30 years. The first, an earthenware vessel or clay cup, was discovered by James Scotford, a local sign maker, in October of 1890 while he was digging a posthole. Over the next year, Scotford discovered numerous artifacts, all with similar markings, and as people who heard of his discoveries showed up, he started a kind of guided expedition business, leading his clients out among the deforested timberland of the area and digging up small mounds that he said were manmade, though others claim they were natural hummocks or tumuli that had resulted from the uprooting trees. Typically, Scotford dug to a certain depth, never deeper than two feet, and then invited his clients to dig further, at which point, invariably, an artifact was unearthed, and his clients would then sign affidavits swearing to the fact that they had discovered it themselves. Scotford convinced his supporters that these objects were the remnants of a major ancient civilization, though no evidence of any actual dwelling structures have ever been uncovered. He claimed that the large swathes of hummocks he was excavating represented a vast necropolis of burial mounds, though no human remains were ever discovered within them. Believers in the authenticity of the Michigan relics, including some Mormons who hoped that they could corroborate the Latter Day Saint claims about American prehistory, pointed out that the sheer number of finds proved they couldn’t be frauds. However, absolutely no Michigan Relics were ever found except in the presence of James Scotford, or, later, in the presence of the partner he took on, Daniel Soper, the former Secretary of State of Michigan, whose political career had ended in scandal with accusations of embezzlement.

A photo of some of the Scotford-Soper forgeries, from Francis Kelsey’s “Some Archeological Forgeries from Michigan,” American Anthropologist , New Series, Vol. 10, No. 1, Jan. - Mar., 1908, pp. 48-59. — A photo of some of the Scotford-Soper forgeries, from Francis Kelsey’s “Some Archeological Forgeries from Michigan,” *American Anthropologist* , New Series, Vol. 10, No. 1, Jan. - Mar., 1908, pp. 48-59.

Already the fraud in the Michigan Relics appears clear. However, physical evidence that the artifacts were modern forgeries was also abundant. Firstly, the script and markings that appeared on all the items was unconvincing. It was a mishmash of cuneiform interspersed with Egyptian-esque hieroglyphs, all of them stamped on rather than engraved. The confusion of languages was explained by Scotford and Soper with claims that the civilization must have been polyglot mix of different cultures that had all somehow made their way into the Americas, but this failed to explain their laziness. Some characters were stamped on and then simply reversed and stamped again to appear like a different symbol, and entire rows were comprised of one symbol stamped over and over. Then there were the materials themselves, which showed every sign of modern origin. The symbols were stamped onto commercially smelted copper, onto slate that been freshly machine-cut, and onto unbaked clay that actually disintegrated in water, leaving no doubt that it would not have survived intact underground for very long. In fact, on the reverse side of some clay pieces, the impression of a machine sawed piece of wood can clearly be discerned, where the piece had obviously been set to dry. Then there is the fact that every single one of them bore the same prominent mark, what looked like an I, an H, and a forward slash. Scotford and Soper suggested this was a “tribal mark,” but most view it to be the signature of the forgers. All of this is unaccountable and damning. No further evidence is needed to cement the Michigan Relics as outright counterfeits, but one more is worth noting insofar as it shows a parallel with previous inscribed stone frauds. There appears to have been correction on the part of the forgers to answer certain criticisms, just as the first Newark Holy Stone was criticized for being in modern Hebrew, and then the next one displayed a more ancient script. Some early Michigan artifacts had a lion with no tail stamped onto them, and after some experts suggested that a primitive artist would not omit the tail, other artifacts appeared on which the lions’ tails could more clearly be seen.

This survey of archaeological frauds perpetrated to convince the public of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact could go on and on. I have skipped, for example, the Grave Creek Stone, the Davenport Tablets, and the Bat Creek Stone, about which I may have more to say in upcoming patron exclusive readings of some historical fiction I wrote about these incidents. I’ve also omitted Minnesota’s Kensington Runestone and the Heavener Runestone of Oklahoma, which are held up as proof of a pre-Columbian Norse presence in North America. Don’t get me wrong. Pre-Columbian Norse exploration of North America at Newfoundland has been proven, but not as far inland as Minnesota and Oklahoma. And the parade of pseudoarcheology would continue during the 20th century to tantalize the Church of Latter-Day Saints and other proponents of the theory of ancient Semitic contact in American prehistory. There were the Tucson Artifacts of Arizona in 1924—a cache of inscribed crosses and swords—and then there was the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone, a boulder in New Mexico inscribed with the Ten Commandments that was first recorded by a professor in 1933, who said the local guide who led him to it claimed to have seen it as far back as the 1880s. The thing with these inscribed stones is that they cannot be dated using radiocarbon analysis, which requires organic material. The leather of the Pittsfield phylactery might have been, if it hadn’t been lost, or maybe not, as the oils and preservatives applied to leather over time have been known to interfere with Carbon-14 dating. Neither can stratigraphic dating typically be relied on, as these are freestanding boulders, or if buried, they were excavated without proper field notes being taken. Anyway, the surviving descriptions tend to suggest that they weren’t found at a depth that would indicate antiquity. Moreover, with the knowledge of contact and commerce between indigenous tribes, it is illogical that items such as the Newark Holy Stones or the Michigan Relics would be found only in one discrete geographical region, and not popping up at other sites farther away. And every time, when there is no clear evidence of skulduggery, there is still some explanation, such as that a travelling Jew in more modern times had accidentally let an artifact or an heirloom fall or even buried it for some purpose we cannot know. And in many of these cases, those who peer at the scratchings on these stones tend to see what they want to see. As Professor Edmund Dellabarre said of Dighton Rock before succumbing himself to the same phenomenon: “Whenever we can, we tend to find something definite in the faint and orderly in the confused and to trust what we find.… There is a pleasure in seeing uncertainties and irregularities resolve themselves into definite form, and the forms take on connected and acceptable meaning.”

Until next time … remember… the longer you stare at anything, clouds, wallpaper patterns, wood grains, marble veins… you will eventually believe you see something hidden there.

Written in Stone: The Archaeological Frauds of Pre-Columbian Trans-Oceanic Contact Theories

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