A Native American
historian and descendant of the Crazy Horse family says he
questions the authenticity of a knife and beaded sheath said to
have been carried by Crazy Horse that will be on the auction block
Saturday at a gallery in New Braunfels, Texas.
Robb Burley of
Burley Auction Gallery, where the knife will be sold, said the
knife has an extended provenance supporting the authenticity of the
knife and sheath.
But Donovin
Sprague, a university instructor at Black Hills State University
and Crazy Horse Memorial, says he has questions about the knife's
authenticity.
"From this 38-page
document, I am very skeptical. It's very well written. They spent a
lot of time researching, but I've found a whole lot of areas of
question," he said.
One question is the
time frame of the beaded design.
"These red, white
and blue flag designs really were more prevalent in the early
1900s," he said.
According to the
provenance, or facts supporting the authenticity of the knife and
sheath, the items came into the possession of a collector in
1894.
As the story goes,
a 22-year-old horseshoer, dispatched from Portland, Maine, and
supported by an ardent collector of Northern Plains Native American
war relics, acquired the knife and sheath from an Army officer
stationed at Fort Meade.
Sprague believes
the knife may have been surrendered by Crazy Horse while at Fort
Robinson in Nebraska, but according to historians there, weapons
were tossed into a big pile and it would have been difficult to
know which item belonged to which person.
"It would have been
difficult to identify one as his," said Sprague, who identifies
himself as a descendant of the Crazy Horse family from Chief Hump,
also know as High Back Bone.
"We had an expert
go over the beads on the sheath and they did confirm they were in
use from the 1850s-to-1900 time frame," Burley said.
Burley estimates
the knife's value at between $15,000 and $30,000.
According to
Burley, John Scheiwe and his wife, Karin, purchased these items at
the auction and displayed them in a shadow box in their home for
the better part of the last four decades. Age and downsizing have
persuaded the Scheiwes to now sell the items.
Sprague said he was
called by the Scheiwes within the past year and is noted in the
38-page provenance. The Scheiwes said they used Sprague's "Rosebud
Sioux" book for research on the knife and sheath.
"I hate to have
someone spend that kind of money and be spoon fed what it says in
the book," Sprague said.
