Looting Spiro Mounds: An American King Tut's Tomb

When a group of relic hunters drove their picks into a lost Indian burial crypt in eastern Oklahoma in 1935, they unearthed a vast treasure trove of Mississippian art—considered by many at the time to be America’s answer to King Tut’s Tomb. They also ignited a controversy that continues to have repercussions throughout archaeological and American Indian communities.

The Spiro Mounds contained some of the most ...