The Wrangell sentinel., 1931-09-18
Author Gets Thrill From Imagined
 Value Of CuriO Found In WrangeII

tnOusnI IL Just as well not to
 tell the assembled scientists that 1
 had planned to have a hole drilled
 through the creatures head and
 use it for a water spout They may
 not have understood.
 To-day the euriously carved bird stands on the table in my library at Journeys End, and from beneath it's dropping lids regards me malevo- lently. I like to look at it because it serves to remind me that in go- ing about the world it is we'll to keep ones eyes open. For one never knows where treasures may be found"
 | Wrangell readers lost no time in finding out about the 'rare" stone object and a very few inquiries brought out the fact that the "old old man with a white beard reach ing halfway to his waist, behind counter serving sandwiches to throng of hungry customers" was T. J. Case, selling ice cream cones to couple of children in his ice cream and soft drink store.
 MT. Case has never worn a long beard nor served sandwiches, but that is beside the point. He re- calls perfectly the details of the transaction when he sold the stone figure two years ago. The tourist asked to buy it, he says, so he sold it to him for five dollars. After the purchaser had the figure safely in his possession" he then questioned Case as to where he had obtained it. Case says he thought that in view of the fact the stran- ger had paid five dollars fer his purchase he was entitled to a five dollar story, so he told him it was taken from the grave of old Chief Skowl more than sixty years ago and the tourist was more than satisfied 'I had set no price oa the stone; I did not try to sell it, and told my story after the stranger had insisted on buying the stone and had paid for it," said Case.
 Asked where he really get 1t Mir Case said, Tt was in the outfit Walter Waters had several years ago when l bought out his tomb st9Rss 8t99RRe 9HRfiiBaBssSdf 9sHRfiiBaBsd up "fttSh ftsh RRenth stone was sold he cut in the letter ing. He became so adept in his stone cutting that one day he turn ed out a twelve-inch totem. It was in my junk shop on the water front for a time. then 1t fell down on the beach where it stayed long enough to get a little messy and dirty. I picked it up off the beach one day and put it in the window Iof the confectionery store.
 Ut never occurred to me that 1t had any sales value. But when l got five dollars out of it hunted up Walter and told him a tourist had paid me twenty-five dollars for that little totem he had cut out of a piece Of waste marble from one of the tombstones. Now, just two years later this fellow has to write magazine story and let Walter know I stretched the truth consider ably"
 MT. Waters insists that the bird is a raven and not an eagle, no matter what any anthropologist says. He doesn't know whether to be flattered or insulted when his work of art is described as having peculiarly sinister expression" Alaskans are accustomed to maga- zines of cheap repute printing fiC- tion wherein the hero boards the train at Seattle for Juneau; or the lovely heroine leaving Seattle on steamer bound for Nome, stops en- route to visit Soapy Smiths grave at Skagway. But we do expect fact material in the American Magazine to bear some semblance to fact. It seems incredible that Dr. Ales He'd licka should say regarding the stone cut in an idle moment by MT. Waters that barring the small figure in the Metropolitan Museum, this is, so far as I am aware, the only example of stone carving by the aborigines of North America n existence"
 Dr. Hedliekas investigations in | Alaska have been conducted along the Yukon river and the Aleutian islands. He has visited Wrangell only when the boat on which he was a passenger called in port here.
 The trip in 1929 was not MT. Powell's first trip to Alaska. In his account of himself in Who's Who in America, he asserts that he was "first person to drive motor car overland from Mexico to Alaska, 1913"
 This Is more remarkable than his ethnologi3a gal find in Wrangell as the road up the Pacific Coast end- ed at Hazelton, British Columbia, in 1913 even as it ends there today, and Hazelton is still a mile or two from the Alaska boundary. The In- ternational Highway Commission which meets in Canada next month