In 1792 a beautiful pipe tomahawk was gifted to the great Seneca leader Cornplanter by George Washington and became part of the NYSM collections in 1850. For nearly 70 years, this tomahawk was in the hands of private collectors, having been stolen from the State Museum between 1947 and 1950. Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous collector, the pipe tomahawk returned to NYSM on June 20, 2018.
Come learn about the remarkable history of this pipe tomahawk, Cornplanter, and the beginnings of the Museum’s ethnology collections with Dr. Gwendolyn Saul, NYS Museum curator of ethnography.
