Whatever Happened to the Fawn Hoof Mummy?

08/09 22:30 - Whatever Happened to the Fawn Hoof Mummy?
The site To Slip One's Mind usually has posts about murders, but they featured the Fawn Hoof Mummy this week. We don't know if there's any evidence that she was murdered, because the mummy was pretty much destroyed in the name of science. I had to find out more. In 1811, workers were mining saltpeter from Short Cave, a part of the Mammoth Cave system. They struck an anomaly that turned out to be a four-foot-square crypt containing a corpse folded into a fetal position. It was that of a woman with short-cropped hair between 5' 10" and six feet tall. She was wrapped in a decorated deerskin and was accompanied by burial goods, including a necklace made of deer hooves, which gave her the name Fawn Hoof. The mummy was moved to Mammoth Cave, where she was on display for several years. Nahum Ward purchased the mummy in 1815 and took it on an exhibition tour. The American Antiquarian Society acquired the mummy for 59 years, during which time she was displayed at the 1876 World's Fair in Philadelphia and the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. Fawn Hoof then went to the Smithsonian Institution, where she was displayed until 1900. But then, the institution decided to remove the mummy's flesh and separate her bones, removing most of what was notable about Fawn Hoof. For more than 100 years, her remains have neither been displayed nor studied, and are far from her designated resting place. Read the story of the Fawn Hoof Mummy and other mummies taken from Mammoth Cave at Great American Hikes. -via Strange Company ...