Janet Baltz had heard about her great-grandfather’s collection of American Indian artifacts when she was a child. But she could barely believe the trove she and her siblings came upon last year while cleaning out her parents’ Lakewood house after her father passed away.
Locked away in a basement and tucked neatly into boxes for nearly 60 years, Baltz’s great grandfather’s collection contains many American Indian artifacts and art pieces along with letters that George D. Hinman had exchanged with an American Indian artist, Chief Half Moon.
“Itap been in the family for more or less 100 years,” Baltz said. “There’s so much of it. I’m just in awe.”
Now, part of the Hinman collection is on display for anyone to enjoy at the Evergreen Fine Art Gallery, 3042 Evergreen Parkway. The rest is still with Baltz and her family as they decide what to keep, what needs to be repatriated to American Indian tribes and what can be sold to art collectors.
The work on display consists of about 40 pieces and includes letters from Chief Half Moon to Hinman, spanning from about 1904-18, a self-portrait of Chief Half Moon and several artifacts including moccasins, pipe axes and a ceremonial headdress.
Baltz estimates that Hinman started his collection from Chief Half Moon and continued to accumulate items until around 1940.
“There is meticulous documentation on all of this work. Some still have the original price tags on the items,” Evergreen Fine Art Gallery director of exhibitions Doug Kacena said.
Baltz has been enjoying piecing together the history of Hinman and Chief Half Moon, whom she admits she knows very little about. She has surmised that Chief Half Moon was an artist and belonged to the Choctaw tribe out of Arkansas. He likely spent a lot of time in Oklahoma and traveled into Canada and overseas.
He likely met Hinman in Connecticut while part of Healy & Bigelow’s Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company’s traveling medicine show. Hinman lived in the area at the time. The two kept in touch, and letters from Chief Half Moon document his time in England during World War I and contain some drawings of other American Indians and historical people he met or heard about along the way.
“He was really documenting the culture he was coming across during his travels and drew them on backs of letters,” Kacena said.
Baltz doesn’t know for sure what parts of the collection came directly from Chief Half Moon and what was acquired later on, but some of the items could date back several hundred years from various tribes.
Baltz’s family first sought appraisers to see what could be sold and what the collection could be worth. She also learned what items should potentially be repatriated to American Indian tribes and what can’t be sold, such as the headdress because it contains eagle feathers. Anything with eagle feathers cannot be sold under the eagle feather law and only people with American Indian ancestry from documented tribes can obtain them.
Kacena said the whole collection could be worth close to $500,000.
John Boulware, who owns an antique shop in Denver, was one of the first to look through the collection to begin an appraisal. He said the collection had some very rare items.
“Itap rare to find a collection of that size,” he said. “Itap not common at all to run across that many items. Itap overwhelming.”
The collection has received interest from some collectors and the Denver Art Museum, which has one of the largest American Indian artifact collections in the country. Curator John Lukavic said he saw items that would be great additions to the art museum’s collection.
The exhibit has been at the Evergreen Fine Art Gallery for almost two weeks, and Kacena is glad to have it for now.
“This stuff needed that second life,” he said. “Itap been in boxes so long. It needs to be in public to have this type of showing.”