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Native American Artifact EXTREMELY RARE Fossilized/Petrified 1 of 1 - $1 (Olympia)
condition:
excellent
make / manufacturer:
Native American
model name / number:
1of1
size / dimensions:
See photos
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BACKSTORY
I am selling my prized possession, an extremely rare, one-of-a-kind 500+ year old Native American (Semi-Iridescent) Fossilized/Petrified Ceremonial War Rattle. I have done an inordinate amount of research on this piece, with help from people from all over the country. The result has always been the same: months of correspondence with no definitive answers, only educated speculation, accompanied by sheer bewilderment/astonishment and a merry-go-round of circulating thoughts/feelings/opinions. (This would be the greatest coffee table piece of all time - a conversation starter to end all conversation starters.) During this time, I did receive many offers to buy it. My plans were to keep it though, believing that I would eventually pass it down to a family member. However, I am happy to announce that my current life situation has changed recently, and accordingly, I have now made the decision to sell it, bc I can use the funds for very important/more pressing matters. I would be very pleased if the buyer of this piece is someone who has immense respect for Native American heritage, especially as it relates to preservation of their culture/artifacts/story….i.e. someone who will take unprecedented efforts to take good care of it and ensure it’s preservation! (My fear is it getting broken in an accident, or somehow getting lost and thus never being seen by the world/never ending up in a museum.) The consistent take away from showing this piece to the handful of people that I have let see it, is one of complete intrigue, persistent curiosity, and on going negotiation banter. No one in my family or friend group knows about this piece. I have always thought that I would eventually get it into an extremely secure display case of some kind - bc for the last few years it has been in a padded/secure storage container. Anyways, life throws curve balls at ya every now and then, and plans change. I would prefer to sell it to either a museum or possibly the curator to a museum of some sort, but I will sell it to anyone…random Craigslist guy to a private collector….any interested party can own this piece, it’s just a matter of the price being right. That said, I must make it clear, I WILL ONLY ACCEPT a CASHIERS CHECK - (verified by meeting at my bank)…. no cash or payment through apps like ApplePay/Venmo/PayPal. Too many possibilities for bad players to pull something. I’ve seen almost every trick in the book, and the schemes out there are always progressing and ever evolving, so better safe than sorry. Real deal interested parties will understand this, and if that is cause for being a deal breaker, I say it was meant to be that way.
I can answer as many questions as you have. But just realize, there are a few things that are unknowable at this point, with some truths just being lost to the sands of time. This is an opportunity for someone to get a once in a lifetime piece - a center piece that any collector (of rare things, antiques, collectibles, Native American artifacts, historically significant objects from the Pacific Northwest, college academic academia, paleontology, science, man kinds journey. Washington State, Olympia/Tumwater, etc) would be proud to call his/her central/prominent piece.
ABOUT THE ACTUAL ITEM
-Age is approximately 500 years old (the initial owner told me he thought it was older than that, but from my research I am relatively confident that it is closer to this age than what we thought (his people thought it closer to 750+, possibly even 1000, due to the carbon dating that was done on some of the pieces found in close proximity.)
-I was told that it is from the Pacific Northwest, in the general region of the mouth of the Columbia River, north of that area (but within 50-75 miles).
-This is 100% a rattle. There is something inside it (with the material size/weight of a large marble - if not bigger). What this rattle was used for is the real conundrum…what/how, the way it was used…this is all up for debate. Wartime? Ceremonial? Storytelling? Dancing? Celebrations? Remembrance? Used for soothing smaller children, such as infants, when they were fussy or tired or crying nonstop due to illness or infection? Really hard to say at this point, but man I really want to know the location that someone finds the answer to this, bc I have looked extensivelyyyyy, and came up empty handed everytime! There is something inside the closed shell, what it is I’m not sure, but it dies makes a really nice rattle noise. Unfortunately, I have accepted the fact that I’ll probably never know. If anyone does know the answer to this, and can prove it to me, I will pay you a finders fee! (<—100%) (On a complete side note: if you wanted to, this thing could definitely be used as a weapon! The whole shell/rattle end is not light weight, it’s actually heavy. It would do damage to whatever it struck, but would definitely fall apart itself after a few good strikes.) I used to daydream about there being a really rare pearl or a chunk of gold in there, but I know the way this thing was made combined with it’s age and uniqueness/rarity, it will never be able to be deconstructed to the degree necessary to view it internally.
-The shell is fossilized and almost completely petrified. It has a semi iridescent sheen to it (can’t really see in the pictures). It is sealed shut with a piece of stretched leather hide. It was constructed and fastened onto the shell flawlessly. It is extremely secure. It has never been opened/messed with in any way/shape/form. The entirety of the piece is incredible. The individual pieces, the craftsmanship, the age, the techniques, the aura of the people, the questions about the item and/or it's actual function/useage….all of it just lends itself to Native American folklore mystery. It deserves to be in a proper museum in my opinion.
-The beads are an absolute work of art! They are absolutely incredible in color, shape, construction, etc. The most impressive things about this item is how these things were made such a long time ago with hardly any materials and without present day tools - the beads just blew my mind at first! (existence, how they were made, how they colored these items, etc ) and the colors of various pieces. The beads color cane from them dying berries (and whatever else they procured to create dyes which was apparently a bunch of different stuff back then.) I don’t know what they are made from but they aren’t uniform or mass produced (under a good microscope it is evident) and I was told they would have had a very difficult/frustrating time hollowing out the center - keeping the piece in a stationary position while extracting material from where the center hole is. Apparently they could do all sorts of difficult things that most people are unaware of or would assume they couldn’t do back then. The metal piece was from various random metal pieces gathered over time and eventually (crudely) melted down and subsequently poured to make a thin piece in a makeshift mold of some kind. Then it was folded over itself many times to make it as strong as possible.
-The horse hair (tail) is very coarse/strong. I was amazed at how strong the stuff was. I can see how it would have worked incredibly well for structural integrity (or for reinforcing), due to its resilience (when inserted into wet stuff that had to set/cure).
-Unknown feathers - I’m told they are not from eagles (I looked up the bald eagle feather comparison page and they passed).
WHERE I GOT IT
I purchased this from an estate sale in the southern Lewis Country area. The families lineage must of had a large Native American representation in it, because their home decor was beyond impressive…a good percentage of their things could be characterized as museum quality. The stuff at this sale was completely insane to me! I was nervous just walking through some of the more confined areas, terrified of breaking something or damaging a piece mistakenly. The real overwhelming part for me was the amount of stuff that I had never seen before (or since). Once I saw this piece atop one of their mantles, I put everything else I had in my basket that I had picked out (up to that point) back. I negotiated politely with the gal at the register for a few minutes back and forth…eventually she walky-talky’d for the main guy to come up to talk with me. Lucky for me, when I first got there and was parking, I saw some folks struggling to load a large furniture piece. I hopped outta my car and hurried over to where they were and helped secure the piece make it up into the bed of the trailer. I didn’t know it at the time, but who I had just helped was (essentially) the owner of the home (head of the family) and main person in charge of the estate sale. He did not come across as owner/wealthy/authoritative/in charge/the boss….he came across more like your best friends dad who you’ve known for years…Long story short, he thanked me multiple times as we walked and then we went separate ways…fast forward to me haggling about the price of this item and this was who the gal called to come handle it. At first he was really not interested in negotiating, but I persisted and we kind of just kept going off on tangents. What made the deal happen was his wife made him realize that it was me that had helped him earlier when they were loading the furniture piece! If she hadn’t walked by and said something to him, we would have just went our separate ways. Thankfully though, it did work out, we negotiated for almost a hour and a half when it was all said and done, but I got the Native American rattle - And he threw in a nice bonus! Multiple arrowheads, sharpening stones, these hollowed out rock bead pieces, and some colorful spotted jewelry bead pieces! It was an incredible day in every conceivable way, and I have always felt there was something magical about that day…almost spiritual, it’s just hard to explain. The only thing I regret was not getting the guys contact information. I know I asked him a few basic questions about the rattle but at the time I was talking with him I was so focused on negotiating that his answers went completely in one ear and out the other. However, that being said, if he had said something of substance, I really think I would have heard him. At any rate, I took ownership and never got to the bottom of what it is that I actually have in my possession….overall, my main thought about this piece is that it is definitely valuable, should be in a museum (preserved), and if it’s possible to figure it’s true origin (and is it the last surviving piece of it’s kind!) It is strange owning something that can’t be found on the internet. Not a picture of it, nothing. Overall, I think I have something incredibly unique/rare, and I think it is worth a lot of money. The question is whether I can put myself in front of the right people and at the right time, and in the right circumstances for the correct valuation and sale agreement to occur - that is the question. Who knows?! I may have completely overpaid! I may have gotten the luckiest / craziest deal ever on a priceless relic! I know for a fact that it’s real. It is Native American. It is really really old. It is really really really really rare. But who knows…I do know that I am kicking myself bc once upon a time (mid COVID) I was offered 10x what I purchased it for. And that offer was given with an open offer moving forward! Unfortunately for me, I called this person before posting this (October 2025) and found out he died in an untimely accident (very sad/tragic/surprising to me). To this day this is the most expensive thing that I have ever purchased. The reason I was able to get it when I did was bc I had literally just sold my car and had not found another one yet. This rattle was the reason that the car I got was itself rattling all the time, bc I spent a huge chunk of my $!!! It has been in my possession since around the beginning of summer in 2016 if my memory is correct. Overall, I believe this piece is extremely unique, very very rare, very valuable from the standpoint of preserving Native American’s true history (and tangibly being able to see/show/learn from these type of discoveries. I am proud that I owned it, that I told people about it, and that I flawlessly/meticulously preserved it, ensuring that it would be intact to hopefully one day be put in the museum of natural history or the Smithsonian. Kind of wish there was a way for someone there to see this post. Anyways, cash talks and BS walks! My loss will be someone else’s massive win!