We respectfully petition UNC's Research Laboratories of Archaeology to reconsider the blanket "fake" designation applied to the Garden Creek/Mount Pisgah carvings and, pending review, replace it with neutral wording such as "authenticity disputed" or "historically described as fake."

The surviving record documents genuine nineteenth-century collecting, not that every carving was fraudulently made or that any specific carving is prehistoric. The defensible conclusion is a mixed assemblage requiring object-by-object adjudication, not a categorical label.

That label traces largely to Joffre Coe's chapter "Through a Glass Darkly," relaying the 1880s Thomas/Emmert verdict without new maker testimony or lab work, while crediting Valentine's early field methods, questioning Thomas-era reporting, and warning against premature single-answer interpretation. Applying Coe's own standard here supports reconsideration, not reversal.

A verified December 15, 1880 letter (B. B. Valentine to A. J. Osborne) identifies a Macon County Cherokee man only as "Chief Bushyhead" (best-fit: George Bushyhead; identity unresolved), stating that in the mountains of western North Carolina "the medicine men use them to bring rain." A September 23, 1884 letter left boxes of relics with "Chief N. Smith" (Principal Chief Nimrod Jarrett Smith, Eastern Band, 1880–1891) and hauling money — a named Cherokee custody node.

The 1965–67 Garden Creek excavations under Coe's Cherokee Project independently catalogued comparable effigy-related stone objects at the same mound. Separately, a 1922 Smithsonian memorandum consolidated several accessions, and a later destruction list calling condemned specimens "mainly plaster casts" nonetheless lists one as "etched stone" — recordkeeping confusion apart from the authenticity question.

We request disclosure of the evidence behind each label, Cherokee consultation, preservation of all records, and independent, non-destructive examination before categorical public wording is retained.