Slack Farm
Slack Farm (15 UN 28) is an archaeological site of the Caborn-Welborn variant of the Mississippian culture. Slack Farm is located near Uniontown, Kentucky, close to the confluence of the Ohio River and the Wabash Rivers. The site included a Native American mound and an extensive village occupation dating between 1400 and 1650 CE. Although Slack Farm was long known to be one of the major villages of the Caborn-Welborn people, it became famous when it was very seriously damaged by looters in 1987.
1987 looting and its effects[edit]
In 1987 the ten looters of Slack Farm paid $10,000 to a new landowner of the Slack Farm property for the right to dig at the site. After renting a tractor, the ten individuals spent two months destroying hundreds of Native American graves, Mississippian culture houses, and unknown other artifacts. Local complaints by the people of Uniontown led to the arrest of the perpetrators for the misdemeanor of "desecrating a venerable object" (a charge which is now a felony, in part due to the controversy over Slack Farm). Prosecution on this charge was difficult in the late 1980s, in part because this predated the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and related state legislation, which made it clearer that such activities were illegal.
The looting of Slack Farm contributed to the passage of more stringent laws in the state of Kentucky relating to the protection of burials, sacred grounds, and indigenous/archaeological sites. The damage done to Slack Farm attracted worldwide attention and was written about in National Geographic magazine,[2] prompting widespread outcry against illicit removal of antiquities.
The hundreds of broken bones were reburied by Native American groups. As of May 2007, Native American groups still meet in the area to commemorate the site and mourn the damage done.