GUEST: This spoon has been in the family. It's a family heirloom. It was hanging in a family camp on Lake Champlain for decades. I've called it the wooden spoon, although there's controversy in the family as to what it's actually made out of. My grandfather was well-traveled. He was in the Army. And my great-grandfather did a lot of collecting, and it's got a little Rocky Mountain sticker on the side of it.
APPRAISER: It's a ladle.
GUEST: Yeah?
APPRAISER: And actually, I have seen graduated sets of these that went from the size of a regular spoon that you would use at the table...
GUEST: Really?
APPRAISER: ...to large-- not this large.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: This is, this is a huge spoon.
GUEST: Huge.
APPRAISER: This is not wood.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: This is horn, this is from a Rocky Mountain sheep in the Northern Rockies.
GUEST: I'll be darned.
APPRAISER: And that's the little tag on the bottom that says "Rocky Mountains." And the horns are taken off, heated, and shaped.
GUEST: Really?
APPRAISER: So it already had a lot of this shape. But as far as straightening out, we're talking, you know, round rams, goes into a spiral.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: So we're, it's a big animal.
GUEST: I'll be darned. There was controversy, so...
APPRAISER: Yeah, yeah, no, it...
GUEST: (laughs): It's horn, all right.
APPRAISER: It's horn, it's not wood, and it's...
GUEST: It's huge!
APPRAISER: Yes, it is, and if you hold it up to the light, it's kind of translucent.
GUEST: Yeah!
APPRAISER: You can see light through it. It was heavily scraped, probably with an iron tool. It, it could have been a stone tool, but probably an iron tool. This came from the Northern Rockies.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: You know, so Colorado north, which would indicate that it came from one of the tribes in the Northern Plains. Right. We're talking, Nez Perce made spoons like this.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: Yakama up in Eastern Washington, Crow, Blackfeet.
GUEST: So they're... Yeah.
APPRAISER: They were made by different tribes, but the tribes that had the most contact with that area would have been, like, the Nez Perce or the Northern Arapaho or the Northern Cheyenne.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: I think this one could be as early as 1850. Many people that were in that part of the world in the 1850s and 1860s were military.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: There was mining going on.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: The country was moving fast. The railroads were going through. So from 1850 to 1880, you had large numbers of troops stationed across the Northern Plains. Before that, it was the fur trade.
GUEST: (softly): Wow.
APPRAISER: And not only has a Native American value, it's natural history.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: And not an, not an endangered animal.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: They're still thriving in the Rockies.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: I think it was for group meals. At an auction...
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: ...easily $4,000 to $6,000.
GUEST: Really?
APPRAISER: And, and this is without a doubt....
GUEST: Wow!
APPRAISER: ...the largest one I've ever seen. And the more I stand here, the better I like it. (both laughing)
