(Radio Iowa) – Cornell College in Mt. Vernon has returned a Native American statue that had been part of its art collection for more than a century. Art History professor Chris Penn-Goetsch says Cornell graduate Natalie Zenk uncovered the statue’s origins at a burial site while completing her senior thesis.  “Through her research, she was able to find an article from 1952… which points out that the work was first found in Bartow County, Georgia, along the Raccoon Creek,” she says.

Zenk says she was working on her senior thesis when she found the statue was taken from a burial site in Georgia in 1886. It was eventually purchased and donated to Cornell College in the early 1900s. “They had expressed that it was a cultural object that they had very dear feelings for, and so I knew that was something that I really wanted to make sure that got back to them.”

Representatives of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation joined Cornell’s art and art history department on campus last week to receive the statue. The Secretary of Culture and Humanities for the Muscogee Nation says the statue will be taken back to be reburied.