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Port Orford Meteorite Hoax - Part 5 of 6

PLOTKIN H. (1993) The Port Orford Meteorite Hoax
(Sky & Tel., September 1993, pp. 35-38):

I became convinced that Evans's story was a hoax when I realized that
his claim of an 1856 discovery date was beyond doubt a lie. All of the
geologic specimens collected during his 1856 trip, as well as his
earlier ones, were analyzed by Abram Litton, a friend who was a chemist
at St. Louis University.When Litton's wife died in late 1858 and he
found himself unable to do further scientific work, Evans turned to
Jackson to analyze his subsequent finds. Jackson's analysis of the Port
Orford specimen is virtual proof that it had not been found in 1856, as
Evans claimed, but during an 1858 trip to Oregon he made to sell off
some of his property.
It seemed inconceivable that Evans could have made a mistake about
something as fundamental to his story as the discovery date. I therefore
took this to be a deliberate lie. More than anything else, this led me
to conclude that Evans's whole story was built on sand.
The Port Orford specimen, currently in the Smithsonian, is one of the
most puzzling pieces in this story. Unquestionably a genuine meteorite,
where did it come from? And how did Evans acquire it? I felt that
answers to these questions would provide the strongest possible proof of
Evans's hoax.
Evans's letters to his wife during his 1858 trip and shortly after his
return to Washington shed light on the meteorite's acquisition. The
letters from Oregon reveal a broken, despondent man utterly worn down
and exhausted by his long, frustrating battles with Congress. Yet by the
time he had returned to Washington, his outlook had surprisingly and
dramatically changed, and he had become extremely buoyant. He boasted
that he was now "better prepared to wage war with Congress" for the
desperately needed appropriation than ever before.

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