What's this about the sacred meteorite

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A.� You must be talking about the Willamette meteorite, a 15.5-ton boulder that fell to Earth more than 10 millenniums ago. It is the largest meteorite found in the United States. Experts believe it originally landed in Canada and was pushed by glaciers to Willamette Valley, Oregon, more than 12,500 years ago. < xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

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Q.� How could they possibly know it was moved

A.� The meteorite, bought by the American Museum of Natural History in 1906, was found in West Linn, but there was no impact crater. That prompted the glacier theory. Scientists believe the meteorite - said to be the size and shape of a Volkswagen Beetle - was the iron core of a planet that broke up billions of years ago and hit the surface of the Earth at 40,000mph.

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Q.� And why was it sacred

A.� The Clackamas native Americans lived in West Linn and revered the meteorite as a representative of the Sky People, cementing a union between sky, earth and water. They called it Tomanowos - which translates as Heavenly Visitor or Visitor From the Moon - and used rainwater that collected in the pockmarks on the meteorite's surface to bless arrows for good hunting and to heal illnesses.

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Q.� What happened to the Clackamas

A.� In 1856 when the 88 surviving members of the Clackamas tribe were among the 20 tribes driven from their homelands in western Oregon and marched to the Grand Ronde Reservation in the rainy Coast Range to make way for the covered wagons pouring into the Willamette Valley over the Oregon Trail. They had to leave their sacred Tomanowos behind.

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Q.� Who took it then

A.� A Welsh miner named Ellis Hughes found the meteorite in 1902, and spent months dragging it from lands owned by the Oregon Iron and Steel Company to his homestead, where he charged people 25 cents a look. The company sued to get it back, then exhibited it at the Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland, Oregon, before selling it to Mrs William Dodge of New York for $20,600. She gave it to the museum.

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Q.� Which took good care of it

A.� Well, no. Museums like to have a big collection and will often swap fragments of exhibits with other institutions. It may seem amazing now, but over the years, curators used diamond saws and sledgehammers to remove dozens of pieces to trade for other pieces of meteorites for study and display. Private collectors all trade in pieces of space debris.

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In 1998, the museum curators cut off a 28lb chunk and traded it to a private collector for half an ounce of Mars. The collector, Darryl Pitt of New York City, sold a 6in, 3.4-ounce slice off that chunk for $11,000 at an auction.

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Q.� And what do the Native Americans think about this

A.� Dismay. One asked: 'Would someone want to auction off a crucifix, one of the holy statues out of the Catholic church or something like that '

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Brent Merrill, a spokesman for the Clackamas, visited Tomanowos in New York with other tribe members and said: 'There is definitely a power in the meteorite. There is definitely a presence there that we all felt. The feeling we got when we left was the meteorite was lonely there.'

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However, there was some good news at the auction. Dr. David Wheeler, a chiropractic physician from West Linn, bought a small piece of the meteorite and said: 'I just looked at that, and thought, 'I'm going to get one of those sections. I'm going to bring it back here'. I may end up donating it to them.'

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Merrill said: 'That is really, really cool. It kind of restores your thoughts that humanity isn't so bad.'

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Steve Cunningham