Northern Mexico: Mexican Indians

National Archaeological Council Of Mexico Dept: The items mostly date from before European explorers landed in North America and include items from hunter-gatherers in pre-Columbian northern Mexico, such as stones used to grind corn, statues, figurines and copper hatchets, said Pedro Sanchez, president of the National Archaeological Council of Mexico, according to CBC. More than two dozen pieces of pottery were seized in Kalispell, Mont., where U.S. Homeland Security agents discovered that a consignor had paid Mexican Indians to loot items from burial sites deep in the Mexican Copper Canyon in Chihuahua, Mexico, authorities said and more than 4,000 archaeological artifacts looted from Mexico and seized in the U.S. were returned to Mexican authorities on Thursday, in what experts say is one of the largest repatriation ever made between the neighbouring countries. Seizures were made in El Paso, Phoenix, Chicago, Denver, San Diego and San Antonio by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, though most of the relics including items traced to a 2008 theft of a museum in Mexico turned up in Fort Stockton, a Texas town about 370 km southeast of El Paso. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.