Whittlesey/Maxwell Expedition

The Whittlesey/Maxwell Amazon Basin Expedition was a scientific excursion sponsored by the New York Museum of Natural History just over five years prior to the events of Relic. Led by John Whittlesey and Edward Maxwell, the expedition traveled to the Upper Xingú Rainforest of Brazil to search for traces of the Kothoga tribe, as well as to survey the flora and fauna of an area of the rainforest that was barely known to science.

The expedition was regarded by the museum as a disaster, causing a minor scandal at the time. Some of the expedition members had been killed by local tribesman, while the rest perished in a plane crash while returning to New York. Rumors of a curse began to circulate, and when crates containing materials shipped back from the expedition arrived at the museum, they sat untouched for years.

Personnel

 * John Whittlesey, expedition leader
 * Edward Maxwell, expedition leader
 * Thomas Crocker, assistant
 * Carlos, camp assistant
 * Paleontologist
 * Mammalogist
 * Physical Anthropologist
 * Entomologist

A botanist named Jörgensen—a friend of Whittlesey's—was supposed to go but was dismissed by Maxwell shortly before departure.

Expedition Summary
The expedition struggled from the beginning as Whittlesey and Maxwell fought for control. Whittlesey attempted to obtain permission from the Brazilian government to ascend a high mesa called a tepui, where he thought the Kothoga might still reside, but was denied. Maxwell, though an anthropologist by training, became obsessed with collecting rare plant specimens from the jungle around the base of the tepui, nearly all of which were absolutely new to science. Whittlesey complained that he was filling their specimen crates with rubbish, even after Maxwell discovered seed pods from a living fossil.

Whittlesey announced that he intended to climb the tepui, permit or no. Maxwell, fearing that his botanical specimens would be impounded, said he would not go. The expedition split up; Whittlesey and an assistant, Thomas Crocker, continued up the tepui while Maxwell and the rest returned to civilization.

The expedition ended in disaster. Whittlesey and Crocker disappeared after sending back a crate of Kothoga artifacts, discovered in a hut at the base of the tepui, while Maxwell's entire party died in a plane crash while returning to the United States.

Fallout
The seven crates of specimens collected by the expedition returned to the United States following a long and tortuous route. They were first sent to Belém, Brazil, then by ship to New Orleans, and finally to New York City. At every step the crates were followed by a series of highly unusual killings that later became known as the Museum Beast Murders.

When the crates finally arrived at the museum, two years after the expedition's demise, they were met with little enthusiasm. The museum's leadership wanted to forget the disastrous expedition, and only one of the seven crates—the one containing Kothoga artifacts—was ever catalogued. According to Jorgensen, none of Whittlesey's associates at the museum were fully trusted in the expedition's aftermath.

The graduate student working with the crates, a Whittlesey protege named Hugo Montague, later disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The crates and the artifacts within sat ignored for years, until the museum decided to feature one of the Kothoga artifacts—the so-called "Mbwun figurine"—in its upcoming Superstition Exhibition.

Less than a year after the expedition, the tepui itself was cleared by napalm, causing uncontrollable fires that burned for weeks and destroyed the entire surrounding ecosystem.