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Iliff School of Theology reckons with grisly past

For 80 years, a book about Christianity bound in the tanned skin of a murdered Lenape Indian was displayed in a glass case outside the library at the Iliff School of Theology, a United Methodist seminary in Denver, Colorado.

Donated in 1893 by R. M. Barns, a Methodist minister, the book was written in Latin and appears to have been considered a unique curiosity. In a 1934 story, the Rocky Mountain News called it “a priceless vestment for the teachings of brotherly love.”