• Originally published June 2, 2010 at 12:11 p.m., updated June 2, 2010 at 5:31 p.m.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) - A sacred whistle, a wooden stick, a button, a shell and a rounded cork possibly from the 1700s are on the verge of being returned to the Nez Perce tribe after spending decades in a forgotten, anonymous crate in a warehouse.

University of Idaho anthropologist Leah Evans-Janke says it was one of those fortuitous discoveries that happen sometimes in archaeological collections: Somebody opens a dusty old box, not knowing what's inside.

While Evans-Janke, collections manager at UI's Alfred W. Bowers Laboratory of Anthropology in Moscow, Idaho, says the discovery isn't earthshaking, it's "the greatest feeling in the world is meeting with the tribe, and handing the items back over to them, and knowing things are coming back to where they should be - kind of tipping the balance in the universe to where things should be."

The 20-year-old federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires that human remains, funerary and sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony are to be returned to lineal descendants and culturally affiliated American Indian tribes. Sometimes, it takes years; collections are so vast, even their curators don't know what they have.

In 2006, the remains of about 150 American Indians including Nez Perce members, as well as their possessions, were returned by the University of Idaho and Washington State University in nearby Pullman and reburied at a secret location, to thwart modern-day grave robbers.

Evans-Janke said lab staff in Moscow were 60 percent finished with cataloguing collections from Idaho's 10 northern counties last year when they came across the five items - the whistle, a square wood stick, a brass or copper button, a tusk-like shell and a rounded cork - that may date back to the 1700s.

"Every now and again, you still find one of those boxes that hasn't been paid much attention to," she said. "We get surprised, just like anybody else."

Records show the objects were dug up 47 years ago on property owned by a sheep rancher named Harry Hagen. It was in the midst of road construction, but the site had been ransacked, according to an Idaho State Archaeological Society account.

"Although the site did not yield human remains at the time of the excavation, it was noted that the site had been 'almost completely potted by amateurs,'" the National Park Service wrote in a Federal Register notice published Tuesday.

In 1971, Hagen sold more than 1,100 acres to the park service. The federal agency now manages the site of the Battle of White Bird Canyon, where the Nez Perce tribe, led by Chief Joseph, fought U.S. Cavalry forces in 1877 during their unsuccessful flight toward Canada to avoid confinement on a reservation.

UI officials, in consultation with the Nez Perce, have determined the sacred whistle - likely used during ceremonies, then buried with its owner - and other objects can be "reasonably traced" to the tribe's ancestors who lived and traveled near the Snake, Clearwater and Salmon rivers in Idaho, Washington and Oregon for thousands of years.

The National Park Service has given notice to other tribes in the region. If nobody steps forward before July 1, they are due to be repatriated to the Nez Perce.

What the tribe will do with the objects was not immediately known. Nakia Williamson, the Nez Perce ethnographer, didn't return a phone call.

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