The Kinderhook plates were a set of six small, bell-shaped pieces of brass with strange engravings which were claimed to have been discovered in 1843 in an Indian mound near Kinderhook, Illinois.
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On April 16, 1843, Robert Wiley, a merchant living in Kinderhook, began to dig a deep shaft in the center of an Indian mound near the village.
Washington Irving lived in the Village of Kinderhook in 1809 and wrote the Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow short stories which take place regionally and is the reason why the high school in Valatie is named "Ichabod Crane".
Smith cited the Kinderhook plates in a map he drew of Moroni's journey to the hill Cumorah.
Martin Van Buren National Historic Site, Kinderhook, New York, listed on the NRHP in New York