by Paul Schrag
Historian Rex Ziak’s In Full View, written in 2001, is a beautifully designed tome that chronicles each step of the expedition carefully and accurately thanks to a mislabeled map drawn by Clark. Ziak explains it was a virtual treasure map with coordinates pointing to a spot called Station Camp. It was here, late on November 15, 1805, that, according to Ziak’s carefully reconstructed account, the Corps of Discovery was finally able to establish a stable camp, and where Clark would write words of great significance: “This I could plainly See would be the extent of our journey by water . . . in full view of the Ocian.” This is further substantiated by the entry made by Sgt. Patrick Gass in his diary the next day, November 16, 1805: “We are now at the end of our voyage which has been completely accomplished.”
According to Ziak, this entry means Station Camp was where Lewis and Clark’s voyage of discovery was completed—Station Camp in Washington, not Fort Clatsop in Oregon. Ziak further reinforces this conclusion by noting in his journal that within days of arriving, the explorers were ready to head home. The weather on November 24 caused them to reconsider their departure plans, and it was on the evening of that day that the two captains polled the entire party about whether to spend the winter near the ocean on the south side of the Columbia or somewhere farther upriver. This now famous “vote” was the first in American history to include a black slave (York, Clark’s servant) and an Indian woman. The vote took place at Station Camp. While the famous vote for a winter camp was being discussed, Clark would carve on a tree: “William Clark, by land from the U. States in 1804 and 1805.” It was in this peninsula on the southwestern tip of Washington where Meriwether Lewis and William Clark ended their trip west.
It was now a matter of waiting out three-and-a-half harsh winter months at Fort Clatsop, in present-day Oregon, before beginning the long journey back home.
During the long winter it became apparent that the worlds of Lewis and Clark and that of the natives were as different as night and day. The explorers came from a land of scientific development, whereas the tribes had beliefs and customs deeply rooted in legend. The natives took their names from sacred animals and places. They explained the forces of the universe with fables and myths.
When Lewis and Clark finally reached the Pacific Ocean, they literally became beachcombers, traveling as far south as the area now called Ecola Beach State Park and as far north as Astoria, Oregon. During their exploration of the area, William Clark would give Tillamook Head, located between Seaside and Cannon Beach, the title of “the Steepest worst and highest mountain I ever ascended.” Shortly after December 25 in 1806, Clark and twelve other expedition members, including Sacagawea, climbed over rocky hills, fighting their way through thick bushes and trees. From this vantage point the members of the climbing party saw the skeleton of a beached whale south of what is now Ecola State Park.
Perhaps a little more exploring in this area and they might have unearthed ancient Chinese coins. In an article written in 2006, journalist Richard Blake interestingly mentions ancient Chinese coins from the Sung Dynasty that had been found at the mouth of the Ecola River. These coins are kept at the Cannon Beach Historical Society museum in Cannon Beach. In addition, records kept by the Sung Dynasty claim that Chinese explorers reached the West Coast possibly seventy years before Columbus reached the East Coast.
The amount of anthropological and archaeological oddities that connect the Washington and Oregon coasts with Asia, and specifically China, are scarce. But they do exist. The problem remains that most of the evidence has gone into private collections. The little that remains at universities is ignored and tucked away in dusty archives. Some examples of anomalies that have come to light are the documenting of various native groups on Vancouver Island who look distinctly Chinese compared to their neighboring natives. In addition, cave burials along the west coast of Vancouver Island have turned up distinctly Chinese relics, including skeletons. These skeletons are different in size and stature from those of native peoples along the coast. Excavations in Tilamook County by the University of Oregon in the early 1970s unearthed ancient Chinese vases and pottery.
In the early to mid 1970s, Washington State University archaeologists examined a piece of bronzework that was hauled up by a fishing boat near the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The archaeologists, led by Dr. Richard D. Daugherty of WSU, thought the piece to be of Chinese origin and possibly a ship’s decoration of some kind. Daugherty had hoped the university would acquire the relic, but it was sold to a private party and never seen again.
The most alluring of all the Asian Pacific Northwest connections is the enigmatic and controversial Kennewick Man. Kennewick Man is the name given to the remains of a prehistoric man found on a bank of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington, on July 28, 1996. While swimming in the river during the annual hydroplane races, two college students accidentally made the discovery of a man’s skull. It turned out to belong to the most complete ancient skeleton ever found. The bones were dubbed the “Kennewick Man.”
Immediately the remains became embroiled in debates about the relationship between Native American religious rights and archaeology that launched a nine-year legal clash between scientists, the federal government, and Native American tribes. The tribes claimed Kennewick Man as their ancestor. The long dispute made the remains an international celebrity, the subject of documentaries, websites, books, and even the cover of Time magazine. The controversy became so convoluted that the long litigation process has relegated this amazing cultural discovery to a university basement. Today secrets held by the Kennewick Man continue to be, at least for the public, secret.
Then Benton County Coroner Floyd Johnson reached out to a forensic anthropologist in Richland named Jim Chatters, who studied the bones before a detailed analysis could be made. About a month later Chatters and Johnson announced that the skeleton was about 9,200 years old, and they speculated that the man appeared to be in his forties or fifties when he died, making him very old for that period. Chatters and Johnson noted that the skeleton showed a healed broken arm and a healed broken rib, and they found a roughly 1-inch basalt spear point embedded in the skeleton’s pelvic bone (which was not the cause of death). Before a detailed scientific analysis was completed a digital reconstruction of the skull revealed the features were Caucasoid. When the media broke the story, a great deal of coverage emphasized a similarity in appearance between the Kennewick Man and Star Trek: The Next Generation actor Patrick Stewart. This flurry of coverage served the purpose of telling the truth about the discovery of the Kennewick Man, but it depicted the discovery as a joke.
But there is far more to his story.
The history of the colonization of North America by humans has been represented as a trickle of migration across the Bering Strait land bridge during the last Ice Age. More recent archaeological research has begun to uncover an enormous amount of evidence that speaks to the contrary. That evidence suggests that there was a much more complex and sizeable migration to North America. Archaeologists such as Thor Heyerdahl, for example, are convinced that the colonization of North America by humans came in multiple waves, via different means, and from different regions. The Kennewick Man is further evidence of such a colonization wave.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers owns the Columbia River shoreline through the Tri-Cities, so it claimed ownership of the skeleton. However, according to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) signed into law by President George H. W. Bush in 1990, if human remains are found on federal lands and their cultural affiliation can be established, the bones must be returned to the affiliated tribe. Based on this act, five Native American nations (the Nez Percé, Umatilla, Yakama, Wannapum, and Colville) claimed the remains as theirs.
In April 1998, to protect any other skeletons and artifacts from the curious hands of archaeologists, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers covered the Kennewick site with five hundred tons of rock fill.
Curiously, we find the Smithsonian
Institution embroiled in the act, with Douglas Owsley, a Smithsonian anthropologist, taking over the disputed remains and refusing to turn them over to any of the native nations. He contends that the remains’ potential contributions to science are too great, and that Kennewick Man could not be linked to any one tribe. Owsley, along with eight other anthropologists, filed a lawsuit on the matter in 1996 in U.S. District Court in Portland, Oregon.
The five native nations fought the anthropologists in court, claiming that the repatriation law covered the Kennewick Man and that scientific examinations disrespected Native American beliefs about the sanctity of their dead. In 2002, Judge John Jelderks ruled in the anthropologists’ favor. The ruling did not set a timetable for the studies to be completed or published. The Army Corps of Engineers, which remains the legal guardian of Kennewick Man, put him in the Burke Museum, a neutral site agreeable to both the tribes and scientists.
Due to a costly litigation process for the five Native American nations, all but the Umatillas dropped their claims. The Umatilla tribe of Native Americans requested custody of the remains, wanting to bury them according to tribal tradition. However, researchers hoping to study the remains contested their claim. The Umatilla tradition holds that their people have been present on the lands since the dawn of time. The government assertion that Kennewick Man is not Native American is tantamount to the government rejecting their beliefs. Interestingly, the government assertion also lends credence to the argument that Kennewick Man descended from a race other than the indigenous Northwest native peoples.
On February 4, 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that a cultural link between the tribe and the skeleton was not met. The tribe dropped its custody lawsuit, and the ruling supposedly opened the door for more scientific study.
In April 2005, U.S. Senator John McCain introduced and later pushed through an amendment to NAGPRA (Senate Bill 536), which, in section 108, would change the definition of “Native American” from being that which “is indigenous to the United States” to “is or was indigenous to the United States.” By that definition Kennewick Man would be Native American, whether or not any link to a contemporary tribe could be found. Proponents of this interpretation argue that this remains in accord with current scientific understanding that it is not in all cases possible for prehistoric remains to be traced to current tribal bloodlines. The difficulty is attributed to a long history of social upheaval, forced resettlement, and extinction of entire ethnicities caused by disease and warfare in the wake of European colonization.
But McCain’s redefinition did not remove the controversy surrounding Kennewick Man.
Finally, in July 2005, some of the nation’s leading scientists convened in Seattle for ten days to study the remains of the Kennewick Man. After making many detailed measurements, tests, and analyses, they have released some of their findings. But for the public, the secrets of the Kennewick Man are still secret.
C. Loring Brace is a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan. He was one of the scientists who had to wait nine years to study the famous skeleton.
“One look at that thing, and I knew it was going to relate to the Ainu of Japan,” he said. The Ainu were the original and first people of Japan before being hunted into extinction in their homeland. The idea of the Ainu roaming the Northwest represented a radical shift in traditional thinking. When Kennewick Man was first discovered, he was initially thought to be European.
But as Brace explains, “The Ainu don’t look like other Japanese. They have light skin, wavy hair and body hair. And their eyes don’t look Asian at all.”7
John Stang, a Seattle Post-Intelligencer correspondent who authored a detailed account of Kennewick Man’s odyssey, interviewed Brian Irely, a spokesman for the Smithsonian Institution, about when the public may expect to read the conclusions drawn from the examination at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum.
Irely replied, “The scientists are unsure how long it will take until their findings are published.”8
Stephanie Jolivette, the museum’s public outreach coordinator, was quoted in the article as saying, “It’s odd to me that there hasn’t been any preliminary results out.”9
When the 2006 examination was finished, the only statements offered indicated that the Kennewick Man was likely in his thirties when he died, that the spear wound did not kill him, and that the estimated age of the skeleton was between 8,200 and 9,500 years. They did little more than confirm the original study completed by Chatters and Johnson in 1996.
Since 2006 nothing has been publicly disclosed about the studies conducted on the remains. Today Kennewick Man is stored in boxes in the Burke Museum’s basement at a premium of $30,000 a year. The museum does not reveal the remains’ exact location for “security reasons,” but it is interesting to note that neither the Corps of Engineers nor the Umatilla nation (which had the highest profile during the litigation) have any idea of the progress made by scientists. Nor has either reported seeing the remains of the Kennewick Man since 2006. Other researchers have requested access to the skeleton for their own measurements and DNA studies. But so far the corps has denied every request.
Rather than clearing the area for more revealing investigations, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers elected to dump five hundred tons of concrete and rock on the discovery site. Rather than make Kennewick Man’s remains available to anthropologists or researchers, access is denied. Rather than turning the bones over to the tribe that claims the remains as their ancestor based on legal rights given to them by the government, the bones are kept in a museum basement. Could the answer be that the Kennewick Man is associated with an ancient and advanced civilization and that an explanation as to why his remains have turned up is dreaded by various authorities? Is that why it seems that extreme steps have been taken to patiently remove the discovery from public awareness?
The Kennewick Man can be compared with the discovery of a 10,300-year-old skeleton discovered in On Your Knees Cave on southeast Alaska’s Prince of Wales Island. The remains were named Shuka Kaa, which means “Man Ahead of Us.” Shuka Kaa was estimated to be roughly twenty years old at the time of his death. The anthropologists involved in this discovery quickly turned the incomplete remains over to the native tribe of the area for burial. Some speculate that a legal battle over incomplete remains that would not likely contribute to current knowledge would be a waste.
Author Michael Cremo’s book Forbidden Archaeology offers a great deal of additional documentation that suggests modern humankind’s antiquity far exceeds accepted chronologies. For example, Cremo offers a report from the June 11, 1891, edition of the Morrisonville Times.
A curious find was brought to light by Mrs. S. W. Gulp last Tuesday morning. As she was breaking a lump of coal preparatory to putting it in the scuttle, she discovered, as the lump fell apart, embedded in a circular shape a small gold chain about ten inches in length of antique and quaint workmanship. At first Mrs. Gulp thought the chain had been dropped accidentally in the coal, but as she undertook to lift the chain up, the idea of its having been recently dropped was at once made fallacious, for as the lump of coal broke it separated almost in the middle, and the circular position of the chain placed the two ends near to each other, and as the lump separated, the middle of the chain became loosened while each end remained fastened to the coal.
This is a study for the students of archaeology who love to puzzle their brains over the geological construction of the earth from whose ancient depth the curious is always dropping out. The lump of coal from which this chain was taken is supposed to come from the Taylorville or Pana mines [southern Illinois] and almost hushes one’s breath with mystery when it is thought for how many long ages the earth has been forming strata after strata which hid the golden links from view. The chain was an eight-carat gold and weighed eight penny-weights.10
He notes that the Illinois State Geological Survey contended that the coal encasing the gold chain was between 260 an
d 320 million years old.
Another instance involved a report issued in 1871 by William E.
Dubois of the Smithsonian Institution. Dubois reported that several manmade objects were found at unusual depths during drilling in Illinois. The first object was what appeared to be a copper coin. In a letter to the Smithsonian the driller said he discovered the coin stuck to a “common ground auger” after drilling at 125 feet. Later reports suggested that the object had been discovered at a depth of 114 feet rather than 125 feet. The Illinois State Geological Survey offered an estimate for the age of deposits found at the 114-foot level: “sometime between 200,000 and 400,000 years.”
Dubois said the coin contained crude inscriptions in a language that he didn’t recognize, and that the coin’s overall appearance differed from any known coin. Dubois seemed certain that the object was made in a machine shop. He said the uniform thickness of the coin indicated that it had “passed through a rolling-mill; and if the ancient Indians had such a contrivance, it must have been prehistoric.”11
The object, according to experts noted by Cremo, suggests the existence of a civilization at least two hundred thousand years ago in North America. This directly contradicts the widely held assumption that the earliest humans intelligent enough to make and use coins lived one hundred thousand years ago.
In Whiteside County, Illinois, at a depth of 120 feet, workers discovered a small trove of objects, including “a large copper ring or fer-rule, similar to those used on ship spars at the present time. . . . They also found something fashioned like a boat-hook.” One observer noted, “There are numerous instances of relics found at lesser depths. A spear-shaped hatchet, made of iron, was found imbedded in clay at 40 feet; and stone pipes and pottery have been unearthed at depths varying from 10 to 50 feet in many localities.”12
In September 1984 the Illinois State Geological Survey wrote to Cremo and his associates that “the age of deposits at 120 feet in Whiteside County varies greatly. In some places, one would find at 120 feet deposits only 50,000 years old, while in other places one would find Silurian bedrock 410 million years old.”13