The Suppressed History of America
The Murder of Meriwether Lewis
and the Mysterious Discoveries of
the Lewis and Clark Expedition
By Paul Schrag and Xaviant Haze
Four
Lewis and Clark and the Journey West
Thomas Jefferson was known to have in his own personal library the most accurate and complete collection of books and maps cataloging the West. His father, Peter Jefferson, was a skilled cartographer and surveyor. In Virginia, surveyors enjoyed prominent status and had plenty of opportunity to become landowners as well. Anyone who wanted to obtain title to an area of land had to deal with a surveyor. In many cases, a surveyor’s knowledge of the land would garner him employment representing large land companies. Surveyors were also among the best-educated Virginians, and it was not unusual for them to acquire large estates from the opportunities afforded by their profession.
Before 1755 the lands west along the Allegheny Mountains had not been settled. Land ownership in Virginia was necessary for the settlement of the area and for the growing prosperity of the colonial planter. The colonies were thriving, and the assurance of westward expansion depended largely on the incentive of land ownership. The expansion west was not just expected. It was being carefully laid out.
People settling in what was known then as the Northern Neck were required to obtain a survey warrant from the Northern Neck Proprietary Office for a set amount of acreage in a specific location. The survey warrant, issued directly from the office to the county surveyor, instructed the surveyor to make a “just and true” survey of the land, officially determining and limiting its boundaries.
In 1749 Peter Jefferson founded the Loyal Land Company of Virginia along with another fellow Virginian and close neighbor, Thomas Meriwether, Lewis’s grandfather. The Loyal Land Company was formed to petition for grants of land west of the Allegheny Mountains. In addition to Peter Jefferson and Thomas Meriwether, the Loyal Land Company included other members and families of high influence, magnates, and large landowners.
The Loyal Land Company of Virginia received 800,000 acres in 1749. They had plans to fund expeditions west in 1753, just four years after forming the company. The quest unfortunately had to be abandoned indefinitely when the French and Indian War broke out. Peter Jefferson never realized his dream of exploring the West. He died on the family ranch and left his large estate to his fourteen-year-old son Thomas.
Immediately after his father’s death, Jefferson began attending what was considered the finest school in Albemarle County, Virginia, under the tutelage of Rev. James Maury. Maury was known in the area as a great teacher of classic education, such as morals and manners, history, literature, mathematics, and geography, which he considered essential in the education of a “well rounded” young man. The clergyman also promoted settling the West. Most of the boys attending the school boarded there because it was too far to come and go each day from home.
Consequently, strong friendships were formed. Many of the young men educated by Reverend Maury would go on to become great personages in the molding of the new country. Thomas Jefferson lived with the minister and his family for two years, and the influence Maury had on the young Jefferson is evident in the latter’s passion for geography and the exploration of the West. It was a passion Jefferson maintained even as his political career evolved steadily from governor, vice president, to president. It is worth noting that another future president, James Madison, had been a pupil of Reverend Maury.
In 1784 Jefferson introduced to Congress an ordinance that allowed new states to be formed from western territories. Much of Jefferson’s excitement about possible trade routes and passages west rested on maps of the American continent produced by early French explorers. It is important to note that maps of America were based almost entirely on conjecture and stemmed from pseudoscientific theories that were equal parts analysis and wishful thinking. Jefferson subscribed to one of these theories, known as Symmetrical Geography, which suggested that the topography of the western American continent mirrored the eastern half—literally that mountains, rivers and waterways of the eastern and western portions of America were identical, or at least remarkably similar. This theory included a belief in the so-called Long River, which was thought to comprise a series of interlocking lakes and rivers that would provide a water route west. The Long River legend was later replaced by a belief in two rivers running east and west that converged to create a waterway that would be able to carry explorers to the Pacific Ocean.
In a time when most of the population lived within forty miles of the Atlantic Ocean, Congress disapproved of allowing newly discovered lands to be given status equal to that of the original states. Undeterred, Jefferson helped sponsor the French botanist André Michaux in hopes of finding the quickest route to the Pacific Ocean. This expedition collapsed near the Mississippi, suffering from political conspiracies and paranoia.
The French, Spanish, and Native Americans were fighting westward expansion, but Jefferson pressed on with a steady resolve. He had a number of interests and was endlessly studying, never resting, knowing that Great Britain or any other nation could claim land on the soil he and his Revolutionary War brethren fought to protect.
In the beginning of 1801, with the help of the American Philosophical Society, an institution for knowledge created by Benjamin Franklin, Jefferson finally took the first real steps westward.
He chose his private secretary and personal protégé, Meriwether Lewis, to lead the expedition.
Lewis was sent to Philadelphia, where he personally studied under some of the sharpest minds of his time. The preparation called for an intensive review of botany, mathematics, chemistry, anatomy, and medicine. It is not difficult to imagine Lewis readying himself for this important mission, comparing himself with the Spanish conquistadores, stockpiling rifles and ammunition, and securing the proper instruments and equipment.
The taking and collection of notes on newly discovered plants, animals, and minerals was of great importance, as was disciplined documentation of all discoveries in journals. Lewis was well prepared for the task and had a strong personal bond to Jefferson. Both came from the same neighborhood in Virginia and were pioneering sons of distinguished families. Jefferson practically watched Lewis grow up.
Born on the family farm August 18, 1774, Meriwether Lewis had lived just miles from Jefferson’s Monticello. Lewis was born to parents of high prominence in central Virginia. Thomas Jefferson had two siblings that married into the Lewis family, and Meriwether’s uncle had handled Jefferson’s relations during his years of diplomatic service in Paris. When Meriwether was five, his father died of pneumonia. His mother remarried, moving the entire family south to Georgia. It was during that time Lewis developed his skills as a tracker, herb gatherer, and outdoorsman. Hunting at night alone with his dogs, the ten-year-old Lewis developed a lifelong passion for the earth’s natural wonders. It was in Georgia that Lewis had his first encounter with the Cherokees. Even as a curious young boy, Lewis was sensitive to the plight of the natives.
Meriwether returned to Virginia in his early teens to be educated. But when he finished his formal schooling, he opted to return to the family farm rather than continue on to college. His scheme to spend time expanding his land and growing his own flora and herbs was short-lived. Trouble brewed as new taxes on whiskey caused farmers to rebel. Riots spread in the colonies. During August 1794, President Washington mobilized thirteen thousand militiamen from Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Lewis, who was worried about the safety of his land, quickly enlisted. The revolt was uneventful and quickly suppressed. Lewis, however, had found some excitement in the promise of travel and decided to remain with the army. Serving under General Wayne during the Battle of Fallen Timbers, Lewis arrived after the slaughter just in time for the signing of the Treaty of Greenville. The landmark treaty was a success for the western confederacy but a sad loss for the Native Americans who turned over Ohio, the future site of downtown Chicago, and Fort Detroit. It was during this military campaign that Lewis met William Clark for the first time. The two instantly forged a deep bond.
Lewis was the consummate adventurer—curious, strong, smart, artistically inclined, and fearless. He was as comfortable in battle as he was in the laboratory, in the library, or in the field. At heart he was a soldier and an adventurer, but he had spent so much time in the company of learned men like Jefferson that his rough edges had been refined. Lewis also was known for mood swings and occasional fits of melancholy. He is alternatively described by various biographers as sensitive, brash, self-aware, poetic, driven, depressed, fearless, and easily angered. He was also characterized as hard to get along with and seems to have held many of the racist tendencies that characterized men of his day. His treatment of Sacagawea, for example, was often described as condescending and dismissive.
Clark was also born in Virginia, the ninth of ten children from English and Scottish ancestry. Unlike the Lewis family, the Clarks did not have a drop of aristocratic blood. As with most children of his era, Clark was home-schooled. Shy, awkward, and self-conscious, he preferred reading books to socializing. At fifteen, his family moved to Kentucky, where Clark ultimately would break out of his shell. Learning wilderness survival tactics, he began to prepare for his inevitable calling. Clark had five older brothers, all with hardened military experience. He understood he would have to follow in his brothers’ footsteps to gain respect. That was no easy task, considering that one of his brothers was a general during the American Revolutionary War.
Clark’s childhood home was a battlefield, under constant raids by the Wea natives. At nineteen years old William Clark began his military career by volunteering to help push tribes out of Kentucky in order to secure the Ohio River. Kentucky militia made no effort to distinguish between warring and peaceful tribes, a point made clear by the attack on the peaceful Shawnee. Appalled by the murder of women and children, Clark detailed these horrors in his journal. Rising up the ranks to lieutenant, he proved to be a good soldier, showing his unmatched expertise in mapping and tracking new lands while commanding troops and winning battles. He was praised for his leadership. But after seven years, the harshness of nonstop conflicts took their toll and Clark prematurely retired, claiming poor health.
As Clark’s military career dipped, his friend Meriwether Lewis seemed to be rocketing straight to the top. After six years in military service Lewis was promoted to the rank of captain. A year later he was invited by Thomas Jefferson, the newly elected president, to be his private secretary. It was a role he happily accepted. After convincing Congress, Jefferson’s plan for exploring the West was set in motion. Lewis, who had been preparing for this journey for what seemed his whole life, was now on the verge of final reckoning. He knew that such a dangerous expedition demanded the preparedness and skills of an equal.
Lewis sought his good friend William Clark, writing him a letter and promising Clark would be his co-captain. The letter enthusiastically detailed the importance of the expedition. An exciting adventure and a chance to be the first to see the Pacific Ocean from land was an offer too good to refuse. It appears, in Clark’s case, that venturing into the unknown with one of his friends, and getting paid to do so, was the right remedy for a man who had abandoned military life. After weeks passed with no response, Lewis was ready to move on when he finally received news that Clark indeed would be joining the party. The newly created Corps of Discovery was setting off on a mission as important in its time as the moon launch was for us in ours.
Left Pittsburgh this day at 11 o’clock with a party of 11 hands 7 of which are soldiers, a pilot and three young men on trial they having proposed to go with me throughout the voyage. —August 31, 1803 1
So began the first journal entry as Lewis departed Elizabeth, Pennsylvania, on his magnificently crafted 55-foot-long keelboat. The boat was narrow and fast, designed to move people swiftly upriver. Almost immediately Lewis was confronted with scientific curiosities. At Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, Lewis helped assist Dr. William Goforth excavate fossil remains of a mastodon. After five days spent studying and cataloging this find, Lewis sent his first shipment of specimens back to President Jefferson. Jefferson was an avid mastodon-bone collector and believed they were not extinct. Lewis was told to keep an eye out for this elusive creature in the unexplored western territories. So impressed were the revolutionary forefathers they went as far as proclaiming the mighty mastodon as America’s national symbol.
In December 1803, William Clark took the responsibility of training the men who had volunteered to go to the Pacific. In a camp set up near present-day Hartford, Illinois, he began the task of building a cooperative and trail-fit team. It was a challenge, considering most of the men had never met one another. Clark taught them to build forts out of logs, to march in formation, and to use their weapons effectively. The dangers they expected to face were numerous, and they prepared skillfully for every possible scenario.
In early 1804 Meriwether Lewis attended the ceremony in which the Upper Louisiana Territory was transferred to the United States. In the most awesome real estate deal in history, the United States took control of a vast territory covering 828,800 square miles encompassing present day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, parts of Minnesota west of the Mississippi River, most of North Dakota, nearly all of South Dakota, northeastern New Mexico, portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide, and Louisiana west of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Orleans and parts of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
In May of 1804 William Clark, the newly formed Corps of Discovery, and Meriwether Lewis met at St. Charles, Missouri. The assembled party of forty-five included twenty-seven unmarried soldiers, a French interpreter, Captain Lewis’s beloved dog Seaman, and another group of soldiers who would accompany them to Mandan country during the first winter of the expedition. Even French boatmen were recruited to help manage the boats, which were laden with supplies.
The expedition’s first few months were a rough trial. As the group traveled up the Missouri River, they were beset with injuries, bitten relentlessly by insects, and beaten down by persistent heat. In August 1804 the Corps of Discovery lost a man to appendicitis. Fortunately it would turn out to be the only casualty of the mission. Along their path they came across huge logs and trees that bore witness to the storms and strong currents of the area. This made parts of the journey difficult, as these floating obstacles could damage and sink the boats. During the worst of these stretches the only way to see the boats safely through was to have the men pull the boat upriver using the cordelling technique, which requires boats to be pulled with ropes by men walking the shoreline. Averaging no more than ten or fifteen miles a day, the slow process was an additional frustration.
The first meetings with Native American tribes went smoothly. These were peaceful tribes on the outskirts of the territories. In preparation for these encounters, Lewis developed an introductory ceremony or brief ritual, in which, dressed in full uniform, they would inform the tribe’s chief that their land now belonged to the United States and that a man in the East—President Thomas Jefferson—was their new “great father.” They would also present the chief with a peace medal showing Jefferson on one side and two hands clasping on the other, as well as some form of present. In addition the corps members would perform a kind of parade, or presentation of arms, during which they would march in uniform and shoot their guns.
Lewis had been warned of the Teton Sioux. Sioux tribal members were fiercely aggressive when it came to their territory. The Sioux slept in tepees and hunted buffalo. These small bands of South Dakota warriors were feared among the French and Canadian traders. Neighboring tribes were no match for the Sioux’s aggressiveness and were often slaughtered if they interfered. The Sioux were the fierce and demanding gatekeepers of the Missouri River. Controlling the traffic of the river, they demanded large amounts of gifts from passing merchants.
When Lewis arrived, tensions were thick. The ceremonial display didn’t impress the Sioux, who knew the Americans sought control of the river. The Sioux demanded one of the boats from Lewis and Clark, and when this was denied, the tribe held the expedition hostage for three drama-filled days. The Sioux put on a war ceremony for them, complete with freshly scalped heads from the neighboring Omaha. The psychological warfare was unbelievable. Nobody in the expedition knew how to speak the Sioux language. The situation was a powder keg waiting to explode. Then, on the fourth day, Chief Black Buffalo of the Sioux granted Lewis and Clark’s expedition safe passage in exchange for extra tobacco. Relieved that they had survived their first unexpected obstacle intact, Lewis and Clark were eager finally to be looking for something that was actually on their agenda.
The Missouri and Mississippi Valley area was home to thousands of mounds in prehistory. These mounds were of great curiosity to antiquarian thinkers of colonial America. Because they were believed to be more than just Native American burials, a closer investigation of these mounds was of high importance.
With several men and Lewis’s dog Seaman, they hiked the miles from where they set up camp on the river. The four-hour hike took its toll on the explorers; they were completely overpowered by the heat. The dog returned to the river, and the men collapsed at the base of the mound in dire thirst. After rehydrating, Lewis and Clark climbed 70 feet to the top of Spirit Mound. They looked down on the impressive view and, seeing the entire valley plain from above for the first time, witnessed the wild buffalo roaming undisturbed. The Spirit Mound is one of the few remaining sites left standing from the original Lewis and Clark expedition. Jaw slack in amazement, Lewis made the following entry dated August 25, 1804.
From the top of this Mound we beheld a most beautiful landscape; Numerous herds of buffalo were Seen feeding in various directions, the Plain to the N. W & N E extends without interruption as far as Can be Seen— . . . no woods except on the Missouri Points. . . . If all the timber which is on the Stone Creek (Vermillion River) was on 100 acres it would not be thickly timbered, the Soil of those Plains are delightful. Here we got Great quantities of the best largest grapes I ever tasted, some Blue currents still on the bushes, and two kinds of plumbs, one the Common wild Plumb the other a large Yellow Plumb . . . about double the Size of the Common and Deliciously flavoured.2
After Lewis and company returned to camp, they briefly considered hiking the lands beyond Spirit Mound but decided the heat would make it dangerous. They continued upriver the next morning and never looked back. If they had ventured just a little farther, they would have crossed paths with America’s biggest pre-Columbian mystery.
The Cahokia Mounds are a gigantic complex settlement of ancient mounds that includes Monks Mound. The name Cahokia is attributed to an unrelated clan of Illiniwek people living in the area when the first French explorers arrived in the 1600s, long after Cahokia was abandoned by its original inhabitants. The living descendants of the Cahokia people associated with the mound site are unknown. French explorers assigned the name Cahokia in the late seventeenth century. The name stuck even though the natives claimed the mounds were much older than they were.
Best known for large, man made earthen structures, the city of Cahokia was inhabited from about 700 to 1400 CE. Built by ancient peoples known casually as the Mound Builders, Cahokia’s original population was thought to have been approximately 1,000 until about the eleventh century, when it expanded to tens of thousands.
At its apex, estimated between 1,100 to 1,200 CE, the city covered nearly six square miles and hosted a population of as many as a hundred thousand people.
These ancient natives are said to have built more than 120 earthen mounds in the city, 109 of which have been recorded and 68 of which are preserved within the site. While some are no more than a gentle rise on the land, others reach 100 feet into the sky. Natives are said to have transported the earthen material used to build the mounds on their backs in baskets to the construction sites. More than fifty million cubic feet of earth was moved for the construction of the mounds.
A rapid decline in the Cahokian population is said to have begun sometime after 1200 CE.
By 1400 CE the site heralded as hosting the most magnificent pre-Columbian city north of Mexico was barren. Theories abound as to what led to the seemingly catastrophic decline of the civilization, including war, disease, drought, and sudden climate change. Archaeologists scratch their heads when considering the fact that there are no legends, records, or mention of the magnificent city in the annals of other local tribes, including the Osage, Omaha, Ponca, and Quapaw.
The largest earthwork at the historical site, called Monks Mound, is at the center. At least 100 feet tall, it is the largest manmade, prehistoric mound in North America. The mound is 1,000 feet long, 800 feet wide, and composed of four platform terraces. Archaeologists estimated that 22 million cubic feet of earth was used to build the mound between the years of 900 and 1,200 CE. Since then the mound has eroded or been damaged to the point that no one knows how large the mound really was.
Even more curious than the existence and seemingly sudden disappearance of a vast culture is the surprising discovery of what appears to be a massive stone structure lying hidden below the massive Monks Mound.
On January 24, 1998, while drilling to construct a water drainage system at Monks Mound, workers hit a 32-foot-long stone structure. “This is astounding,” said William I. Woods, professor of geography and courtesy professor of anthropology at Kansas University, who was at the time an archaeologist with Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Woods led the investigation of the mystery structure. “The stone is at least 32 feet (10 meters) long in one of its dimensions,” he wrote. “It is buried about 40 feet below the surface of a terrace on the western side of Monk’s Mound and well above the mound’s bottom.”3
Woods noted that even if the structure turned out to be just a large slab of stone, it would still be a dramatic find, because the nearest source of stone was more than ten miles from Cahokia, which lies approximately twenty miles southeast of St. Louis. In fact, no stones had ever been found at the site other than those used to craft primitive tools, weapons, and artifacts.4
Archaeologists Andy Martignoni Jr. and Steve Fulton were on duty at the site and discussed the situation, speculating it could be a drain or even a tomb. Comparing the “feel” of the drill with countless other operations, the drill operator told them the structure seemed to be made of large stones apparently placed together deliberately, deep into the western face. That gave the archaeologists more reason to think this might be something other than just a large rock. There is a large region of stone of undetermined shape located 40 feet below one of the terrace surfaces but still well above the base of the mound. Until then the prevailing dogma has long been that the Native Americans who built Cahokia worked only with earth, never with stone, which is not found anywhere near the region in question. The Monks Mound discovery directly challenged thinking at the time about the culture that built Cahokia, and suggests that what is beneath the mounds themselves may be much, much older. Discovery of the massive, unidentified stone could push the dates of construction back much further, associating Cahokia with other similar structures that range from 3,000 to 3,500 years of age.
More recently, the discovery made at Cahokia on February 17, 2010 of what appears to have been a Stone Age copper workshop has baffled explorers even further. About two hundred yards east of Monks Mound, an excavation revealed evidence of the only known copper workshop from the Mississippian era. The copper workshop is being studied in relation to a peculiarity on an engraved drinking cup made from a conch shell found at the top of the 10-foot-high mound. Some speculate that the shell came from the Gulf of Mexico. It contains a symbol of an arrow like logo with a circle in the arrowhead. This symbol first turned up in rock shelters excavated in Wisconsin and east central Missouri and was dated from about 1000 CE, more than two hundred years before the peak of Cahokia-area civilization.
The symbols on the shelter walls are similar to the shell fragments found on the mound at Cahokia, and scholars now believe Cahokia may have been the center of the ancient Mississippian culture. Copper relics have been found throughout the Mississippi Mound network, but to claim that they all must be related somehow to the Cahokias is too hasty an assumption. Could these earth-covered mounds conceal the remains of much older and forgotten ruins? The truth will be revealed only when a full dig is conducted. As it is today, less than 1 percent of the Cahokia mounds have been excavated. What is ironic about the copper find is that this recent excavation did not take place at the site of the stone structure but rather somewhere else leading to an even more fascinating discovery.
And while Lewis didn’t get to see all of Cahokia, he and the party did wander into the mounds at Grave Creek. After Lewis’s vivid descriptions of these mounds in his journal and his documentation of finding brass beads in a burial site, the journal is abruptly cut off. It remains unexplained why everything in the journals of Lewis is detailed meticulously until the topic of mounds is mentioned. Then begins a series of strange omissions or missing pages. Gary Moulton elaborates.
More difficult to explain is Lewis’s lack of journal-keeping once the expedition got underway. No Lewis journals are known to exist that cover the first phase of the expedition, from May 14, 1804, until the group left Fort Mandan on April 7, 1805. This is the longest hiatus in Lewis’s writing and to historians it is the most curious gap.5
This gap, and others, are discussed further in chapter 9.
Above the surface, scholars teach that the mounds are the works of the Native Americans. But below the surface another tale is emerging as a growing number of scholars come forth with evidence that points to a prehistoric civilization that predates the Native American.
Five
Prince Madoc, Welsh Natives,
and Legends of the Mandan
During their encounter with the Flathead (Salish) Indians on September 5, 1805, while in what is today western Montana, members of the Corps of Discovery noted that the natives spoke a strange tongue. Sergeant John Ordway observed, “these natives have the Strangest language of any we have ever seen. they appear to us as though they had an Impediment in their Speech or brogue on their tongue. we think perhaps that they are the welch Indians.”1 Clark noted in his journal that only the Flathead (Salish) tongue was “a gurgling kind of language Spoken much through the Throat.”2
Ordway was certain the Corps had discovered the legendary Welsh Indians descended from Welsh Prince Madoc, who had sailed to the American continent centuries before Columbus. As the story goes, in 1170 CE a Welsh prince named Madoc sailed west, far away from the disasters occurring in his homeland. Bards throughout the next four centuries did the same. The earliest printed report of Madoc’s story is David Powell’s The History of Cambria, published in 1584.
Madoc . . . left the land in contention betwixt his brethrens and prepared certain ships with men and munitions and sought adventures by seas, sailing west. . . He came to a land unknown where he saw many strange things. . . . Of the visage and returned of this Madoc there be many fables, as the common people do use in distance of place and length of time, rather to augment than diminish; but sure it is that there he was. . . . And after he had returned home, and declared the pleasant and fruitful countries that he had seen, he prepared a number of ships, and got with him such men and women as were desirous to live in quietness, and taking leave of his friends took his journey thitherward again. Madoc arriving in the country, into which he came in the year 1170, left most of his people there, and returning back for more of his own nation, acquaintance, and friends, to inhabit that fair and large country, went thither again.3
Gutyn Owen, the famous bard and historian of Basingwerk Abbey. is one of the most influential proprietors of the Madoc myth. His writings are cited as crucial sources by authors such as Richard Deacon, who wrote the influential Madoc and the Discovery of America in 1966. This rare book builds a solid case for Madoc’s voyage of discovery, despite controversial claims that Madoc’s story was invented after 1492, giving England claim to prior rights in the New World. Deacon’s research indicates that in 1625 the archbishop of Canterbury wrote a world history that suggested a Welsh prince had discovered America. What if the young Prince Madoc lived on to build ancient settlements and interact with the Native Americans? The ocean current naturally would have carried Madoc and his fleet into the Gulf of Mexico. Once there he would have been attracted to the perfect harbor offered in Mobile Bay.
There’s another traveler the ancient bards speak of who also sailed to American shores. An Irish monk named St. Brendan was said to have discovered sometime between 512 and 530 CE an island so big he failed to find the shore after forty days of walking in a forested land full of fresh fruits and divided by a river too wide to cross. His tales, first published in Latin, were fanciful bestsellers that read more like great entertainment than actual reality. St. Brendan’s exploits were quickly synchronized with folklore, and he joined Madoc as another mythological hero. In 1977 historian, author, and ship captain Tim Severin proved a voyage from Ireland to the North American mainland was possible. Against all odds Severin and his robust crew built a leather boat exactly like those used in the days of St. Brendan and sailed across the dangerous Atlantic Ocean, safely landing in Newfoundland.
There have been ancient fortifications found along the Mississippi River, with architecture unlike any previously discovered in the region. In a 1781 letter, Governor John Sevier of Tennessee recounts a conversation he had with a ninety-year-old Cherokee chief. Seiver asked the chief about the people who had left the fortifications in his country. The chief told him white people who crossed the Great Water had built them. This letter can be found in the files of the Georgia Historical Commission.
There are three major forts that stand out against the typical native settlements found along the Mississippi. All three of these forts share striking similarities to ancient Welsh fortifications. The fort at Chatsworth, Georgia, is virtually identical in layout and method of construction to Dolwyddelan Castle in Wales, the supposed birthplace of Prince Madoc.
As forts were built and territory expanded upriver, a clash with hostile native tribes was inevitable. It’s presumed this hostility forced them to build a defensive stronghold, complete with a massive wall 800 feet long. The wall, another anomaly of southeastern archaeology, long predates the Cherokees found living there in the 1700s. Cherokee legends called the wall builders “moon-eyed people,” who were said to have fair skin, blond hair, and blue eyes. Throughout the centuries scholars and historians have argued for and against the Madoc story.
In November 1953 a memorial tablet was erected at Fort Morgan, Mobile Bay, Alabama, by the Virginia Cavalier Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, which reads, “In memory of Prince Madoc, a Welsh explorer, who landed on the shores of Mobile Bay in 1170 and left behind, with the Indians, the Welsh language.”
The memorial, subject to much controversy, was taken down after a hurricane in 1970. Despite resolutions being passed and the support of the governor to restore the plaque, this part of American history is mostly forgotten, covered up, or transparently ignored.
More than any other tribe, the Mandan of the northern plains showed signs of contact with Welsh explorers such as Madoc. They were a small, peaceful tribe that lived at the convergence of the Knife and Missouri Rivers near Bismarck, North Dakota. They were known for their friendliness, which was the outward expression of a deep-seated ethical philosophy. The Mandan shared the northern plains with tribes such as the Hidatsa, Arikara, Assiniboine, Dakota, and Chippewa. The lands they collectively inhabited were largely similar and had few natural barriers to prevent the mingling of people. Because of this the various tribes had many traits in common. They all depended on buffalo for food, clothing, and other necessities.
But of these, only the Mandan and Hidatsa lived in earth-lodge villages when they were first visited by white people in what is now North Dakota. The Mandan were further differentiated from their native counterparts in the way they set up their villages, their spiritual beliefs, and their physical appearance. These differences have led many scholars to suggest that the Mandan derived from different bloodlines than their northern plains counterparts. Despite a widespread absence of facts about the Mandan in history books, there is more than enough documentation elsewhere to suggest that the tribe originated in Europe.
The Mandan lived in earth-lodge homes rather than teepees, and unlike the settlements of other tribal nations, theirs were permanent. The women of the Mandan tribe tended their gardens, prepared food, and maintained the lodges while the men spent their time hunting or seeking spiritual knowledge. Their villages were strategically located on bluffs overlooking the river. This position provided maximum defense and limited any attacks to one land approach. These villages were the center of the social, spiritual, and economic lives of the Mandan.
The Mandan earth lodges were unlike those built by other tribes. These lodges were large rectangular and circular huts 15 feet high and 40 to 60 feet in diameter. Each hut had a vestibule entrance and a square hole on top that served as a smokestack. Each earth lodge housed ten to thirty people and their belongings. Villages contained fifty to one hundred earth lodges. The frame of an earth lodge was made from tree trunks, which were covered with crisscrossed willow branches. Over the branches they placed dirt and sod. This type of construction made the roofs strong enough to support people on nights of good weather. The floors of earth lodges were made of dirt, and the middle was dug out to make a bench around the outer edge of the lodge.
Surrounding the village were stockades of poles as tall as 6 feet high to prevent enemy attacks. In the middle of a Mandan village was a large, circular open space that was called the central plaza. In the middle of the plaza was a sacred cedar post that represented the “Ark of the First Man” or “Lone Man,” a revered hero from their ancient legend. At the north end of the plaza was the medicine or ceremonial lodge. The arrangement of the lodges around the central plaza represented the social status of each family. The higher in status villagers were, the more duties were required of them, and therefore they were located closer to the ceremonial lodge. A strange feature of the Mandan villages that did not correspond with the behavior of other native tribes was that the Mandan homes were arranged resembling streets. The Hidatsas, another peaceful tribe, were the only other native people who built earthen huts, which practice they learned from the Mandan.
The rich flood-plain fields that surrounded the village made agriculture the basis of Mandan existence. The Mandan women were responsible for sustaining the gardens within the village. The agricultural year began in April when the women would clear the fields by burning the old stalks and weeds of the previous year’s crops. Around May they planted rows of corn, beans, tobacco, pumpkin, sunflowers, and squash to maximize exposure to sunlight. To tend their gardens, women used tools such as digging sticks, rakes, and hoes made from wood or buffalo bones. To protect their gardens from natural predators like prairie dogs, birds, and rodents, the women constructed scarecrows out of buffalo hide. The Mandan women also performed daily cleansing rituals before entering their gardens by rubbing sage over their bodies. They believed this would protect their crops from worms and disease.
Harvesting began in late August with squash and ended in October with corn. After harvest, women would dry the corn in scaffolds built above the ground. After the corn was dry women picked the seeds that they would use for the next year’s crops, and the rest was buried with other dried garden items in underground storage pits to preserve them through the winter. These garrets took days to build and were deep enough to require a ladder to enter. When finished they were lined with grass and buffalo hide. The dried vegetables and seeds were placed inside. The garrets were then covered with a layer of buffalo hide, a layer of dirt, and then grass on top. In comparison to the traditions of the other native tribes, these techniques impressed white traders and scouts as uncharacteristically advanced.
But the most mysterious of the Mandan characteristics was their physical appearance. Unlike other natives encountered by early explorers, the Mandan were purported to have mixed complexion that varied from white to almost white, blue and green eyes, and reddish or blondish hair color. All these characteristics suggest European genetics were at some point introduced to tribal bloodlines.
Some theories name Paul Knutson, a thirteenth-century Norwegian, as a possible candidate for having introduced a Nordic/European genetic strain and Christian cultural nuances to the American Midwest. This theory arose because the Mandan built their settlements using an architectural style unknown anywhere else in North America but common in medieval Norway.
In a letter dated January 22, 1804, to Meriwether Lewis, President Jefferson specifically requests the expedition to make contact with and verify rumors of the existence of a white, blue-eyed tribe of natives that had come to be referred to as the “Welsh Indians” because of the similarities between the language of the Mandans and the language of the Welsh. The original source of these claims cannot be pinpointed with exact accuracy, but they had circulated enough that the issue became a matter of great importance to government officials. Documented accounts begin in 1738, when Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de la Vérendrye, took an expedition from his forts in present-day Manitoba to what is now North Dakota in search of this mysterious tribe.
During this expedition, near the banks of the Missouri River, de Vérendrye found a stone cairn with a small stone tablet inscribed on both sides with unfamiliar characters. Jesuit scholars in Quebec later described the writing on the stone as Tartarian—a runic script similar to Norse runes. Professor Peter Kalm of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences interviewed Captain de Vérendrye about this discovery in Quebec. The tablet was reportedly shipped to France, stored with other archaeological artifacts in a church at Rouen, and buried under tons of rubble by a direct bomb hit during World War II.
Vérendrye located the Mandan village in what is now McLean County, North Dakota, between Minot and Bismarck. It was a large and well-fortified town with 130 houses laid out in streets. The fort’s palisades and ramparts were not unlike European battlements, with a dry moat around the perimeter. More remarkable, Vérendrye noted many of the Mandan had light skin, fair hair, and “European” features. Vérendrye described their houses as “large and spacious,” very clean, with separate rooms.
On August 24, 1784, the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser reported that “a new nation of white people” had been discovered about two thousand miles to the west of the Appalachians, “acquainted with the principles of the Christian religion” and “extremely courteous and civilized.” The rumor spread, and somewhere along the line a possible connection of Welsh ancestry was suggested.
In 1796 Welsh explorer John Evans set out to search for the Mandan, hoping to find proof that their language contained Welsh words. Evans spent the winter of 1796–97 with a tribe of Mandan but found no evidence of any Welsh influence. In July 1797 Evans wrote a letter to a Dr. Samuel Jones that said, “Thus having explored and charted the Missouri for 1,800 miles and by my Communications with the Indians this side of the Pacific Ocean from 35 to 49 degrees of Latitude, I am able to inform you that there is no such People as the Welsh Indians.”
Evans’s conclusion was directly contradicted by Lewis and Clark in 1804 and again in 1832 by George Catlin, a lawyer, frontiersman, and pictorial historian who spent several months living among the Mandan.
It was through Catlin’s accounts and art that it was proved beyond what many could doubt that the Mandan indeed were a race descending from European ancestry. Some speculate that Evans may not have reached an actual Mandan settlement, claiming that the evidence provided by Catlin is indisputable.
When the Corps of Discovery entered the world of the Mandan in October 1804, the tribal leaders were receptive to the goals of the expedition. Lewis and Clark found the Mandan people to be extremely hospitable, and the Corps of Discovery prepared to winter on the Missouri River, building a log fort made of cottonwood tree trunks. The men in the expedition cut the lumber from the riverbanks, building a triangular fort facing the river just downstream from the nearby Mandan and Hidatsa villages. They called it Fort Mandan.
For the next five months the fort was a beehive of activity as the expedition made preparations for heading westward to the Pacific Ocean. While there Lewis and Clark interviewed several trappers who could assist as guides and interpreters. It was here that Lewis and Clark hired Toussaint Charbonneau, whose wife, Sacagawea, spoke the Shoshone language. The explorers knew they would need to communicate with the Shoshone tribes as they neared the headwaters of the Missouri River. Sacagawea, who was just fourteen years old, pregnant, and had been long separated from her tribe, would become essential to the success of the expedition. The Corps of Discovery stayed at Fort Mandan until early April, when they set out westward along the Missouri River, but not before documenting over a period of six months important details about the Mandan, their way of life, their sacred beliefs, and their astonishing “almost white” appearance.
With their Hidatsa friends and neighbors the Mandan lay at the center of trade along the upper Missouri River, inhabiting what is now central North Dakota. At the time of Lewis and Clark’s arrival, they lived in two villages, Matootonha and Rooptahee. Matootonha was located on the western bank of the Missouri, and Rooptahee was directly north, on the river’s eastern bank. The Corps of Discovery built Fort Mandan across the river from Matootonha.
In contrast to the relations of the corps with the aggressive Arikaras of the region, the corps and the Mandan were friendly throughout the duration of the expedition’s stay. The Mandan supplied the Americans with food throughout the winter at their newly constructed home, Fort Mandan, in exchange for a steady stream of trade goods. When food became scarce, members of the corps accompanied the Mandan on a buffalo hunt. Sheheke (Bigwhite) and Black Cat, chiefs from Matootonha and Roohaptee, met often with Lewis and Clark, and the corps participated in many of the Mandan ceremonial rituals. Lewis and Clark hoped to establish peace between the Mandan and the nearby Arikaras. In spite of arranging peace talks between the two tribes, conflict broke out again as winter approached.
Of their experience living among the Mandan, William Clark wrote this in his journal: “I set myself down with the big white man Chief [Mandan Chief Bigwhite (Sheheke)] and made a number of enquiries into the tradition of his nation. . . . He told me his nation first came out of the ground . . . and saw Buffalo and every kind of animal also grapes, plumbs, c . . . and determined to go up and live upon earth, and great numbers . . . got upon earth, men women and children.”4
In his investigation regarding the origins of the mysterious Mandan, Clark was told of the former’s belief in a future state after death, a belief that is also connected with the theory of their origin. The Mandan legend describes a whole nation that lived in one large village, underground, near a subterranean lake. A grapevine extended its roots down to their habitation and gave them a view of the light. Some of the more adventurous climbed up the vine, and were delighted with the sight of the earth, which they found covered with buffalo and rich with every kind of fruit.
They returned with the grapes they had gathered, and their countrymen were so pleased with the grapes’ taste that the whole nation resolved to leave their dull residence for the charms of the upper region. Men, women, and children ascended by means of the vine, but, when about half the nation had reached the surface of the earth, a corpulent woman who was clambering up the vine broke it with her weight, closing off from herself and the rest of the nation the light of the sun. When the Mandan died they expected to return to the original seats of their forefathers, the good reaching the ancient village by means of the lake, which the burden of the sins of the wicked would not enable them to cross.
This peculiar tradition can be interpreted to mean that the present nation at one time in the distant past lived in a large settlement underground, that is, beyond the land, in the sea, the sea being represented by “the subterranean lake.” The description of a vine that was used for people to reach the land of the “sun” and gather fruits and so on indicates the free movement of people back and forth between the North American continent and this other place the Mandan refer to as the “large village.” In the new continent the land was filled with buffalo and all kinds of fruits, and the land was colonized, or settled. Perhaps the building traditions from the original “large village” were also acquired, and there were actual cities with streets built in the new continent. And then something happened that cut these people off. Contact was not established again. Whatever happened that severed contact between the two lands was of catastrophic proportion.
During the 1860s Major James W. Lynd lived among the Dakotas and wrote a book about them before meeting a violent death at their hands. Lynd supports the aforementioned explanation with the fact that the legends of the Iowa natives, who were a branch of the Dakotas and relatives of the Mandan, relate that at one point in antiquity all the different tribes were originally one, and they all lived together on an island, or at least across a large body of water toward the east, or the sunrise. According to these legends they crossed this body of water in skin canoes, but they did not know how long the crossing took, or whether the water was salt or fresh.
These legends speak of “huge skiffs, in which their ancestors of long ago floated for weeks, finally gaining dry land.” This account is certainly a reference to ships and long sea voyages. The ceremonies further tell a story that “the world was once a great tortoise, borne on the waters, and covered with earth, and that when one day, in digging the soil, a tribe of white men, who had made holes in the earth to a great depth digging for badgers, at length pierced the shell of the tortoise, it sank, and the water covering it drowned all men with the exception of one, who saved himself in a boat; and when the earth re-emerged, sent out a dove, who returned with a branch of willow in its beak.”5
Twenty-six years after the departure of the Corps of Discovery, George Catlin went in search of the Mandan, locating them and living among them for eight years. Before setting off on his journey Catlin met with then Governor William Clark, who told Catlin he would find the Mandan to be “a strange people and half-white.” Catlin describes the tribe as possessing strange hair colors and strange eye colors such as blue and hazel. He speculated at the time that the Mandan had descended from Celts, and that their appearance and atypical customs were perhaps the result of generations of intermarrying and breeding with Welsh explorers and their descendants. Later visitors noted that the languages of the Mandan and Welsh were so similar that the Mandan showed clear comprehension when spoken to in Welsh. Catlin described Mandan women as possessing strikingly Northern European features and found the Mandan in general to be “a very interesting and pleasing people in their personal appearance and manners, differing in many respects, both in looks and customs, from all the other tribes I have seen.”6
The more time he spent with the Mandan, the more curious Catlin considered them to be. He discovered, for example, that the Mandan claimed to be descended from a white man who arrived in a giant canoe after a flood had destroyed the earth. Oral tradition tells that his vessel became perched on a mountaintop and that a dove was sent out to seek land. It returned with a willow branch in its beak. Similarities to the biblical account of Noah are hard to deny.
An additional detail that adds veracity to the tales of the curious Mandan can be found in a statement made by then Governor William Clark to Catlin prior to his departure in search of the Mandan. Catlin mentions this during his general descriptions of his experience with the legendary tribe:
Their traditions, so far as I have learned them, afford us no information of their having had any knowledge of white men before the visit of Lewis and Clark. Since that time there have been but very few visits from white men to the place, and surely not enough to have changed the complexions and the customs of a nation. And I recollect perfectly well that Governor [William] Clark told me before I started for this place, that I would find the Mandan a strange people and half-white. So forcibly have I been struck with the peculiar ease and elegance of these people, together with their diversity of complexions, the various colours of their hair and eyes; the singularity of their language, and their peculiar and unaccountable customs, that I am fully convinced that they have sprung from some other origin than that of the other North American Tribes, or that they are an amalgam of natives with some civilized race.7
George Catlin was familiar with at least some of the Madoc stories, “which,” as he put it, “I will suppose everybody has read, rather than quote them at this time.” The Mandan, according to Catlin, “might possibly be the remains of this lost colony, amalgamated with a tribe, or part of a tribe, of the natives, which would account for the unusual appearances of this tribe of Indians, and also for the changed character and customs of the Welsh colonists, provided this be the remains of them.”8
During the years he lived with the Mandan, Catlin traced their old village sites down the Missouri and to the mouth of the Ohio River. During these explorations he found remains of fortified towns, some enclosing “a great many acres.”
There are many flood references in the Mandan legends and those of other tribes. Even more intriguing is that in the center of the religious ceremonies of the Mandan, we find that they kept an image of an ark, preserved from generation to generation, and performed ceremonies that refer plainly to the destruction of a land, and to the arrival of one who survived the flood and brought to this new land the news of the catastrophic destruction. Catlin gives us a bird’s-eye view of this unique ceremony, which is no longer being danced:
In the centre of the village is an open space, or public square, 150 feet in diameter and circular in form, which is used for all public games and festivals, shows and exhibitions. The lodges around this open space front in, with their doors toward the centre; and in the middle of this stands an object of great religious veneration, on account of the importance it has in connection with the annual religious ceremonies. This object is in the form of a large hogshead, some eight or ten feet high, made of planks and hoops, containing within it some of their choicest mysteries or medicines. They call it the “Big Canoe.” On the day set apart for the commencement of the ceremonies a solitary figure is seen approaching the village. During the deafening din and confusion within the pickets of the village the figure discovered on the prairie continued to approach with a dignified step, and in a right line toward the village; all eyes were upon him, and he at length made his appearance within the pickets, and proceeded toward the centre of the village, where all the chiefs and braves stood ready to receive him, which they did in a cordial manner by shaking hands, recognizing him as an old acquaintance, and pronouncing his name, Nu-mohk-muck-a-nah (the first or only man). The body of this strange personage, which was chiefly naked, was painted with white clay, so as to resemble at a distance a white man. He enters the medicine lodge, and goes through certain mysterious ceremonies. During the whole of this day Nu-mohk-muck-anah (the first or only man) travelled through the village, stopping in front of each man’s lodge, and crying until the owner of the lodge came out and asked who he was, and what was the matter? To which be replied by narrating the sad catastrophe which had happened on the earth’s surface by the overflowing of the waters, saying that “he was the only person saved from the universal calamity”; that he landed his big canoe on a high mountain in the west, where he now resides; that he has come to open the medicine lodge, which must needs receive a present of an edged tool from the owner of every wigwam, that it may be sacrificed to the water; for, he says, “if this is not done there will be another flood, and no one will be saved, as it was with such tools that the big canoe was made.” Having visited every lodge in the village during the day, and having received such a present from each as a hatchet, a knife, etc. (which is undoubtedly always prepared ready for the occasion), he places them in the medicine lodge; and, on the last day of the ceremony, they are thrown into a deep place in the river—“sacrificed to the Spirit of the Waters.”9
Describing the dance performed by twelve men around the ark, Catlin says: “They arrange themselves according to the four cardinal points; two are painted perfectly black, two are vermilion color, some were painted partially white. They dance a dance called ‘Bel-lohck-napie,’” with horns on their heads, like those used in Europe as symbolic of Baal. “It would seem,” wrote George Catlin, “that these people must have had some proximity to some part of the civilized world; or that missionaries or others have been formerly among them, inculcating the Christian religion and the Mosaic account of the Flood.”10
It is a well-known fact that in the various philosophies and religions throughout the world, we find traces or mention of the flood. The Mandan legend describes the earth as a large tortoise. It moves slowly and carries a great deal of earth on its back. Long ago there was a nation of people who are now dead because their land sank into the water. All the people were drowned except for one man. Neither the Mandan nor Catlin had heard of Atlantis, making this account all the more intriguing.
In 1838 a steamboat belonging to the American Fur Company carried up the Missouri the end of the Mandans. A deadly wave of smallpox broke out from the infected crew during a stop at one of the Mandan villages. The tribe didn’t stand a chance. Those who weren’t killed immediately by the disease decided to take their own lives. During the next two months, the Mandan were decimated to near extinction. Adding insult to injury, the survivors were made slaves by their bitter enemies, the Sioux and Arikara.
Nearly thirty years later all the tribes were swindled out of most of their land and set up on reservations. In 1870 the remaining North Dakota tribes were huddled together and thrown onto a new reservation. Renamed the Three Affiliated Tribes, the surviving Arikaras, Mandans, and Hidatsa were now mere shells of their former selves, less concerned with their ancient heritage and more interested in alcohol. The Condensed American Cyclopedia reported in 1877 that the Mandans “are now with the Riccarees (Arikaras) and Gros Ventres (Hidatsa) at Fort Berthold, Dakota. . . . They live partly by agriculture. They are lighter in complexion than most tribes.”
The last full-blooded Mandan passed away in 1973, ending the history of these mysterious people, whom George Catlin praised: “A better, more honest, hospitable and kind people, as a community, are not to be found in the world. No set of men that ever I associated with have better hearts than the Mandans, and none are quicker to embrace and welcome a white man than they are—none will press him closer to his bosom, that the pulsation of his heart may be felt, than a Mandan; and no man in any country will keep his word and guard his honour more closely.”11
Whether the Mandan descended from Scandinavians, or Madoc’s Welshmen, or Atlanteans we will never know. Lewis and Clark were in awe of the likeness in the Mandan legends to the biblical story of the flood. They also knew the Mandan were white, because blue eyes and blond-brunette hair are indisputable European features. These remarkable people have left in their wake a mystery that may never be solved.
Six
Voyagers of the Pacific Coast
and the Kennewick Man
After a cold and confounding winter with the Mandans, the Corps of Discovery were ready to step once again into the great unknown. The mighty Pacific Ocean and the untamed West were waiting for them. But deep in their guts they knew, somehow, this had all been explored before.
In continuing their journey the Corps of Discovery sent their keelboat back down the Missouri River with a few men and items that had been gathered and sorted for President Jefferson. These included an updated report of the expedition, soil samples, minerals, plants, rudimentary tools and items gathered from the natives, live birds, and a prairie dog, which had never been heard of in the East. Considering the travelers ate some two hundred prairie dogs during the expedition, one wonders if President Jefferson prepared a meal with this one as well.
The rest of the expedition, including Sacagawea, her husband, and their newborn baby, Jean Baptiste, continued their way west up the river in the smaller pirogues. Waterfalls and fierce rapids were progressively making the river impassable. As they made their way into present-day Montana the captains encountered an abundance of wildlife, including buffalo, bighorn sheep, wolves, and a new threat to their survival. The Mandan had warned Lewis and Clark of a creature of such size and strength that it would take many warriors to bring it down. This terrifying new enemy was the grizzly bear.
The expedition would learn to avoid and respect these feared beasts. Lewis was even chased within inches of his life after shooting one. Luckily the bleeding bear gave up the chase after Lewis jumped into a river. Of the grizzly bear Lewis writes, “This bear being so hard to die rather intimidates us all; I must confess that I do not like the gentlemen and had rather fight two Indians than one bear; there is no other chance to conquer them by a single shot but by shooting them through the brains. . . . The fleece and skin were as much as two men could possibly carry.”1
During the corps’ travels, Sacagawea became an important intermediary between the adventurers and the native tribes they encountered. Her presence soothed many of these tribal members, as it was known that warring tribes generally didn’t travel with women. Sacagawea translated between various tribes with the help of her husband, the French Canadian trapper Charbonneau, who would relay messages to Rene Jessaume or Frances Labiche. Jessaume and Labiche, in turn, would translate messages into English for the party leaders. Sacagawea also helped forage for edible and medicinal plants, roots, and berries. At one point during the journey Sacagawea saved important supplies and Lewis’s journals from washing overboard as the expedition negotiated a storm on the Missouri River.
On August 13, 1805, Lewis and several companions saw a group of two Shoshone women and a male scout. Lewis greeted them and gave the women gifts he had brought with him. The group was brought to a Shoshone village under the leadership of a man named Cameahwait, whom Sacagawea recognized as her own brother. This improbable event proved to be extremely fortunate for Lewis and Clark. They of course included Sacagawea in all their dealings with the Shoshone leader.
On August 17 the tight group of negotiators sealed a pact of mutual friendship and support, and Chief Cameahwait agreed to sell the Corps of Discovery all the horses that they needed for the rest of the journey. Although Sacagawea had been reunited with her family, she chose to continue with the expedition. In September 1805, when the Corps of Discovery encountered the Salish tribe, the latter feared for their lives at the hands of white warriors, and it was Sacagawea’s presence that calmed their worries, proving again how indispensable she was in establishing relations with the natives. The Salish agreed to sell supplies and horses for the expedition and welcomed the Americans and their Shoshone guide into their community. What we know today of Sacagawea’s involvement in the expedition comes from the personal diaries of Lewis and Clark. The helpful girl comes alive through the eyes of these two American men. And though the mission to open up the West had fallen upon them, Sacagawea’s immeasurable contribution cannot be dismissed.
In early August 1805, Lewis and three other members of the Corps of Discovery headed toward Beaverhead Rock in search of inhabitants. They reached Lemhi Pass, a two-mile stretch across the Montana-Idaho border, on August 12, 1805. Lemhi Pass bridges the gap between the ranges of the Rockies. The crossing of this pass—the Continental Divide—became one of the most important achievements of Lewis and Clark’s expedition. They were the first Americans to venture by land into a territory being disputed by other countries.
By finding and mapping a land route to the Pacific Ocean, Lewis and Clark were fulfilling the key priority of the mission and bringing the Pacific Northwest into the history of the United States. In his journal that day Lewis wrote:
the road took us to the most distant fountain of the waters of the Mighty Missouri in search of which we have spent so many toilsome days and restless nights. thus far I had accomplished one of those great objects on which my mind has been unalterably fixed for many years, judge then of the pleasure I felt in allaying my thirst with this pure and ice-cold water here I halted a few minutes and rested myself. two miles below McNeal had exultingly stood with a foot on each side of this rivulet and thanked his god that he had lived to bestride the mighty & heretofore deemed endless Missouri. after refreshing ourselves we proceeded on to the top of the dividing ridge from which I discovered immense ranges of high mountains still to the West of us with their tops partially covered with snow. . . . here I first tasted the water of the great Columbia river.2
It is hard to imagine what went through Lewis’s mind while he stood looking at the Rocky Mountains to the east, with range upon range of rugged mountains and peaks fading in the west. This view told Lewis that it would be a long time before he and the Corps of Discovery reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean. For the next two hundred miles the expedition struggled with rain, snow, and near starvation as they made their way into the Bitterroot Mountains. There they suffered frostbite, hunger, and dehydration. Lewis and Clark seemed to lose some of the enthusiasm that had carried them thus far, as evidenced by one of Clark’s journal entries: “I have been wet and as cold in every part as I ever was in my life, indeed I was at one time fearful my feet would freeze in the thin Mockersons which I wore.”3
The next day Lewis made the following grim entry: “I directed the horses to be gotten up early being determined to force my march as much as the abilities of our horses would permit. this morning we finished the remainder of our last coult. we dined & suped on a skant proportion of portable soupe . . .”4
Atop the 7,000-foot-tall ridge they found no water. Their meal consisted of a soup made from melted snow and the leftovers of a young colt. After traveling for more than a month through dangerous high mountains and heavily forested hills, with little rest along the way, the expedition finally came out of the Bitterroot Mountains.
On September 20, 1805, the Corps of Discovery encountered the natives that came to be known as the Nez Percé. The French name Nez Percé, which means “pierced nose,” is a name mistakenly ascribed to the tribe by a Corps of Discovery interpreter who confused them with the Chinook Tribe, whose members did display piercing and shared fishing and trading sites with the Nez Percé Tribe. Today, the most common self-designation used by the Nez Percé Tribe is Nimiipuu.
The first contact was between what must have appeared as an odd looking stranger with white skin and red hair, William Clark, and three scared native boys. The Nez Percé had never seen a white man before, and they graciously welcomed the exhausted Corps of Discovery to their camp at Weippe Prairie.
The great Chief Joseph spoke highly of the strange folk that arrived from the mountains, saying:
The first white men of your people who came to our country were named Lewis and Clark. They brought many things that our people had never seen. They talked straight and our people gave them a great feast as proof that their hearts were friendly. They made presents to our chiefs and our people made presents to them. We had a great many horses of which we gave them what they needed, and they gave us guns and tobacco in return. All the Nez Percé made friends with Lewis and Clark and agreed to let them pass through their country and never to make war on white men. This promise the Nez Percé have never broken.5
These noble words weighed true until the discovery of gold on the chief ’s land.
Lewis and Clark were intrigued with the Nez Percé for many reasons, not the least of which were their beautiful and unusual horses, the Appaloosa, a highly refined breed. It was exclusive to their tribe, even though neighboring tribes coveted it. When Lewis saw the Appaloosa, he compared them to some of the more elegant horses of Europe.
The Nez Percé had mastered the art of breeding—unknown to other tribes—such as mating the best stallion with the best mare and practicing castration of lesser stallions. (All the other tribes caught wild horses or stole them from each other.) It is generally believed that horses were brought to the New World by the Spanish around 1780 and that the plains Native Americans acquired them soon after that. Yet even if the Spanish breeds had been rushed to the Pacific Northwest as soon as they came off the Spanish galleons, the time span from 1780 would have been insufficient to achieve the specific genetic developments present when Lewis and Clark first saw the horses in September 1805.
Thus it is that we must question how a native tribe in the northwest corner of a land divided by almost insurmountable physical boundaries could possess such a defined breed. The few schoolbooks that actually mention the subject suggest that the Appaloosa is a mixture of Asian and Spanish breeds and that the Northwest natives obtained these Spanish breeds from the tribes of the South. However, most books omit to mention where the Asian breeds may have come from, leaving it to be assumed Asian horses also crossed the Bering Strait.
Further investigation leads us to believe the Appaloosa bred by the Nez Percé were Chinese, and there was evidence at the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition to substantiate this claim. In addition there exists strong proof that the Pacific Northwest had contact with Chinese civilizations by water, and not only by the trickle suggested across the Bering land bridge. Over the years this evidence has been coyly yet ruthlessly covered, altered, or outright destroyed.
The Appaloosa appears in pictographs of ancient Asian and Chinese art. The Nez Percé horses were known for their speed, endurance, and surefootedness. The Appaloosa in particular were short legged and stocky, with large heads and thick necks. Their spotted rumps are their defining characteristic. In the second century BCE, Chinese emperor Wu Ti imported Arabian horses into China to improve their mediocre native stock. Among this new influx were the spotted horses. Evidence of spotted horses has been common in China for the past 2000 years as documented in surviving art.
After they had been fed and were sufficiently rested, the Corps of Discovery were ready to resume their journey. The generous Nez Percé people gave them supplies and information about river routes to the Pacific Ocean. The explorers left their horses in the trust of the Nez Percé until their return.
It is interesting to note that in this beautiful valley where the Nez Percé lived freely, there is a mound so large it looks like a hill. According to local legend this mound is supposed to contain deep within it the heart of a great monster killed during the beginning of the world. There is no mention of this hill or its intriguing mythology in any of the journals of the men from the expedition despite very clear instructions from President Jefferson for soil samples and the like. Did Lewis and Clark see the mound? How is it possible they could have missed it?
Within a few days after leaving the Nez Percé, Lewis and Clark reached the Clearwater River, a tributary of the Snake River, which led to the Columbia. The two rivers converge in the general area near Kennewick, Washington. On October 16, 1805, when they reached the Narrows of the Columbia, Lewis saw the water “boiling and whirling in every direction” over jagged rocks. They flung their canoes safely through the obstacles and found themselves on the waters of the Columbia, rushing toward the Pacific Ocean.
The expedition was traversing a particularly awe-inspiring territory, rich in anthropological treasures, when Clark wrote in his journal:
in those narrows the water was agitated in a most Shocking manner boils Swell and whirlpools, we passed with great risque It being impossible to make a portage of the Canoes, about 2 miles lower passed a very bad place between 2 rocks one large and in the middle of the river here our Canoes took in some water, I put all the men who Could not Swim on Shore; and sent a few articles Such as guns & papers, and landed at a village of 20 houses on the Strand. Side in a Deep basin where the river apprd. to be blocked up with immense rocks.6
It is important to mention here the intriguing area that surrounded the Corps of Discovery during these last maneuvers that would bring them within view of the Pacific. The region described by Lewis and Clark no longer resembles the landscape described in Clark’s journal. The area had long been a gathering place for people from the Warm Springs, Yakama, Umatilla, Nez Percé, and other tribes. Some, like the Wishram, Cloud, and Lishkam tribes, lived there permanently and fished with nets and spears between the Dalles and Celilo Falls.
Other natives visited seasonally to practice their religion and take the opportunity to trade and socialize. Others came to harvest spawning salmon. The number of Native American villages in the area was greater than any other Lewis and Clark had encountered in their journey. Because they were abundant, salmon was the currency that supported the tribal economy. Today salmon have been reduced to a meager number that represents less than 1 percent of the numbers observed by early explorers. For centuries this area near the river was a sort of campground, or communal gathering center, where religious ceremonies, including burials, took place. Annual ceremonies that brought together thousands would logically make this place the largest burial ground of natives in the area. Indeed it was.
Lewis and Clark arrived in the area of Horsethief Butte on October 24, 1805. Because of the rough weather and harsh terrain they didn’t do much exploring.
Later some of the oldest pictographs in North America were found in this area. Discoveries included sacred petroglyphs—drawings chipped or ground into rock—that depict tribal legends, hunting scenes, what appear to be alien beings, and mystical imagery. This is evidence of the extreme age of the gatherings that took place in the area. Celilo Falls now only exists in the imagination; it has been reduced to a lake. Sitting behind the Dalles Dam since 1957, this reservoir eliminated important fishing grounds for many native tribes. For more than ten thousand years Native Americans lived and fished in the Celilo Falls area. But today their ghosts remain silent and show no proof of the proud, ancient heritage that once existed in the area.
The seeming erasure of history has much to do with the fact that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers owns this part of the Columbia River. In 1957 the corps specifically chose the area of Celilo Falls to build a dam, where hundreds of historical petroglyphs and perhaps more artifacts that would provide proof of an ancient, technological civilization were to be found. Rising waters caused by the dam flooded the Celilo area, including the falls, burying forever the ancient petroglyphs, along with the ancient history of the Columbia Basin. Only forty-three of the ancient rock symbols were chosen to be moved to a new location.
You can visit these remaining glyphs at Washington’s Columbia Hills State Park, about an hour and a half away from their original location. According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, this is “the best place to see native petroglyphs in the Northwest”—unless one has gills, in which case one can see the hundreds that are under water.
By early November the Corps of Discovery had overcome the Cascades, and the last mountain obstacle was behind them. They were now moving through tidewater by the White Salmon River junction, which they called Canoe Creek because of a cluster of canoes seen at the river’s mouth when they drifted by. There isn’t much noted about this area, which is intriguing. Did they stop? Were they more impressed by the view of Mount Hood to the south?
Lewis, Clark, and the men of the Corps of Discovery were the first white Americans to see Mount Hood. White Salmon River runs through what was once a giant lava tube that collapsed on itself. The vegetation on the area’s riverbank is a strange mix of oak trees, cottonwoods, and ponderosas, with Douglas fir, maidenhair ferns, western red cedar, and Pacific yew, vastly different from the desertlike terrain they had just passed through days before. One can only imagine the awe with which the explorers must have viewed this uncharted territory. Without a clear notion of how, or if, they would return home, Lewis and Clark, the young Sacagawea, and the Corps of Discovery risked mountains, falls, and rapids that today would intimidate the most skilled sportsmen. Rather than die, as the native spectators along the shore expected them to, they lived to tell a tale that continues to enthrall.
On November 7, 1805, Clark famously wrote in his journal: “Ocean in view! O, the joy!” when he incorrectly thought he was within a short distance from the great Pacific. And then on the morning of November 8, 1805, Clark wrote that the entire party changed clothes. A custom of that time was for travelers to stop at the end of a long journey and ready themselves by putting on their best clothes for arrival. This indicates that Lewis and Clark were expecting November 8 to be the day they would stand on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. With only twenty miles to go, the weather changed dramatically, and they were forced to hang on for dear life. They were hit by rolling breakers so big they had to turn around. This brave group that had pushed ahead against all odds was now facing a river entrance that in later years would be known as the Graveyard of Ships.
After two other attempts that day they were forced to camp on a little beach. During the night they experienced thunderstorms, wind, hail, rocks falling from the cliffs above them, and huge logs tossed to the shore by the pounding surf. They abandoned most of their supplies, buried their canoes, and found shelter in a wooded area around the point. When the weather finally changed days later, and they were able to leave their refuge behind, Clark referred to the place as “this dismal nitch.”
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 Ocean.” 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 Tillamook 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.
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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 features. 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, Wanapum, 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.[of course, cannot mess with the damn British narrative DC]
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 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 and 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 ferrule, 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
The singular sort of territorial rage evoked by these sorts of claims emerged in 1996 when NBC broadcast a prime-time special called “The Mysterious Origins of Man.” The special featured material from Cremo’s book, and it sent America’s academic and scientific communities into a fit. The reaction from the scientific community was especially fiery, as NBC was inundated with letters from irate scientists. Amid cries of “Hoax!” the scientists tried to force NBC to agree never to reair the broadcast. When that didn’t work, opponent scientists took their case to the FCC. In a letter to the FCC, Dr. Allison Palmer, president of the Institute for Cambrian Studies, wrote, “At the very least, NBC should be required to make substantial prime-time apologies to their viewing audience for a sufficient period of time so that the audience clearly gets the message that they were duped.”14
Wait until they hear about the giants.
NEXT
Giants in Ancient America
footnotes chapters 4-6
Chapter 4. Lewis and Clark and the Journey West
1. Lewis and Clark, The Definitive Journals of Lewis & Clark, Vol. 9, 233.
2. Ibid., 234.
3. Allen, “Cahokia Mounds Finding Stuns Archaeologists.”
4. Ibid.
5. Moulton, “The Missing Journals of Meriwether Lewis,” 28–39.
Chapter 5. Prince Madoc, Welsh Natives, and Legends of the Mandan
1. Lewis and Clark, The Lewis and Clark Journals, 241.
2. Lewis and Clark, The Definitive Journals of Lewis and Clark, Vol. 8, xv.
3. Powel, The Historie of Cambria, 166–67. 150 H Notes
4. Lewis and Clark, The Lewis and Clark Journals, 442.
5. Donnelly, Atlantis, 115.
6. Catlin, Illustrations of the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indian, 93.
7. Ibid., 93.
8. Ibid., 259. 9. Donnelly, Atlantis, 111.
10. Ibid., 98.
11. Catlin, Illustrations of the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the American Indian, 182.
Chapter 6. Voyagers of the Pacific Coast and the Kennewick Man
1. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage, 484; Slaughter, Exploring Lewis and Clark, 153.
2. Lewis and Clark, The Definitive Journals of Lewis and Clark, Vol. 5, 211.
3. Lewis and Clark, The Lewis and Clark Journals, 246.
4. Lewis and Clark, The Definitive Journals of Lewis and Clark, Vol. 5, 328.
5. Chief Joseph of the Niimiipu Nation, Great Speeches by Native Americans, 150.
6. Lewis and Clark, The Definitive Journals of Lewis and Clark, Vol. 5, 328.
7. King, “Kennewick Man’s Bones Provide Window to Past.”
8. Strang, “Kennewick Man’s Secrets Still Mostly Secret.”
9. Ibid.
10. Cremo and Thompson, The Hidden History of the Human Race, 90.
11. Stiger, Worlds Before Our Own.
12. Dubois, “On A Quasi Coin Reported Found in a Boring in Illinois,” 224.
13. Cremo and Thompson, The Hidden History of the Human Race, 802.
14. Peet, Underground!, 320.
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