Black History Month: Finding Folsom
How George McJunkin’s Momentous Bison Bone Discovery Came To Revolutionize Science
By Stephen E. Nash
Special to the GPHN
Jan. 22 marked the 100th anniversary of the death of George McJunkin, an African American cowboy in northeastern New Mexico during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Why is the anniversary of McJunkin’s passing worth celebrating? Because he discovered what became known as the Folsom site, an ancient bison bone bed where scientists came to accept the idea that Native Americans lived in North America during the last ice age—thousands of years earlier than most scientists then believed.
McJunkin is also important because he is one of many Black historical figures finally gaining credit for their myriad contributions to science, politics, and other disciplines over the centuries.
But what exactly did McJunkin discover? A quick Google search on “George McJunkin” yields dozens of articles and books—and their statements range from vague to conflicting.
Many, like a National Park Service brochure, give him credit for making “an incredible discovery that changed the world of North American archeology forever.” A recent story in Science for the People claims, “McJunkin made a pivotal discovery that resulted in an archeological paradigm shift worthy of celebration as a ‘scientific revolution.’” An Arkansas Archeological Survey story suggests McJunkin found human-made artifacts at the Folsom site.
Others give McJunkin credit for discovering the Folsom site while glossing over the question of whether he knew it contained evidence of ancient humans.
To paraphrase the famous question from the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, it is instructive to establish what McJunkin knew and when he knew it. Only then can we fully appreciate him. Only then can we do his scientific legacy full justice.
Cowboy, rancher, naturalist
George McJunkin was a remarkable man. He was born on Jan. 9, 1851, in eastern Texas. Enslaved until the end of the Civil War, in 1868 he moved to New Mexico to start a new life as a free man and lived there for more than half a century. He was a champion cowboy, an outstanding ranch manager, a self-taught reader and naturalist, and a collector of ancient stone tools, ceramics, animal bones, and other interesting objects he found while working.
On Aug. 27, 1908, when McJunkin was manager of the Crowfoot Ranch, an unusually strong summer thunderstorm dropped 13 inches of rain on Johnson Mesa, several miles northwest and upstream of what we now call the Folsom site. A flash flood swept through the region, wreaking havoc and downcutting arroyos.
After the storm, McJunkin ventured out to repair broken fence lines. He noticed large bones protruding from the newly eroded base of Wild Horse Arroyo. With his knowledge of animals and natural history, McJunkin determined the bones belonged to bison much larger than any modern bison he had encountered. He collected some bones and took them back to his cabin, where they took pride of place on a mantle.
From then until his death, a period of nearly 14 years, McJunkin tried to get friends and associates out to see the site. But none came. The trip required an arduous two-day horseback ride that most were unwilling to endure, and few, if any, people in the region had a car.
Then in 1922, Carl Schwachheim — a blacksmith and amateur naturalist from Raton, N.M. whom McJunkin had told about the bones — convinced banker and car owner Fred Howarth to make the journey. On Dec. 10, 1922, nearly a year after McJunkin’s death, the two drove to the Folsom site. They immediately understood why McJunkin had been so excited: The bones were huge and unlike those of any modern animals.
A spear in the ribs
To learn more about the bones, on Jan. 25, 1926, Schwachheim and Howarth met with Jesse Dade Figgins, the director of the Colorado Museum of Natural History (CMNH) in Denver. Several weeks later, CMNH honorary Curator of Paleontology Howard Cook confirmed the bones were those of Bison antiquus, an extinct ice age bison. Figgins immediately committed his museum (now the Denver Museum of Nature & Science) to further work at the site.
Excavation at the Folsom site began in May of 1926. Everyone involved initially believed it was a paleontological dig — not an archaeological dig searching for human-made artifacts. The team’s charge was to look for reasonably complete and intact skeletons of ice age mammals for display at the museum.
That said, Figgins had long been interested in the scientific problem of ancient humans in North America, and he told Howarth and Schwachheim to keep their eyes open for the possibility of finding stone tools. However, it was only that: a possibility.
On July 14, 1926, the team unexpectedly found a stone spear point. It was unlike any other then known. But because they found it in a pile of excavated dirt and not in its original burial context, Figgins knew the archaeological establishment would not accept it as proof that humans lived with ice age animals in North America.
The museum conducted a second excavation season in 1927. On Aug. 29, the team discovered another stone spear point, this time embedded in the ribs of a bison. They left it in place, contacted prominent archaeologists via telegram, and waited for them to visit the Folsom site to confirm the discovery in person.
This was not necessarily a “Eureka!” moment. But it did ultimately lead to scientific and public acceptance of the idea that Native Americans were present in North America far earlier than these groups previously believed. It also appeared to confirm what Native Americans had been saying all along — that they have been here since “time immemorial.”
Rewriting history
To correct some of the public narrative: George McJunkin could not have known the site he found would revolutionize science. For 14 years, he knew he had discovered an interesting scientific locality based on the unusual bison bones, but he wasn’t aware it contained stone tools, and therefore evidence of ancient humans. Confirmation of that discovery happened more than five years after his death.
It is unclear whether Schwachheim or Howarth ever mentioned McJunkin to Figgins or Cook; neither of the latter men acknowledged McJunkin in their scholarly articles. (Figgins was a registered member of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. It therefore seems unlikely he would have given McJunkin credit even if Schwachheim or Howarth had suggested it to him.)
It is important to celebrate how McJunkin’s initial discovery and advocacy for the site set in motion the later work that led to the new history of humans who lived during the ice age in North America. And it is admirable that a broader public is now celebrating, rather than hiding, the contributions made by people who too often have been left out of history books.
But somewhere along the way, for some reason, McJunkin’s initial find morphed into the subsequent scientific breakthrough.
Histories get rewritten all the time, usually when new information comes to light. As a naturalist and collector committed to uncovering hidden histories himself, I like to think George McJunkin would want his own story written so that it can be told accurately. Then all of us can properly celebrate his contributions to science.
Stephen E. Nash is the senior curator of archaeology and director of anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. He lives in Park Hill with his family. A longer version of this essay can be read at the anthropology magazine Sapiens.org. It is reprinted with permission.