The Suppressed History of America by Paul Schrag

Author:Paul Schrag
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inner Traditions / Bear & Company
Published: 2011-05-05T04:00:00+00:00

The most alluring of all the Asian Pacific Northwest connections is the enigmatic and controversial Kennewick Man. Kennewick Man is the name given to the remains of a prehistoric man found on a bank of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington, on July 28, 1996. While swimming in the river during the annual hydroplane races, two college students accidentally made the discovery of a man’s skull. It turned out to belong to the most complete ancient skeleton ever found. The bones were dubbed the “Kennewick Man.”

Immediately the remains became embroiled in debates about the relationship between Native American religious rights and archaeology that launched a nine-year legal clash between scientists, the federal government, and Native American tribes. The tribes claimed Kennewick Man as their ancestor. The long dispute made the remains an international celebrity, the subject of documentaries, websites, books, and even the cover of Time magazine. The controversy became so convoluted that the long litigation process has relegated this amazing cultural discovery to a university basement. Today secrets held by the Kennewick Man continue to be, at least for the public, secret.

Then Benton County Coroner Floyd Johnson reached out to a forensic anthropologist in Richland named Jim Chatters, who studied the bones before a detailed analysis could be made. About a month later Chatters and Johnson announced that the skeleton was about 9,200 years old, and they speculated that the man appeared to be in his forties or fifties when he died, making him very old for that period. Chatters and Johnson noted that the skeleton showed a healed broken arm and a healed broken rib, and they found a roughly 1-inch basalt spear point embedded in the skeleton’s pelvic bone (which was not the cause of death). Before a detailed scientific analysis was completed a digital reconstruction of the skull revealed the features were Caucasoid. When the media broke the story, a great deal of coverage emphasized a similarity in appearance between the Kennewick Man and Star Trek: The Next Generation actor Patrick Stewart. This flurry of coverage served the purpose of telling the truth about the discovery of the Kennewick Man, but it depicted the discovery as a joke.

But there is far more to his story.

The history of the colonization of North America by humans has been represented as a trickle of migration across the Bering Strait land bridge during the last Ice Age. More recent archaeological research has begun to uncover an enormous amount of evidence that speaks to the contrary. That evidence suggests that there was a much more complex and sizeable migration to North America. Archaeologists such as Thor Heyerdahl, for example, are convinced that the colonization of North America by humans came in multiple waves, via different means, and from different regions. The Kennewick Man is further evidence of such a colonization wave.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers owns the Columbia River shoreline through the Tri-Cities, so it claimed ownership of the skeleton. However, according to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) signed into law by President George H.

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