How an African American Cowboy Made a Discovery that Changed North America’s Prehistory

We’ve seen them drive large herds from state to state, fight against Native Americans, defend stagecoaches from bandits, duel, and even battle aliens, but there’s something else cowboys can add to their resume: discovering key lithic tools essential for American paleoanthropology. This happened in 1908, and what makes it even more striking is that the cowboy at the center of this event was African American. His name was George McJunkin.

Folsom Site is the place in New Mexico where the discovery occurred, a small canyon about thirteen kilometers from Folsom, a tiny village in Union County named after Frances Folsom, wife of President Grover Cleveland and First Lady of the U.S. during two periods: the first between 1886 and 1889, and the second from 1893 to 1897.

Obviously, it’s a young town, founded in 1888 to replace nearby Madison, which had been left somewhat distant from the new railroad line and eventually became a ghost town.

Folsom Site, the place of the discovery. Credit: Denver museum of Nature and Science

Today, it barely surpasses fifty inhabitants, which is curious considering that the area was inhabited in prehistoric times. In the final stages of the Pleistocene, around 8,000 or 9,000 years B.C., the landscape was very different. Instead of desert, there was a swampy area, the result of the last glacial advances, which served as a hunting ground for Paleo-Indians, as their prey would become stuck in the mud, making them easier to hunt. Among these prey were mammoths, but as we will see, the bison would take center stage.

In the 19th century, the site remained of interest to Comanche, Ute, and Jicarilla Apache hunters. However, that way of life had ended by the 20th century, and those ancient swamps, now turned into grazing pastures, were home to Crowfoot Ranch, where a solitary and nomadic cowboy arrived in search of work.

He was highly experienced, having worked in other states, including Colorado and Texas, and was a valued horse trainer and expert bison hunter. Like the Native Americans, he had been forced to change careers when those mammals nearly disappeared from the U.S. prairies.

Bison skulls piled up for use as fertilizer in the last quarter of the 19th century. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

This man was George McJunkin, also known as “Nigger George” due to his African origin. He was the son of enslaved parents from the Texan town of Midway. Born between 1851 and 1856, he wasn’t yet of age when the Union victory in the Civil War granted him freedom, but also the need to find a way to earn a living, as his father’s blacksmithing trade didn’t interest him. His first jobs were as a stevedore and cowboy, the latter being where his companions took advantage of long days outdoors and evenings around the campfire to teach him to read and write. In fact, that wasn’t all he learned from them, as some were Mexican and taught him to speak Spanish and play the guitar— even the violin, they say.

McJunkin became a self-taught individual, developing an interest in history and, within it, archaeology and paleoanthropology, which at the time were just beginning as proper scientific disciplines. Additionally, he collected specimens and fossils. For this reason, he was the perfect person to be in the right place in 1868 when he arrived in New Mexico for the first time to join the Thomas Owens Pitchfork Ranch.

During that period, he alternated his work on various ranches with bison hunting. It was also during this time that he gained fame as a roper and in rodeo riding, both with and without a saddle—skills that survive today as folk entertainment.

The flooded Folsom landscape.Credit: Lubbock Lake Landmark

And the fact is that, forty years later, the Far West had become a practically dying world. It’s true that some outlaws, like Butch Cassidy, resisted giving up a life that was almost romantic outside the law, but they were like dinosaurs on the verge of extinction, who in a few years would be replaced by a new generation of motorized criminals, like Dillinger or Bonnie and Clyde.

There were no longer any wars between cattle ranchers and farmers—if anything, there were disputes with oilmen, though bloodless—and Native Americans no longer posed a threat to the country’s expansion, which was now seeking new horizons beyond its borders. Life on a ranch could only be threatened by the fury of nature, and that’s exactly what happened in 1908 at the aforementioned Crowfoot Ranch, where George had settled.

In fact, on August 27 of that year, the rains were so intense that they caused severe flooding. It’s curious because the same thing happened in many other parts of the world: thousands of kilometers away, Moscow and the Indian city of Hyderabad (and a few months earlier, Málaga) were also flooded. In Folsom alone, eighteen people died, one of whom became a local heroine: Sally J. Rooke, a telephone operator who refused to abandon her post at the switchboard to help people and was eventually swept away by the waters. Sally is one of the town’s most beloved figures; the other is George.

Folsom Points from Blackwater Draw, New Mexico.Credit: SeriouslySerious / Wikimedia Commons

By then, George had risen to the position of foreman, and when the water levels receded, he scoured the ranch lands to assess the damage and repair the fences. He was in the middle of this task when, in a small canyon called Wild Horse Arroyo, he noticed that the softened and still moist ground had allowed some bones to surface.

He had hunted many bison in his life, enough to immediately recognize their skeletons; but these bones were something special, significantly larger than the usual ones. And George had also read enough about geology and paleontology to realize that this was the skeleton of a prehistoric bovid, not only because of its size but also because of the depth at which it had been buried.

What seemed to him like an interesting discovery didn’t initially capture the attention of the scientific community, which once again erred on the side of excessive caution—or arrogance—and ignored his alerts until 1918, when George managed to bring Ivan Shoemaker, the teenage son of the ranch owner, to the site. Together, they excavated in the riverbank deposits of the canyon and found more bones, totaling twenty-three bison. This drew the attention of other locals, such as the naturalist Carl Schwachheim and the banker Fred Howarth, who collected samples and sent them to the Denver Museum of Natural History.

The Folsom Point between the bison ribs. Credit: Denver museum of Nature and Science

Then things changed, as the institution sent a paleontologist, Harold Cook, to lead a methodical excavation. The results of that work radically changed some mistaken concepts that had been held until then, especially when in 1926, accompanied by archaeologist Jesse Dade Figgins, director of the Colorado Museum of Natural History, he found a broken flint spearhead. Unfortunately, it was damaged and the surroundings disturbed by mules, making it difficult to prove its promised age. But the following year, they found another complete spearhead between the ribs of an exhumed bison.

This piece, now known as the Folsom Point, proved that the previous find wasn’t a forgery or something to be dismissed due to a faulty excavation, as some skeptics like Aleš Hrdlička, a Czech-born anthropologist who directed the National Museum of Natural History in the U.S. (now the Smithsonian Institution), had claimed.

The fact that the point was found inside the ribcage of a prehistoric bison, in its chronological context, allowed it to be dated to around 10,000 B.C., since it was during the final stage of the Ice Age that this species became extinct. This, in turn, demonstrated that humans had been in North America four to six millennia earlier than the previously accepted date of 3000 B.C.

Map of early human migrations; the numbers represent thousands of years ago.Credit: Dbachmann / Wikimedia Commons

The Folsom Site, the name given to the excavation, was the habitat of a Paleo-Indian culture probably derived from the Clovis culture, which Figgins named the Folsom Tradition. It spread across much of North America, with lithic tool remains found in places as far-flung as Wyoming and Colorado.

Of course, the emblematic model of that toolmaking tradition is the Folsom Point, identical to the original one found by George McJunkin, characterized by its symmetrical bifacial craftsmanship, its concave lower notch, and its fluting, which made it easier to attach to projectiles or knives.

Unfortunately, George didn’t live to see the confirmation of his find by Figgins, as he died in 1922, but despite that, he has gone down in history. Not bad for an old cowboy, African-American and former slave, who strove to learn and educate himself independently.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on September 6, 2019: Cómo un cowboy afroamericano hizo un descubrimiento que cambió la prehistoria de Norteamérica

SOURCES

Brenda Wilkinson, George McJunkin: un capítulo en la historia de Nuevo México

Stephen E. Nash, How the Folsom Point became an archaeological icon

Franklin Folsom, Black Cowboy. The life and legend of George McJunkin

Bruce A. Glasrud, Michael N. Searles, Black Cowboys in the American West. On the range, on the stage, behind the badge

George H. Junnie, Jr, Blacks in the American West and beyond–America, Canada, and Mexico

Sara R. Massey, Black cowboys of Texas

Lubbock Lake Landmark

Denver Museum of Nature&Science

Wikipedia, George McJunkin

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