Deep Time

...not later than 90 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of the Army, acting through the Chief of Engineers, shall transfer the human remains...that are known as Kennewick Man or the Ancient One, which includes the projectile point lodged in the right ilium bone... to claimant tribes.

--Public Law 114-322, Bring the Ancient One Home Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama, December 2016

We always knew the Ancient One to be Indian ... we have oral stories that tell of our history on this land and we knew, at the moment of his discovery, that he was our relation.

--Aaron Ashley, Umatilla Nation

A common element in these essays inspired by our visits to Washington's State Parks has been the trauma caused by the colonization of this land and its people. There is much brutality and pain in the story of our state. I am shedding more light on these stories because I believe that there is a potential for reconciliation that can lead to a more enlightened, inclusive future.

For this essay, though, I would like to look much farther back. The human story on this landscape has persisted for at least 13,500 years, and probably much longer than that. The time that has passed since the establishment of Washington Territory in 1853 represents barely 1% of the story of people here.

Our visit to Lake Lenore Caves State Park Heritage Site brought us into a perspective much larger than we usually inhabit. Set in the heart of the great rend in the Earth that is Grand Coulee, the caves offer a tangible portal into deep time.

Technically, these are rockshelters, not caves, the distinction being that caves are deep enough to contain places that have no penetration by sunlight. These rockshelters likely formed due to powerful erosion during one or more of the giant glacial outburst floods that created other landform features of the Grand Coulee. See my essay on Sun Lakes-Dry Falls State Park for more detail on that story!

Human beings have a history with caves as places for shelter and ritual, although the stereotypical "caveman" image is quite inaccurate. There is no archaeological research on this particular site, but it is not hard to imagine its use by people passing through this area. The archaeological record in Eastern Washington is largely drawn from cultural resource management survey requirements established by Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. This law requires US federal agencies to consider the effects of projects they carry out, approve or fund on historic properties. In fact, most of the archaeological evidence from this region comes from only four projects-- Lower Monumental Dam on the Snake River, Chief Joseph Dam on the Columbia, Wells Dam a little farther downstream and the route of a pipeline across Eastern Washington. The data collected at these sites has outlined a picture of life here through thousands of years.

The first 6,500 years of human occupation here after the glacial times (sometimes called the Cascade Phase ) were marked by fluctuating, low population densities (estimates range from 350 to 10,000 people inhabiting all of eastern Washington at any one time during this period) of highly mobile people who hunted a range of mammals from rabbits to bison with distinctive wide-based projectile points probably hurled at their target with an atlatl.

The major change in the next 3,000 years was the settling of people into a less mobile lifestyle. People occupied pithouses built both in river canyons and plateau uplands, and occupied them for very long periods of time as indicated by the extensive deposits around the houses. The presence of mortars and pestles indicates increased processing of plant and fiber materials, and the flaked projectile points often lack the investment of time and skill from earlier times, possibly because individual points were used fewer times before replacement, or because subsistence patterns changed toward less precise hunting requirements and more plant consumption.

The subsequent 3,500 years saw an increasing population, the development of mat houses, large settlements with a concentration of houses, widespread salmon fishing with nets, intensifying exploitation of camas and other root plants, and widespread storage of preserved foods in baskets, storage pits and caves.

This brings us to the year 1720, and the appearance of horses in the area. They came into the area by way of trade networks stretching to the Spanish settlements in Mexico. In 1680, resistance to colonial oppression by the Pueblo nations of the Rio Grande Valley successfully removed the 2,500 Spanish colonists in their homelands for 12 years. Guided by Pueblo stable boys with knowledge of equestrian care and utilization, the Pueblo people initiated a trade process that led eventually to introduction of horses into eastern Washington a few decades later, and ultimately fostered a culture centered around the incorporation of horses into nearly every aspect of life.

The interpretive trails we walked in Lake Lenore Caves State Park access the soapy shores of alkaline Lake Lenore and, after a couple of of switchbacks and steps in the basalt bedrock, the series of rockshelters 400 feet above the lake. As we rested just inside the ledge of a rockshelter, we watched in awe as a cotillion of Caspian terns soared and wheeled below us, seemingly playing in the breezes. From such an overlook, it is not hard to time travel back through the millenia, sharing this view with the many people who have rested in just this spot, looking out over the Grand Coulee.

In July 1996, two young men looking for a good view of the Water Follies hydroplane races at Columbia Park in Kennewick stumbled on and reported a human skull on the bank of the Wallula Reservoir on the Columbia River. Upon investigation, the Coroner called anthropologist James Chatters to examine the remains, along with 350 additional bones and fragments searchers found at the site that made up a nearly complete skeleton, including a pelvis bone with a stone point lodged in it. Suspecting that the individual-- a man about 40 years old at his death-- was of great antiquity (the giveaway: his teeth, though heavily worn, had no cavities), he arranged for a sample fragment to be radiocarbon dated. At a news conference a month later, he reported that the tests had revealed that the remains were over 9,000 years old.

Opening a controversy that would continue for the next two decades, Chatters also reported that craniometric measurements he had performed on the skull of the man now dubbed "Kennewick Man" indicated that the individual was not similar to present day Native Americans.

Local tribes, with understanding from a deep oral tradition, recognized the body as that of an ancestor, and requested repatriation for reburial under terms of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA, 1990), as the remains were found on federal land.

Chatters and a group of other scientists sued to stop the repatriation, wishing to study the remains further. The magistrate judge hearing the case, John Jelderks, ordered the remains to be transferred to a neutral depository (Burke Museum in Seattle) for investigation as to whether the remains could be appropriately determined as ancestral to present-day tribes, and thus subject to repatriation.

There are only around a dozen sets of similarly ancient human remains from North America in the scientific record. Lacking the ability to obtain reliable DNA information from the remains until very recently, anthropologists studying ancient Native American remains relied on detailed measurement of skulls (craniometry) as a means of comparing individuals. A hallmark of this collection is the wide diversity of skull shapes. This has caused discussion among anthropologists as to whether groups of ancestors of today's tribes may have followed many avenues to migrate from Asia, perhaps following a coastal route (the "Kelp Highway") as well as the Bering Land Bridge.

Under the direction of Francis McManamon, Chief Archaeologist with the National Park Service, measurements were taken to determine if a morphological match could be made. The results were inconclusive-- Kennewick Man most closely matched present-day Moriori people of the Chatham Islands near New Zealand and Ainu people, the indigenous inhabitants of Hokkaido. Many anthropologists point out that "race" is not a fixed and immutable biological category. Given the very long time span between Kennewick Man's life and the present day, many changes of physical characteristics are likely.

In 2002 Judge Jelderks ruled that no relation between Kennewick Man and present tribes had been proven, so NAGPRA repatriation was not required. On appeal, his decision was upheld by the 9th Circuit Court. This opened the way for scientists to pursue research on the remains. They were granted access on 16 days over the course of 2004-2006 to carry out their testing. Their results were published in 2014, once again asserting that Kennewick Man did not bear a close resemblance to modern Native Americans, and noting that analysis of the bones indicated a diet of sea mammals (not readily available in the environment he was buried in!), adding to the mystery surrounding his life.

Almost simultaneously, researchers at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark had pioneered a technique for obtaining genomic information from ancient bones. Performing this test on 200 mg of Kennewick Man's finger bone, they determined that he was "more closely related to modern Native Americans than to any other population."

Over the course of this journey, James Chatters, the anthropologist who first examined the remains, came to have a more nuanced understanding of Kennewick Man's physical difference from modern Native Americans. He has stated that he now realizes that ancient Americans did not fit into modern racial divisions. That does not mean that one or all of them weren't ancestral to modern Native Americans, only that they didn't look like them.

After corroboration of the DNA testing by others, and in light of the clear connection to the tribes, local members of Congress sponsored legislation to facilitate the repatriation, signed by President Obama in 2016.

In February 2017, in a private ceremony attended by about 200 tribal members of the Umatilla, Colville, Yakama, Wanapum and Nez Perce Nations, Kennewick Man was, at long last, reburied at an undisclosed location overlooking the Columbia River.

--David

Cascade Point photo courtesy projectilepoints.net

Kennewick Man facial reconstruction photo courtesy Smithsonian Institution