Shifting Sand, Shifting Culture: How George McJunkin Blazed a Trail that Changed Our Understanding of Human History

 George McJunkin, a self-taught African-American cowboy from Folsom, New Mexico, became a local hero and a pioneer of American Archaeology. We trace George's incredible journey, from escaping Night Riders in Texas to his profound influence as a cowboy to his incredible ability to teach himself two languages. Despite facing racial prejudice, George was a renowned figure in New Mexico, and his heroism during a blizzard etched his name in the annals of cowboy folklore. We also explore George's other talents: his flair for music, his love for history, and his pivotal role in the aftermath of the Folsom flood.

The remarkable archaeological discovery he made while assessing flood damage - a discovery significant enough to reshape our understanding of North American history- took many years for  to be acknowledged, George's story echoes throughout time, a testament to his enduring legacy. Listen to how, decades later, New Mexico archaeologist Frank Hibbins finally gave George the recognition he deserved for his monumental discovery. This tale of a cowboy turned amateur archaeologist is one you don't want to miss.

And Teachers, as Promised, here is a complete lesson plan to cover 2-3 days of your class in New Mexico history, written by our co-host Drew for the New Mexico Public Education Departments Social Studies Instructional Scope and Sequence.
Shifting Sand, Shifting Culture: How George McJunkin Changed our Understanding of Human History

Transcript

Johnny : 0:10

You're listening to the Enchantment Chronicles with Johnny and Drew, and today we're going to talk about George Mjunkin from Folsom, new Mexico, mr Drew.

Drew: 0:21

Yeah, originally in Rogers Prairie, Texas. George Mjunkin, I think it's safe to say he made his life in Folsom, new Mexico, right, I think that's fair to say I think so.

Johnny : 0:35

He was born in what? The 1850s or so. I don't think he even knew how old he was, but he was born in the 1850s in Texas, pre-Civil War yeah.

Drew: 0:48

His father, mr Shoe Boy, was a farrier, a guy who put a blacksmith that put shoes onto horses and had worked at the McJunkin Ranch out there in Texas. He had been able to buy his own freedom, but not that of his son or his wife, so he was stuck out there. Mr Shoe Boy his name sounded as bad to him as it does probably to us, calling him a fully grown blacksmith boy and Shoe Boy that he hated that name but had become a leader in his cute. So George was freed on June 17th, a couple of days before June 19th but that national holiday. That declaration was made down in Galveston. But he was formerly notified by Union truths of his freedom. But a book that we have by Franklin Folsom, the Life and Legend of George McJunkin-- no relation to Folsom, New Mexico. But it does note that George did not run off as soon as he had the opportunity. In fact he had stuck around. He'd had the opportunity during the Civil War to become a cowboy because all the Confederates were off fighting for slavery.

Drew: 2:25

But his dad had said you're only going to be able to be a cowboy for a couple more years, but they're coming back and you will not my words that one or two years you'll have a chance. And his dad, and given some other fantastic advice, he said we've got to read, otherwise we'll always be the bottom rail on the fence. According to this biography there was based on a lot of interviews with them.

Johnny : 2:54

Interestingly, George didn't get much education, obviously, but he taught himself how to read and write and was also in English and also in Spanish. He was fluent in both English and Spanish reading and writing, which is pretty remarkable for the time and now, frankly.

Drew: 3:17

No, he actually traded. He would actually tame wild horses in exchange for reading lessons, because back then in Texas there was a Freedman's Bureau that was supposed to open up schools, but night writers, math writers, klansmen, essentially whether they were formerly part of the Ku Klux Klan or just some other imitator were showing up. George ran off to New Mexico where he traded horse trading lessons in order to learn how to use, instead of being paid in reading lessons. His last words to his parents were tell my parents, tell my folks, I'm all right, tell them I'm not going to be a cowboy and to look for a school. He went to Folsom, New Mexico, where he didn't need to become a cowboy and eventually to form an at the Crowfoot Ranch up there along.

Johnny : 4:17

North of Folsom. He bounced around to different ranches in the Northern New Mexico and Colorado area but eventually became known as one of the best Bronco Busters in the area and best ropers. He hunted buffalo and various things around that area. When you could do that, he was. For all everything that I've read, he was one of the best cowboys that, frankly, New Mexico has ever seen, especially at that time.

Drew: 4:56

For sure. I mean I don't mean to sugarcoat it he did face some racism in New Mexico. It was normal back then for ranches to help each other out, and now for that matter, with roundups and when you're branding your calves in the spring and at the crow foot, he was helping out at a neighbor's ranch when they insisted that he eat separately and it was kind of. It was recorded that his fellow cowboys actually said well, if you're going to make him eat separately, then we're all even, and so that ranch was left without help that day because they stood up for George. But he was also. You know, he definitely faced some prejudice, but he still rose to that rank of foreman and it was well deserved. He actually saved some several men's lives in a blizzard once by tying them together and leading them to a cabin where he knew that there was likely to be somebody home and a light, you know, and managed to save them when the entire herd got lost in the snowstorm.

Johnny : 6:08

So he was even a very accomplished cowboy and a Western man and another thing that I found of interest in reading about George was not only did he teach himself how to read and write, we also knew numerous musical instruments, I think the fiddle and the guitar and you know cowboy stuff, I guess, back in the day. But I thought that was pretty cool to learn. He seemed to be a very well rounded and remarkable, remarkable person, and we'll get into this a little bit more. But he also became an amateur historian, even though some folks didn't listen to him while he was alive. But he, he was much more than just a cowboy.

Drew: 7:01

Absolutely, yeah, possibly. Well, this will be this, the story we kind of get to today. That time we talked about Sally Rock, the heroine of the Folsom flood, that stayed in her station and kept dialing those numbers up and down the river on the dry simmer, on just getting as many people out as she could. Well, george has a connection to Sally Rook. He actually helped search for her body, but he also, according to Franklin Folsom, was known kind of for teasing her a little bit in your job. She would call her and instead of giving a number he'd say give me that hole in the wall. What do you want to talk to? His friend over there, Albert Davis, at a little cafe that we run down down in the town of Folsom.

Drew: 7:57

Well, he also was one of the first that saw that that storm coming and he tried to call Sally Rook that night, august 27, 1908. He had some urgent news. He'd been up on Johnson Mesa that day when the clouds began to gather, the sky turned very dark, and so he decided he should phone from the ranch house that had recently gotten a phone, which he usually called her, but she hadn't been able to answer because she'd already gotten the first warning. She'd already started calling him In fact she'd already whether he couldn't get her because her circuits were busy or whether because she'd already been washed away. He had done his best to spread his word, spread the word down the river that flood was coming. And then the next day he went back and had found helped find 15 of the bodies after the flood.

Johnny : 9:08

And unfortunately I don't think Sally was discovered months later, I think in the spring. So he wasn't able to discover her but during during the assessment of the damage, the fallout of the of the flood, if you will, the dry simmer on river flood he was out and about there shortly thereafter and discovered something huge. He discovered bones in a washed out gulch I know it as a different name than Drew does. I know it as the dead horse gulch and drew what was your book? What is your book so?

Drew: 10:01

wild horse, but it's recorded both ways so it was probably called both ways at the time. But wild horse arroyo, dead horse Gulch. But Mr Folsom records and he was checking on the fence lines and he saw some bone that looked like buffalo. He said it's the biggest buffalo bone I ever saw and I have seen plenty of them in my day. You noted that it was a buffalo, huh, well, yeah.

Johnny : 10:31

And what else. And he also saw inside those bones a something that nobody had ever seen before, what is now known as the Folsom Point, which was later revealed to be one of the greatest discoveries of archaeological discovery in northern New Mexico and North America. North American history I mean.

Drew: 11:01

At that time, people thought that the Native Americans might have been lost tribes of Israel and might have just been there 2000, 3000. This is the view of the Smithsonian's director at the time. This is, and he's looking at these bison and teakus bones and it's kind of weird to think of our 2000 pound bison is the miniature version. These guys are about half again as tall as what you think of as a bison and if you've ever looked at a bison I thought they'd look it in the eye. I can't look it in the eye, I'm not the tallest guy, but these, this is a picture of a six, seven foot tall buffalo and that's the bison and teakus. And so George realizes there's no way. There's no way that bison like this are running around and he sees these spear points and he realizes the people have been around in North America a lot longer than anyone's thought of. Because he's seeing these things Look, you know, to his mind probably look closer to dinosaurs than anything we see today.

Johnny : 12:13

And I think, if, if I remember correctly, I think it placed later on a place human beings present in North America, some like seven or 9,000 years before we realized we knew that we had been here which is pretty remarkable. And then later on, of course, the Clovis Clovis discovery later on down the road that expanded that notion. But George was the first person to discover these points. So what do you know? The story of how he discovered it and how he tried to tell people.

Drew: 12:51

Well, I know that he was checking those fence lines after the Folsom flood in 1908. He told a few neighbors, you know, but he told Charlie Wiley and some others. But in 1912, traveling was getting a little easier out there. So you know, there was a train, there was automobiles, and George went to a fair in Rattone, New Mexico, and so we met Carl Schwaackheim and he sees this fountain that was made out of some bull elk antlers. You know it was decorated with some bull elk antlers that currently elk will sometimes lock antlers and get stuck together.

Drew: 13:44

And so they found these two bulls that had basically killed each other just by getting intertwined so much they couldn't separate. And he said well, I've seen something even bigger and these bull elk were actually up on that St Johnson Mesa. He said I never saw a bigger elk but I've seen the bones of animals that were plenty big enough to hold them up. And so he's speaking to Schwacheim and his son, Carl Schwaackheim, and he tells them about it, and Carl Schwacheim and says if I ever get time off from work and if somebody gives me a ride, I'll come out there, I'll go out there to Wild Horse or Dead Horse Arroyo . And George said he'd be glad to show them the place, so he was ready to show them back in 1912.

Johnny : 14:36

It took something. Yeah, go ahead, it took like 10 years to convince somebody to come out, 10, 14 years, 12 years to convince somebody to come out to look at these bones.

Drew: 14:48

Yeah. And then an archaeologist from Colorado came out, but it was after George's death in January 22nd 1922. So 1-22- 22. He passed away.

Drew: 15:05

But later in July Carl still and another fellow, Fred Howarth, in the Raton and a fellow taxidermist in the Raton, James Campbell, went out in a car with a fourth guy, a bricklayer and a local priest. They went out and they headed out to where George made that discovery. And they made the same discovery and agree, Folsom points points embedded with the giant bison, along with the cut marks, the butchering marks on the bones, proved his theory. So they pulled some of the bones out and took them back to Rathome in 1922. But same year George died. They kind of organized that trip finally in his memory.

Drew: 16:03

And then Fred Howarth, one of the guys, visited the Colorado Museum of Natural History. We met JD Figgins, and Figgins and other scientists realized these guys were onto something and you traveled back down to fulsome, to what they saw what George called the bone pit, because it wasn't just one giant python. These people had been organized and they'd been driving these bison into what you call dead horse or royal or dead horse gulch right, dead horse gulch. It had been a place basically for thousands of years where they could drive, herd animals and travel.

Johnny : 16:47

Dead bison gulch maybe.

Drew: 16:49

Yeah, Dead Bison Gulch Wild Horse Arroyo . You run the wild horses up there, you get them trapped. You can break them.

Johnny : 16:57

So interestingly, at least to me, even though he made this discovery and he died, and after he died a lot of people made more discoveries about it it took a long time for George to get any recognition for his discovery. The folks that came down from Colorado never credited him. For a long time it was unknown that he actually made this discovery, certainly not within his lifetime, and I believe it wasn't until like the 40s or so, to where somebody mentioned I believe it was the New Mexico archaeologist, frank Hibbins, who mentioned gave George McJunkin credit for finding those bones in that arrowhead, those arrowheads in that, in that, in that Erstalling up in the royal yeah.

Drew: 17:50

Yeah, and a lot of credit does there'd be go to the Raton and Folsom that never kind of ceased giving them credit. Correct, they were sort of an ex-room all about that. They kept telling that story over and over and over again to anyone that would listen. It certainly is. He was not given the due in his life, but his neighbors kind of insisted that he be given it after his death and that's why we hear about it today.

Johnny : 18:27

It says a lot about Northern New Mexico. It says a lot about New Mexico because in other places he would have just been forgotten and nobody would have ever given him credit. Absolutely, absolutely. George ended up dying just so January of 1922. At that there's a Folsom Hotel. I don't know if you've been there, drew, but there's a Folsom Hotel still staying. There's still a sign. It's really cool. He died there and he's buried at that local cemetery there in Folsom.

Drew: 18:57

Okay, and for those of you that are interested in hearing more, we actually have some resources. There's some lesson plans, but also some National Park Service, over at the neighboring Keplin National Monument, produced a great little video about George, and there have been the Smithsonian Magazine. The Smithsonian was the people poo-pooing his theory, but they've written up that story about how he changed American archeology forever. And right now, when he goes back in the news, we may again have the oldest signs of human habitation in North America. When the Folsom points were found that was the first time we did they got surpassed by the Clovis points.

Drew: 19:46

Right now, I think the clearest example is down in Mexico. There's an underwater cave in the ocean where the sea levels were lower. There was a little girl, leg broken, that lay in the cave along with a lot of animal bones. But we also found out down near White Sands where there used to be a lake. There's footprints of kids of running around. Depending on some dating methods that it's probably worth exploring in another podcast, that might be the oldest human habitation or it might not sign. In North America we have that desert advantage on the other states.

Johnny : 20:28

Well, that's all I've got for Mr George McJunkin.

Drew: 20:34

Certainly there's a lot more you can tell about him. Again, the life of George McJunkin by Franklin Folsom no relation to Folsom County or Folsom, New Mexico is a recommended but out of print book. And also Brian Burke has written a historical fiction book called Rango about George McJunkin. That's Wrango, W-R-A-N-G-O. If you ever want to learn how, no more, you're free to check out the lesson plan so we have links to on our site. Thanks, Johnny.

Johnny : 21:15

Yeah, thanks Drew. Thanks everybody for listening and tune in next time for the Enchanted Mechanicals.