Kennewick Man: Bones and Controversies
by Leann Moore - 2000 (written for a North American Archaeology class)

When I first read about Kennewick Man, what got my attention like most people, was the fact that one of the oldest and most complete skeletons found on this continent has a so-called Caucasoid appearance, which is unlike the “typical” modern Native American.  I also found it significant that archaeologists were fighting for their right to seek information, while Native Americans said that by doing so, it violated their freedom of religion.  The facts and opinions surrounding Kennewick Man have brought up many important issues, the most controversial being the validity of racial identity and its use in science, while perhaps unintentionally challenging the meaning of NAGPRA and the very definition of Native American. 

It is important to understand why there is such controversy over this case, when burial remains have been, unquestioningly, given back to Native American groups under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) since it was passed in 1990.   The law has several goals, each pertaining to human remains and cultural objects found on federal or tribal land.  It requires that any affected Native American tribe be promptly notified, that these tribes approve any permits for the intentional excavation of the sites, and the law imposes criminal penalties for any trafficking of Native American remains or objects.  The law also requires that American museums and other public collections provide tribes with detailed collection information, and repatriate to tribes, on request, human remains and objects that meet the law’s criteria.

A key condition for the repatriation is that tribes must prove they are related to human remains and objects.  Proof may include oral traditions as well as geographical, historical, archaeological, and other information (washington.edu-1).  Another condition to determine ownership of ancient remains is based on time.  Remains older than the arrival of Columbus in 1492 are considered legally “Native American” by the government and property of the tribes, even if they don’t show a biological or cultural relation to modern people (Lee, 1999).

In the fall of 1999, two skeletons, known as the Minnesota Woman and Browns Valley Man, dating back 9,000 years, were turned over to the Sioux in Minnesota, even at the objection that the Sioux are relative newcomers to the area (Lee).  What’s not clear is how these remains were repatriated to a tribe with questionable affiliation, without an ethical tug of war breaking out.  The Kennewick trial has caused much more controversy, and deals with bones of approximately the same age.  One reason may be the completeness of the skeleton, but most people can’t let the issue of whether the bones may be Caucasoid drop.

On July 28, 1996, two students watching the annual hydroplane races accidentally found part of a human skull in the eroding Columbia River bank in Kennewick, Washington.  The skull was about ten feet from shore, where one of the men, Will Thomas, literally stumbled upon the ancient skull while wading in the river with a friend. 

Fearful that the skull might belong to a drowning or homicide victim and that an investigation might hinder his ability to see the hydroplane races, Mr. Thomas said he hid the skull in nearby weeds.  After the races, he mentioned the skull to his friends, which he then retrieved to show the group.  At that time, local authorities were called and the area was treated as a crime scene (Robinson, 1997a).

That evening, Coroner Floyd Johnson contacted Dr. James Chatters, who conducts skeletal forensics and is a private consultant in archaeology and paleoecology.  He helped police recover much of the skeleton and conducted the initial forensic examination. 

According to Chatters, the completeness and unusually good condition of the skeleton, presence of Caucasoid traits, a lack of definitive Native-American characteristics, and the association with an early homestead led him to suspect that the bones represented a European settler.  But he soon questioned this when he detected a gray object partially healed within the right ilium. 

CAT scans revealed the 20 by 54 mm base of a leaf-shaped, serrated Cascade projectile point like those used by hunters of the Columbia Plateau from 8500 B.P. to 4500 B.P.  However similar styles were in use elsewhere in western North America and Australia into the nineteenth century.  In one report, Chatters said, “we either had an ancient individual with physical characteristics unlike later native people’s or a trapper/explorer who’d had difficulties with ‘stone-age’ peoples during his travels” (Chatters, see: mnh.si.edu).  However, early on, he told The New York Times, “I’ve got a white guy with a stone point in him (Thomas).”  To resolve this issue, the Coroner ordered radiocarbon and DNA analyses.

On July 29, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was informed of the discovery because the site is federal land under its jurisdiction.  The next day a local newspaper in Eastern Washington published a story of the discovery, which prompted a representative of a local Native American tribe to contact authorities.

One bone fragment was sent to the University of California, Riverside on August 5 to be dated by carbon-14 method, a destructive test.  Meanwhile, a standard forensic examination and measurements were conducted with the assistance of seven other specialists, including identification of the projectile point, amino acid composition, and an attempt at DNA extraction.  AMS dating results were announced on August 26 (washington.edu-2).

According to Chatters’ forensic observations, the skeleton is nearly complete, missing only the sternum and a few small bones of hand and feet.  This was a male of late middle age (40-55 years), tall (5’7” to 5’10” or 170 to 176 cm), with a slender build. “He had suffered numerous injuries, the most severe of which were compound fractures of at least six ribs and apparent damage to his left shoulder musculature, atrophy of the left humerus due to the muscle damage, and the healing projectile wound in his right pelvis.”  The unusually light wear on his teeth. Minimal arthritis, and lack of head flattening from cradleboard use distinguish his behavior and diet from that of more recent people in the region.  “A fragment of the fifth left metacarpal analyzed by AMS has an *isotopically-corrected age of 8410 60 B.P. (UCR 3476) (ca 7300 to 7600 B.C.).  Amino acids and stable isotopes indicate heavy dependence on anadromous fish.  DNA was intact, but two partially completed extractions were inconclusive.” (Chatters, see: mnh.si.edu)

Chatters initially described the shape of the skull as “out of the ordinary for a Native American and consistent with Caucasian.”  Under the impression that he was dealing with a more recent death, the initial conclusions were based on modern day forensic standards. “The man lacks definitive characteristics of the classic mongoloid stock to which modern Native Americans belong.  The face is narrow and prognathous rather than broad and flat.”  Other features are a long, broad nose, a v-shaped mandible, with a pronounced deep chin, and round orbits.  “Many of these characteristics are definitive of modern-day Caucasoid peoples, while others, such as the orbits are typical of neither race (Chatters, mnh.si.edu).”

The man who lived more than 450 generations ago was first dubbed the Richland Man, due to confusion over where he was found and later the Kennewick Man.  Out of respect for the elder, many in Indian country call him the Ancient One.  Rory Flintknife, a Yakama tribal attorney, calls him Xwesaat (old man).  The name is Ichiskin, one of three Yakama languages (Robinson, 1997a).

On August 30, four days after the startling radiocarbon result, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers insisted that all studies be terminated and soon took possession of the skeleton.  They soon published their intent to repatriate the remains, under NAGPRA, to an alliance of five tribes: the Umatilla, Yakama Indian Nation, Nez Perce Tribe, Wanapum Band, and Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.  They said the Ancient One is clearly one of them, having been found in a place where they have lived since the beginning of time and that further study goes against tradition of leaving the dead undisturbed (Robinson, 1997b). 

The Colville is the only tribe of the five which encourage the study of remains.  “It’s our belief that these remains, or any remains we happen across, are there for a reason.  There is a message there someplace,” said Harvey Moses Jr., Secretary of the Colville Business Council.  But because the remains already had been studied, the Colville Tribe joined the others in asking for reburial (Robinson, 1997a).

After announcing their plan to repatriate, the Corps received twelve requests for scientific study.  A group of eight internationally known archaeologists and physical anthropologists filed suit, asserting that NAGPRA does not apply to this case.  Chatters and others claimed that Kennewick Man could not be adequately affiliated with any living tribe.  To let one group of tribes not permit scientific study would violate the rights of all other Americans seeking answers about the past (Thomas).

Rosemary Thomas, the mother of the student who found the skull, told the Indian Country Today paper, that her claim is one of protest.  Ms. Thomas said she understands the need for the grave act, which tries to protect remains and respect the beliefs of the Native Americans, but asked, “What happens to the study of human history on this continent?” 

Some non-Indian claims were purely symbolic, and stated that further study was needed to prove or disprove their ancestral ties.  The Asatru Folk Assembly from Nevada City, California is a religious group founded on the pre-Christian beliefs once practiced by Vikings who also sued for the right to determine if this individual was their ancestor.  Stephan McNallen, director of the assembly, said the group of about 400 members is based on the link of humanity with nature and an awareness of identity through kinship and ancestry.  “They’re used to Native American people relating to their heritage.  They’re not used to Europeans relating to their heritage.”

Daniel Donaldson claimed that the remains are those of an ancestral Celtic clan and stated that he wanted the remains to undergo testing and then be buried in the Zillah Cemetery with five generations of his family.  Kern Gruntt staked his claim on the fact that he is of European decent and the initial examination of the remains have led some to believe that they may have been Caucasian.  James A. Bowery claimed that he is more closely related than other claimant and would submit to testing to prove it.  Linda Parish believed that the Ancient One is ancestor to all and cited tribal affiliations for two of her grandmothers as qualifiers for her NAGPRA claim.  Patricia Lettau’s Scandinavian ancestors may have migrated to North America across the land bridge, she stated.  She and others asked that the Corps of Engineers direct the transfer of the skeleton to the scientific community for further study (Robinson, 1997a).

While most of these claims seem absurd, it was later pointed out by Alan Goodman, that Asatru Folk Assembly leaders also have extensive neo-Nazi connections.  Louis Beam, an Asatru spokesman, is a former Texas Klansman and “Ambassador at Large” for the Aryan Nations.  In his article “Dead ‘Indians’ don’t lie” he cites public statements by scientists to support his view that America was first settled by whites. 

And in their publication, “The Runestone” they wrote that Kennewick Man is their kin and that the reason Native Americans have contested the idea is because they have a lot to lose if their status as the first Americans is overturned (Thomas).

Serious questions emerged after the first mention of the word Caucasian to describe a 9,000-year-old man in the new world.  For one thing, the term Caucasian implies racial ancestry, which ignites a series of inquiry into current new world migration theories.  Secondly, the idea of race itself implies a political agenda.

Ever since Europeans landed on this continent, they’ve been observing, analyzing, questioning, and renaming everything.  Even though the people and places already had names and the people knew how the world was created and where they came from (Thomas).  Christians felt the need to explain where these unknown people came from since it didn’t match up with their book of truth, the bible.  They disregarded the unwritten stories of the Indian because it differed from their own concept of history.  Ironically, this inquiry into where people came from eventually led to a more science-based anthropology, and now some scientists are trying to prove once again that the Native American’s concept of reality isn’t valid because it isn’t science. 

There is a tendency to regard Indians as primitive, or an ancient race, because of the 19th century idea that the Indian would go extinct if they would not assimilate to civilization.  People still don’t see Indians now as the Real Indians.  Real Indians are thought of in past tense, because “Indianness” refers to those romanticized qualities of the natives, untouched by European contact. 

In the 1830s, Samuel Morton tested the hypothesis that a ranking of races could be established objectively by physical characteristics of the brain, particularly by its size.  He took skull measurements of as many different socially constructed racial groups as he could get his hands on, more than one thousand skulls by the time he died in 1851.  He wrote several articles to defend the status of human races as separate, created species (Gould, 1981). 

A good scientist at this time period wanted his own complete collection of skeletons. In order to study the people of the past and present, a secret skull trade was born of grave robbers and soldiers who massacred peaceful villages and sold the dead to science.   Reliable documentation on the individual’s tribe or band, cause of death, level of intelligence, and personality traits, could raise a skull’s market value, because “these data helped skull scientists correlate personality and intelligence with cranial attributes (Thomas).”  This was the first American Archaeology. 

Many have criticized Dr. Chatters’ forensic opinion of throwing oil into the fire of racial tension between Native Americans and anthropologists, among others.  He, without realizing what he was getting into, used the term white to identify the individual because he had Caucasoid features and was under the assumption this was a fairly recent skeleton. 

What has charged this debate so strongly is the interchangeability of Caucasoid and Caucasian to describe the skeleton when the two words are not synonymous.  Caucasoid denotes physical features, while Caucasian is an invented racial type.  Forensics specialists use the socially constructed racial grouping names such as Negroid, Mongoloid, and Caucasoid to identify more recent skeletons all the time and claim an 85-90 percent success rate (Thomas).  The study of forensics is an important part of understanding skeletal variation, however, even if skeletal features can be classified into racial groups, they can not provide skin, hair, or eye color which are socially attributable to race.

The problems of using modern skeletal differences arise when they are applied to past populations. Not to mention that using the word Caucasoid to describe a skeleton to the non-forensic community raises the emotional connotations of race-based language.  Less emphasis was put on the fact that underlying processes of human variability, natural selection, genetic drift, disease, and stress, produce only gradual trends not discrete racial types. 

In 1908, Franz Boas studies changes in immigrants “racial characteristics” and found that “head form, considered the most stable and permanent characteristic of human races, undergoes far-reaching changes coincident with the transfer of the people from European to American soil…All evidence is now in favour of a great plasticity of human types (Thomas).” 

Heredity of head form (and therefore predictable racial personality traits) would have shown up in the children of immigrants if biology was destiny, but this study proved otherwise and suggested environmental causes of variation.  As Boas stated half a century ago, racial classifications depends mostly on the experience and prejudices of the observer (Thomas).  For example, American Indians are considered a race, even though some groups have more Asian features, more European features, facial hair, and other non- “classically Indian” appearances.

In his report in this year’s American Antiquity, Chatters clarified his earlier assessment, “His physical features, teeth, and skeletal measurements show him to be an outlier relative to modern human populations, but place him closer to Pacific Islanders and Ainu than to Late Prehistoric Amerinds or any other modern group.  Despite his uniqueness relative to modern peoples, he is not significantly different from other Paleoamerican males in most characteristics (Chatters, 2000).”

The legal battle over Kennewick Man’s bones began on October 24, 1996.  The Corp of Engineers allowed scientists to study the area around where the bones were found and has permitted tribes and the Asatru group to conduct religious ceremonies.  But soon after, the Corp announced plans to bury the site, which they claimed was necessary to halt further erosion (but which geologists argued wasn’t a problem).  Senator Gorton authored a bill that the Senate Appropriations Committee tucked into its emergency supplemental budget in March, to block the Corp from altering the shoreline (Provo, 1998).

Corps of Engineers defy the will of congress on April 6 by covering the site with 600 tons of boulders, gravel, logs, and back dirt, planted thousands of closely spaced trees.  To date, they have not explained their motives behind this. 

Chatters and sculptor Tom McClelland released a controversial clay reconstruction of Kennewick Man’s head, which Chatter compares to the actor Patrick Stewart implying a Caucasian appearance.  I agree with Vine Deloria who thinks Kennewick Man looks more like certain Native Americans who are less “typically-Indian” looking like Chief Black Hawk or the legendary Jim Thorpe (Thomas).

The bones were transferred on October 29, to the Thomas burke Memorial Washington State Museum in Seattle, Washington.  The following year, the Department of Interior was assigned to more scientific evaluations they claimed necessary in order to confirm whether the remains are legally Native American.  Between February 25 and March 1, 1999, a team of federally selected anthropologists under the direction of Francis P. McManamon used non-destructive tests and allowed tribes and scientists to have someone serve as an observer of the examinations (McManamon, 1999).

The Analysis of the wounds differed from Chatters’ initial observation slightly, but nothing significant to the procession of the case.  One key point of the report – Kennewick’s cranium doesn’t match those typical of modern American Indians.  They think features likely came from the Ainu, a group of people in Japan that bears Caucasoid traits, or from Polynesians (Lee, 1998).

The Ainu are an anomaly, and covered a much larger area in the past but were crowded into the northern tip of Japan where they are concentrated today.  They have a similar relationship with the Japanese as Native Americans do with the dominant group in this country (mnh.si.edu-1).

On July 27, the National Park Service announced its decision to destroy more of the bone in order to confirm the age despite tribal opposition.  “We’re not anti-science.  We just want a say in what happens to our ancestors,” said Jeff Van Pelt, a Umatilla member and cultural resources director (washington.edu-2).

Four bone fragments were sent out to be radiocarbon dated.  In December, the government reported delays, which many scientists claimed were due to the incompetence of the Department of Interior who they say, took bones too low in protein count to begin with, threw off certain measurements, and took more bone than needed for the tests (Sorensen, 1999).

The Asatru Folk Assembly dropped their claim on Kennewick man by the time the Department of Interior’s January 31, 2000 news release on their findings.  Kennewick Man was reported Native American (under the NAGPRA definition). The official Report tried to sketch the following scenes from Kennewick Man’s Life:

Somewhere not far from here more than 9,000 years ago, a young man, perhaps only a teenager, received a nearly fatal injury.  A thin sharpened stone point, made and used for hundreds of years here in the Pacific Northwest, struck the young man in the back of his hip.  It was thrown with such force that it imbedded itself into the bone.  Alone with his wound, he might have died, or been finished off by his attackers.  But he lived, perhaps rescued and helped to recover by his family and friends.  This young man was one tough hunter-gatherer!  He lived long after recovering from his wound.  His hipbone grew and molded completely around the stone point that remained embedded there.

From his bones, we believe that he lived a vigorous life; his stature was robust and remained strong right up to his death at about 45-55 years old.  He wasn’t affected by arthritis, and he didn’t walk with a limp.  When he died, his bones were covered almost immediately-before any scavenging animal could gnaw up or carry off any part.  His body might have been covered naturally by flood-borne sediments or some other natural event, but it is also possible that he was buried by his family or friends in the abundant hunting and fishing land around the confluence of the Columbia and Snake Rivers.  (McManamon, 2000)

DNA analysis was then approved to determine biological and genetic racial ancestry of the remains.  Bone samples were removed, but no DNA was found.  In the meantime, the question of cultural affiliation was addressed to determine whether a shared group identity could be established between the remains and any modern day group.  A series of special research reports were completed on the archaeology, cultural history, Linguistics and anthropology of the area.

Alan Schneider, Lead attorney for the eight scientists, said that DNA analysis done for the purposes of cultural affiliation is ridiculous, and that “biology doesn’t prove culture.”

He also pointed out the hypocrisy of the Interior conducting the exact same tests his clients wanted to do, but to which McManamon originally objected to on behalf of the tribes (Montana, 2000).

September 25, 2000, Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbit, announced that the government had decided that Kennewick Man was culturally affiliated with five Northwest tribes and should be repatriated.  “Although ambiguities in the data made this a close call, I was persuaded by the geographic data and oral histories of the five tribes… I believe that it is reasonable to determine that Kennewick Man should be transferred to the tribes- tribes that have inhabited, hunted, and fished this area for millennia (washington.edu-3).” 

This ended more than two years of scientific study of these remains and their cultural origins.  Federal Law now required that Kennewick Man’s remains be transferred to the joint custody of the five tribes,

In October, the U.S. magistrate, John Jelderks questioned the Justice Department’s position that any human remains or artifacts that predate Columbus are automatically considered “native American”.   Under this theory, any Viking remains from their voyages to North American around 1000 AD would be given to modern-day tribes for reburial.  Jelderks asked the lawyers for the five tribes to consider whether they agree with the government’s definition because it “might have implications beyond this case (Brandt, 2000).” 

Despite the anthropologists who still hope to further study the remains, the Umatilla, Yakama, Colvilles, Wanapum and Nez Perce say that testing already done is enough and they want to rebury him.  They criticize the scientists, saying “NAGPRA is a direct threat to the information they need to take that hypothesis into theory, and that’s why they’re battling it right now.  They want to become $1,000 an hour guest speakers.  That’s what this is all about. Notoriety.  It’s about survival and it’s about their constitutional right to pursue fame in America (Montana).

But to these tribes, it doesn’t matter how old or how distantly related human remains are to current peoples.  It is a matter of respect, and they believe that all human remains that have been disturbed should be returned to the earth from whence they came, no matter what their age or ethnic origin.