17 Burst results for "George Mcjunkin"
Bear Grease
"george mcjunkin" Discussed on Bear Grease
"He was that he was born a slave in the 1850s in Texas, moved out to New Mexico. After the Emancipation, became a landowner, became a big ranch hand and was a very intelligent man and educated man, learned to read on a chuck wagon cattle drive. He was a naturalist. He collected bones in the amateur archeologist. He made mechanisms to measure the wind speed and direction, and one day he was out riding the riding his horse and he came across an unusual bone pile sticking out of the ground in this Arroyo. And he goes, those are not normal bones. He takes a couple of bones home with him. It was in 1908. He spins the next over ten years, trying to get people to come out and look at the bones. He'd go back into town and talk with people and say, hey, somebody needs to come here and look at this. They never came. He dies in 1923. So his 15 years he tried to get people to come out there. He dies in literally three months after he dies. An amateur archeologist goes to this place where they're like, George said there was a pile of bones over here. They see the bones and they go, oh my, after they send them somewhere and then they go these are the bones of a bison antiquis, which is an ice age bison that is no longer here. And some museums says, well, we got to excavate those bones. They start excavating the bones, and they find stone points inside of the bones, indicating that these animals weren't, this wasn't just a pile of dead animals. These animals were killed by humans. And at the time, the greatest minds on Planet Earth with all the data, all the information would have been no different today than the great minds of our time telling us something that was a matter of fact. No different. I mean, it would be like them saying, absolutely, this is the truth. They believe that humans have been in the North American continent for about 3000 years. Well, they knew that these bison bones were over 10,000 years old and that these it by finally stone points it meant that they had humans had been here for over 10,000 years and it totally re scripted how long humans had been in North America. And that became the Folsom point. They found Folsom points there. And so George mcjunkin, African American cowboy, found this site and died before he ever knew that it was there. We salute you. Yeah, so those are the 6 current bear grease Hall of Famers. Today, this day, we are going to induct Josh.
Bear Grease
"george mcjunkin" Discussed on Bear Grease
"Or vice versa. Come on, you're gonna use an ad level? Yeah, it's what grandpa it's what great grandpa used. Tradition. I bet they did. Honestly, as I hear the stories of technology of points and styles of points, I look at that today in our archery world or our hunting world where there's different technology, different ways to hunt, gives identity to different groups. Yeah, absolutely. I'm a bow hunter. I'm a traditional bow hunter. I use this type of broadhead and he uses that like always used weaponry among a thousand other things to build personal identity. And so I just can't help but think that the archery guys were they weren't just absent of thoughts about the guys that were using adela adults. You know, there's all sorts of potential going on there. Maybe they had some slightly different tactics going on. But I think it's perfectly viable to say how we do it today. We definitely build identity around these different weapon systems. And that's really important. And that's probably a part of the conservatism of hunting technology. And there are multiple times in which in history, people have conserved older hunting technologies and preferred not to take on a newer technology. One of the prime examples is this polynomial because they use javelins. That was their primary projectile weapon. And they had the bow, but it was mostly a toy or for hunting like rats. Really? Yeah, but they fought and hunted with javelins. And they just hung onto it. That was even though the rest of the world shifted to archery and other things. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the bow is in northern Australia as well. But most people in Australia used either the outlet or is one of the native words there for it or javelins. Yeah, we tend to think of things from this technological deterministic perspective when a new technology comes on the scene. Everyone's going to adopt it. Yeah. That's not necessarily the case. There's a number of contexts in which you would hang on to an older technology. You know, I think about adopting new technology in modern times. Probably the biggest deterrent for me. If there was some new, big major archery technology, I would be like, why do I need it? What I'm doing works fine. Yeah, precisely. And so it's just like, yeah, it might go for a couple generations before my ancestors were like, okay, we're gonna do this because they find some reason it's better. Think of it this way. You know how to use a shotgun or a bow really well. A new technology comes on the scene. It may have better ballistic properties, but it turns out it's a lot harder to make it or it's a lot harder to maintain it for you because you could just buy it. It's a lot harder to maintain it. And it's just kind of a pain to deal with. Bows and arrows are they're great, but they're kind of, I think of them as being high strung. They're pun intended. They're under exactly. They're under tension, they break when they break. They're no good. And they're harder to make. They're harder to maintain. It's harder to make the string. But if you have a little was just, you're not going to break that thing. No, it's very simple. It's not you're carrying it around on the landscape is not under tension. It's ready to go at a moment's notice, but it's not under tension. It's not getting worn down from being strung easier to make easier to maintain. So if it works for you, Y adopt something new. You just feel like a bow shows up in your camp and then everybody wants it. 6 months later, at a laterals are in the trash. Right. And everybody's got a boat. Life moved a little bit slower, didn't it? Well, I feel really good about the ground we've covered with the fulsome technology and understanding the history of those and add Las. Don't let your kids forget that they're here today because your ancestors used a ladders to kill critters and feed your ancient family. That is a fact. As we come to the end of this Folsom series, I want to bring it back to the original question that we started with. Why does any of this stuff matter? You know, it blows my mind. Human life is so weird in that we live in 2021. We drive cars. But we're trapped into the present and it's so hard for us to fathom that there were people wandering around this place that this was how they lived by these tools that we're talking about. Part of your daily life. When I find these stone points and my front yard, if any one of my family is home, I try to get them to come outside with me to look at it in the ground. And we pick it up and we say to dude that touch this last was planning to cook his dinner over an open fire. Number one. Number two, he made this and they had to provide for their families with this stone point. That's a fascinating thought, but it's such a healthy exercise, I think. Yeah, the past is essential. This is what our identities are constructed of. And our understanding of the world and how it works is drives from the past. In fact, one of the things I always tell students is the past is so potent that in World War II, the Nazis created a division of their government to construct this view, this history of the Aryan race, and they reinterpreted all this archeological evidence. They went to Peru. And they reinterpreted the archeology and they said, this archeology is the archeology of the Internet people. Of course, it was all completely fabricated, but that's what that was a big part of their ideology and what allowed them to do what they did. All the terrible atrocities they did to convince people that this is right. So that's how that history was going to play a major part in the modern culture they were building. Yeah, archeology is extremely potent stuff, you know? It's really powerful. You have to get it right. In a time when it's hard for people to even be able to track back a couple of generations and their family, which is kind of bizarre that we can't because we have this in the last thousand years we've had the ability to record history. I mean, even just the advent of paper and printing presses and writing stuff down and written language and we can record all this stuff, but typically people don't. I mean, people have a hard time learning what happened to their families a hundred years ago. Well, it's there, you know, the history, even if they're not looking for it. It's there, and it's what's forming who they are. Man right at the very end in the last sentence after hours of conversation, we find the answer to the question we started with wrapped in a cute little bow. Why does any of this matter? History is forming who we are regardless of our awareness of it. Even if George mcjunkin hadn't found those bones, that day in that box canyon would have shaped our identity as humans today. Many times I've expressed my interest in identity and the factors that influence it. Certainly the Folsom hunters would be a part of the puzzle of our macro identity as humans. As much as many of us would like to think we're independent free thinking beings that's kind of a facade. There are parts of our past that are fundamental in architectural. It can't be changed. Like these ancient humans being hunters being meat eaters and procuring their livelihood through craft and skill in interacting with the earth. In a time when the very identity of what it means to be human is up in the air, the fulsome hunters give us an indisputable anchor point in identity that might help us put perspective on our own lives in modern times. You have to figure out what that means to you, but I feel like I know what that means for me. It makes me marvel at human life in 2022. And it puts perspective on my problems and struggles. And it makes me want to do.
Bear Grease
"george mcjunkin" Discussed on Bear Grease
"Archeological site. We're going to get another layer of info from doctor David melzer about these ancient people. After this one will have completed 75% of our journey towards getting the layman's PhD on fulsome. But for those just jumping in, here's the lowdown. In 1908 a freed slave named George mcjunkin found some peculiar bison bones in an Arroyo in northeast New Mexico. He tried to get some folks to come check it out, but they didn't come until after his death. In 1928, the leading archeologist in the country would proclaim the site the most important in North American history at the time. We talked about George mcjunkin in part one, in part two we talked about the nuts and bolts of the Folsom site and how they unearthed the remains of 32 bison antiques, a relic form of ice age bison no longer here, but the real kicker was they found around 20 stone projectile points in the bone pile, giving us undisputable evidence that they were killed by humans thus proving human antiquity in the Americas was much older than we thought. And like I seen on a cake, the stone points were of a style that had never been documented. They were a unique fluted technology that would become known as Folsom points. These Folsom hunters weren't cartoon cave men. These were human beings with the same cognition, desires and rudimentary needs as us in 2021. These people experience pain and discomfort, emotional highs and lows from relationships, disappointment and failed dreams. Hope in what the next month might bring for their family. I don't have to tell you to do this, but put yourself in the shoes of the Folsom people. Imagine the cold, wearing clothes made of animal skin. Imagine no knowledge of the world beyond what you can see. Imagine being a pleistocene human. Because the life that you live is a very rare human experience. To put the fulsome people in our lives into context, stew on these numbers. It's estimated that a 117 billion homo sapiens have lived on Planet Earth since the dawn of time. By the year, 1000, there were 300,000 people on the earth. By 1650, roughly 50 million lived here. By the year 1800, there were 1 billion. In 2021, we have a population of 7.8 billion. The population of the earth today represents about 7% of the humans that have ever lived. It's hard to make sense of these numbers, but we can easily say that most humans that have lived have lived much different lives than us. No demographic data exists for 99% of human history. I got all these numbers from an article on PRB org called how many people have ever lived on the earth. It's pretty interesting. But what are the implications of a species do and stuff way different than we've ever done? What are the implications of being trapped in time and thinking that our lives are normal? That's exactly why looking back into the lives of these Folsom hunters has value. On the last podcast we heard from Steve rinella of meat eater and he helped walk us through the bison kill. He and doctor Meltzer believed that the bison were herded into a box canyon where they were met with a quote rain of spears. But Steve has another unanswered question. And hey, I can't say this with enough certainty. If you haven't listened to the first two podcasts, go back and listen to them in order. Here's Steve, jumping right in with some more unanswered questions. Here are some things we know that they were dealing with an animal that they could manipulate. They hauled meat away. They hauled some meat away on the bone. They took the tails somewhere, probably the tail stayed with the hide and they took the hides away because the tailbones aren't there. Here's the thing that kills me. They had that many animals on the ground. It had to have been days worth work, but they can't find where they slept. Somewhere around there within a couple hundred yards. Has to be the coolest place on the planet. If they had been well preserved, was where they slept in butchered all that stuff and cook stuff. Well, let me ask you a question about finding their campsite. So when I was at the Folsom site, I was struck by how small it was. It's not like they came in there with, you know, big caterpillar cranes and started just cleared out four or 5 acres of ground. I mean, the whole fulsome site that they actually excavated can't be more than 60 70 feet by 60 70 feet, so it's just this square. And now granted, they took that square and they dug out every single grain of sand and dirt from the surface to like ten feet down. I mean, essentially. But you got to remember that it was there was the two digs. The first guys went in there with a wrecking ball. Yeah. In the 1920s. Yep. Later people went in there, Meltzer. Went in there, let's be honest. He went in there in a way that in a hundred years will probably be regarded as he went in there like a rack and ball. Part of the restraint of modern day archeologist anthropologist is to leave some of that stuff intact because you just know that through technological progression. Wow. The same way that when those guys dug in the 20s, they were looking for. They wanted big bones. They wanted stone tools and air and air to wash and stuff away. All the seeds and pollen and small flakes and things that may be like little, some ability to extract DNA from other contemporaneous creatures that might have been associated just gone, right? You could imagine some future in which someone could go in and tell you a lot more. They'd be like, I don't know, they'd be like, this temperature that day. There were fires burning somewhere nearby. There's evidence of a mixture of male and female humans based on dander. You know, who knows? But in 1920 they weren't going to imagine radiocarbon dating. Yeah. If you just said to a guy in 1920, you know what? Hang tight on that because before long. He'll tell you the exact date this happened. He had been like, give me a break. I mean, basically, we think we're so technologically advanced in 2021. But we are going off of just hints. I mean, some cowboy back in, you know, 1908, randomly saw bones sticking out of a bank, went and pulled a bone and here we have that false sight. Yeah. And now we're banking almost we're banking so much off this seemingly coincidental find by this cowboy. Yeah. And that Arroyo's channel moves all the time. When I was there, I went in the new channel, which is over yonder awaits. And now the channel is off in a different direction now. And I was over in the other new channel off yonder that's been caught since McDonald. Guess what I found. It killed me. I found a big bone sticking.
Bear Grease
"george mcjunkin" Discussed on Bear Grease
"And at the time they excavated it, you know, we didn't have the technology that we do now with radiocarbon dating and I couldn't get into all the detail of what Meltzer studied. I mean, it was like wildly deep stuff about the sedimentation, the sediment layers. They were able to take those 10,000 year old bones and understand how long they were in the sun before they were covered with silt. Because the decay, you know how bone? If you had a beer bone, you know, somewhere. Wherever the sun was hitting, it would turn white. Exactly. It was touching the dirt. It was maintained as natural color. And they felt like pretty quickly. Like within a couple of years that thing was silted over. And that's the reason it was preserved for 10,000 years. And then it was only uncovered once in recent times within the past hundred. What was the 70 years before Meltzer did? It was the first. That was the excavation. They didn't leave anything in the ground. On purpose. George mcjunkin found a small section of bones. Yeah. You know, imagine a 32 bison killed right here, and there's a drainage right here, the new, the flood, push the cut bank that drainage, you know, imagine three or four feet this way. Yeah. Exposed these bones enough for George to be like, those are cool. Somebody needs to come down here and check this out. Yeah. You know, and then he dies. Nobody comes. Finally, they come, and then this guy named Carl Swahili, who was a friend of George's. The museum hired him. He was just he wasn't even an archeologist. He was just a dude. You know? Yeah. And they hired him to get them a bison and take with skull, because by that time they had been like, hey, those are best buys Nintendo. That's pretty cool. We need one of those. They hired their Carl Carl goes in there, starts digging. Carl finds that Folsom point, which at the time wasn't the Folsom point. He just finds his own point. It's like, dude, I found sweets don't point. It's pretty cool and Meltzer's book. He has Karl himself handwritten notes. Carl was struck at somehow to write notes of what he found every day. This is late 1800s. No, no, this would have been 1926 and 27. Something like that. And Carl, it was a pretty good artist and he drew in his notes. A picture of the Folsom point that he found. And it looks just like it. That's cool..
Bear Grease
"george mcjunkin" Discussed on Bear Grease
"Authorities have see that's only way that I need to get in here. I'm walking through a grassy meadow headed towards a small drainage. The clicking you're hearing is Kyle bell spurs. That's it, huh? We're 11 miles west of Folsom New Mexico on the crowfoot ranch. The place we're headed to is we're ancient pleistocene hunters killed a cow calf herd of 32 bison, some 10,300 years ago. Here they found the bison bone piles buried beneath ten feet of earth and astonishingly roughly 20 stone points of a design that had never been documented before. They called this place the Folsom site. You'd walk right past it if you didn't know what you were looking for. It looks like every other place on this range. But something special happened here. This is the voice of the current manager of the crowfoot ranch, Seth. They add all those archeologists come out, you know, from the different schools. And they did a dig, 20 years ago, 20 plus. So all this disturbed dirt, they dug right in here. What I thought was ironic that they found was they said that they were being selective of meat. Have you heard that? Because they didn't have any of their lower jaw bones to them. So they thought they were eating the tongues out of them. Yeah. Really? And they were they thought that was a delicacy. You're at the sight. So when George found it, would it have been like, it'd been like a fresh cut bank. Yeah. After a big floor. Yeah, I mean, you look, you can come up here and look at the erosion from it. And I assume that this is probably eroded more sense, but you see how steep it was. Okay. And then that flood, you know, it probably took another two or three foot off the sides, and that's when he found the bone. In part one of this series we learned that this site was discovered in 1908 by freed slave named George mcjunkin. He was a self educated self made man who became a renowned cowboy and the manager of the crowfoot ranch. The site wasn't excavated by professional archeologists until after George's death, so he never knew the significance of his discovery. In this podcast series, we're en route to get a layman's PhD on the Folsom site. You've heard Steve brunella on bare grease before. He's a George but junk and junkie and has been.
Bear Grease
"george mcjunkin" Discussed on Bear Grease
"There was so many questions about the site that were unanswered. That's why I went back 70 years later. On this episode of the bear grease podcast, we're going to the site of an ancient bison kill. The one found by George mcjunkin on part one of the series. After George's death, it would become known as the Folsom site. It was here that stone tools made by humans were found with a relic form of pleistocene bison and forever planted and indisputable data point into the debate of human antiquity in North America. We're going to talk with old Steve rinella of meat eater and the nation's leading expert on the fulsome site. Doctor David melzer, he literally wrote the book on Folsom after he went back there 70 years after its initial excavation and excavated it again to find more answers. So on this podcast, we're going back to fulsome. I really doubt you're going to want to miss this one. But first, I have an overarching question I'd like to present to you and it's this. What is the relevance of this knowledge about these ancient people in their lives? Why do we care? Is it merely entertainment to try to understand them or is there more? I'm in search of the answer. These things were herded, driven, into a box canyon, and then just rain down spears out of them and killed them. You can't make them go anywhere they don't want to go. We don't have to drive them in there. All we gotta do is wait till they go up in their own neuron. So I think it was an accident. My name is clay Newcomb and this is the bear grease podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten, but relevant. Search for inside and unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by gear. American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore..
Bear Grease
"george mcjunkin" Discussed on Bear Grease
"There's been a couple of those. But point being, how many George mcjunkins are out there that just weren't the one that found something that made him super famous, you know? And it's interesting that George mcjunkin for until 1972 wasn't even credited with that find. Right. It was the archeologist that came from Denver that went and went and viewed the site shortly shortly after within a couple of years after George McDonald, and then he and a colleague were credited with that find, and it wasn't until 1972 that George McDonald was actually credited with it. I'll tell you what impressed me most about it. I think somebody would eventually found that site. It didn't have to be George Mitchell. I was most impressed with the story of him deciding to do something. In a time that was hard, he decided he wanted to read and write, so he put himself in a position to learn that. He said a goal, and he was goal oriented, and solely focused on making himself a better human being. And he did that, and he did that in a time when it was hard. And today, you know, it's so different where people gripe about the spoon at their being fed with about the size of back when the cat didn't have a spoon. In people regardless of their situation, they can, if you work hard enough, things shouldn't be easy. Things should be hard, and you should have to work for it. You probably shouldn't have to work for it as hard as George did. But he did it. And he didn't know where in that podcast that I hear one person say anything or tell a story that that George said around and said, man, I had it tough coming up. It was always what was going to be happening down the road. He said, once he reached that, just from my summation of it, once he reached that goal of educating himself, he didn't stop. He wanted to do more and he wanted to do more. He thought he'd, but he did find those bones that side and he thought he didn't think it was just bounty knew he knew enough to say, hey, somebody ought to check this out. They never did. In his lifetime..
Bear Grease
"george mcjunkin" Discussed on Bear Grease
"Super, super cool guy. I mean, I appreciate the fact that I got to go with you just to learn about him. These guys revere this guy. I mean, these old men just talk about them with such reverence and honor, make themselves great. I picked up when I talked to Matt daru. He wasn't super convincing on the phone that he was the George McDonald expert of the world. He just kind of he just he went and just like putting all his credit out there. And finally, I just asked him, I said, hey, are you the guy I need to be talking? Just tell me. You know, I mean, 'cause I want I need to find a doctor. And he was like, yeah, pretty much. And I was like, okay, that's good enough for me. If you pretty much think you're the expert we go there, he lives in the building that George mcjunkin died in. Yeah. Turns out he's pretty much that guy. His grandfather, so there's a picture of George, and you can find it online. It's in the book, the black cowboy. There's a picture of George mcjunkin in the early 1900s standing on a porch, just a vertical picture. And there's a little Georgia black. There's a little white baby at his feet, which toddler. That's a story right there. Is it not? And that little baby is Matt's grandfather. Grandfather, yeah. They just revered George and Matt's grandmother is the one who basically collected Intel on George's life. I mean, think about, think about if a guy died just a guy down the street that you knew and he died and then all of a sudden, 5 years after his death, you realized that he had done something that changed our understanding of human history and was going to be in textbooks. You'd kind of be like, holy cow, we should have probably took a few more pictures, wrote down a few more dates, saved a few more letters. Decorations. You know, and that's what's so interesting about Georges is like his life just kind of pass by and they recognize that he was unique as a cowboy and all this. But anyway Matt's grandmother was the main source of info because she had saved correspondence. And that's just kind of neat. So I said all that to say, these guys, I really think of you to talk about George McDonald. They would have fought you. Yes. In the face. Karl bell would have shot you with his R 32 pistol. Okay, let me ask you this. 'cause when I was listening to the podcast, this was a question that I had. It's clear that they revere, like you say, and it's clear that that was earned. And I know why I would think highly of him. Why do you think I feel like the intensity with which they respect George McDonald and to vote a lot of attention to him is pretty high. Way above average for just someone that you respect..
Bear Grease
"george mcjunkin" Discussed on Bear Grease
"At material culture would look like. Look at our phones or clothes, anything like that. Material culture. But material, human culture. Exactly, yeah. You nailed on the distinction there because a paleontologist or paleontology would be what? Study of bones. So when we thought, because I was trying to decipher the difference between paleontology and archeology. Because was was George mcjunkin a paleontologist, an amateur paleontologist or archeologist. Right. Well, okay. And that's what cued me in. And I think in context, if this had been on the ACT test, you know, we used to bring up my ACT score..
Bear Grease
"george mcjunkin" Discussed on Bear Grease
"Wildest days of <Speech_Male> the place was still <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> yet to come, you know. <Speech_Music_Male> <Speech_Music_Male> Well, there's a <Speech_Music_Male> couple of us out <Music> loud, well. <Music> <Advertisement> <SpeakerChange> <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> I'm impacted <Speech_Male> by stories of <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> people overcoming <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> all varieties <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> of obstacles to <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> accomplish great <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> things in their life. <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> George <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> was a Gritty <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> son of a gun, <Speech_Music_Male> an intellectual, <Speech_Music_Male> a voracious <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> learner, and <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> someone who didn't <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> bow to the social <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> norms. <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> He used his character, <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> work ethic <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> and genuine <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> care for people <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> to overcome <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> the mainstream <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> social norms of <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> the day. But <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> what's so sad <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> and even <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> hard to understand <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> why. <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> Is when he died <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> in his mid 60s, <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> he would <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> never <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> know that 100 <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> years later <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> we'd still <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> be talking about it. <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> And we <Speech_Music_Male> haven't even uncovered <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> the incredible details <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> of the <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> ancient bison <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> kill side. He <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> found that rewrote <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> our understanding <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> of human history. <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> Justice is <Speech_Music_Male> an odd thing. <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> We all <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> want it, but <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> often it's <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> just out of <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> reach. <Speech_Music_Male> We don't have the <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> power to go back <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> and change <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> history or <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> tell George <Speech_Music_Male> or give him any <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> credit for what he <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> did. <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> But with what <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> I do have, <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> I would like <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> to do this <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> as a symbolic <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> gesture. <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> I'm officially <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> extending <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> a <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> posthumous <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> invitation <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> to George <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> mcjunkin <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> to be a feature <Speech_Music_Male> guest <Speech_Music_Male> on the bear <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> grease podcast. <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> <SpeakerChange> That <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> would have been a cool interview. <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> Thanks <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> so much for listening <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> to bear grease. <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> I can't <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> thank you enough for <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> following along. <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> Please share <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> podcast with <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> a buddy this week <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> if you can. <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> On the next episode, <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> we'll talk <Speech_Music_Male> with the nation's leading <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> expert <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> on the fulsome site <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> and dive <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> in deep into <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> ancient human <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> history. It's <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> going to be wild. <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> If you get a <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> chance, playing a trip <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> through Folsom New <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> Mexico to <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> visit the Folsom museum, <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> just don't take your <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> horse or dog in <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> there. And you can <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> also see the Folsom <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> hotel. <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> Mat mom has <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> a pretty cool VRBO <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> that you can <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> stay in. <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> And when you're there, <Speech_Music_Male> tell Matt
Bear Grease
"george mcjunkin" Discussed on Bear Grease
"Their own the man. You can just imagine him setting back, looking at that thing, thinking about that skull like we now think about the fulsome man. Being a curious guy usually indicates an internal posture of awareness. And one who's keen on the nuances of the natural world, but also the human social world. And it indicates someone with an active intellect. When you examine his whole life, it just seems like he was special. But he was one of the guys that was, you know, had good timing, I guess, you know, there are certain people that you come across that just always seem to be in the right place at the right time. And a lot of the stuff he did is not even well known at all. You know, kind of like catching outlaws and stuff. He was just always the right place at the right time. And impacted American history really several different occasions, you know, and it's just the same that he's an unsung hero. Outlaws, you say? Once while George was out riding, he came across a suspicious camp. He went and talked to the guys and got a bad vibe. He reported the man to the law. It turns out they were a notorious outlaw band of train robbers who were later captured and convicted. Fist bumped to George. Even though George didn't know about his discovery now, important it would. From what I've read and from what I've heard, he was also a humble man. And he didn't go around looking for fame and fortune or bragging on himself. I bet he never told anybody. He was the best bronc writer in this part of the country. He wasn't a show off. He was just a good person. Yeah. You know, people love George McDonald. I mean, now we're talking about him, but like locally. There's accounts of there's one story I remember where he was in a restaurant. Presumably here in Folsom. Rock hotel did he actually died in. Just tell me that story. Hey, we're there, and if there's a new guy in town, you know, just spot a ranch or something he came in and they were sitting there in Georgia's eating in south and they said, you know, I'm not gonna eat with a black man, you know? You can't sit here and yeah so his buddies, you know that right there that said, oh, we will handle this for you, and they took him in through his out outside in the mud and they were gonna whip him and George actually came out. That's right, they George looked out and they had a whip and were about to whip him in the street. Yeah, and so he stopped him from doing that. So you know that right there just shows what a man was. But then it was even funnier because that guy was having a welcoming party for everyone in the community, you know, and couldn't find any musician. So I think it was carlito's coronet or no, I know a guy that, you know, plays a fiddle and stuff. I'll just bring him and it was George. So this is the guy. This is the guy that George had just. And then George said don't whip him. Yeah, and then he went and played fiddle at his party. Exactly, so it shows what kind of a character a man he was. We've just uncovered something we've yet to talk about. George was a musician. Man, oh man, you know out ahead that dude playing the fiddle on the bear grease podcast if he were here today. George would later say and I quote a fiddle is a better teacher than a whip. Besides, I only charged him double my usual price for playing. Yeah, there's another account of him going to so yeah, George was in Clayton with a couple of this cowboy Friends, you know that were white and I think there was an Hispanic guy with him. And they'd been known to shoot up the bar, not George, but the guy he was with. So they were kind of rough guys. Yeah, I mean, they're still bullet holes. Yeah, there's doable in the bar there. They were there in Clayton, you know, wanting to get a bite to eat before they headed back to this part of the world. And the bar owner wouldn't serve him. He said, you know, we don't serve African Americans here. So his body pulls out his pistol throws it down on the table and says, it looks like your policy changed and so it did. So they served George. I love stories of rough characters. You know, guys outside the mainstream trends. The outlaws you might say that have more character than the good guys. You may remember my friend doctor malaka Nichols. He's been on the render several times, and he taught me about correlations. Malachi's from Texas and several months ago, I asked him if he'd be willing to read the book, the black cowboy, which is the source of much of our Intel about George, and he was excited to read it. I want to see if he has any insight into Georgia's life. So I think the thing that strikes me about George's life is that his life is a lifestyle that is today almost absent from African American culture, the African American lifestyle and kind of what people aspire to be. I can remember when I was young and there's a famous day called Juneteenth inside of the black culture and is the day that Lincoln freed the slaves and the news got down to the slaves. And so, you know, we still celebrate it. That's in Midland. Yeah, that's a Midland, Texas, right? There's a parade that we do that goal starts one place and travels all the way to the park. And at the end of the line, every year, there are black cowboys. Black cowboys on big horses get kind of finished the parade. And that kind of stood out to me as, hey, I never hear about blacks being cowboys. And George's life shows the power of a different lifestyle that is fading away. And so to me, I think it shows that you have to be aware of kind of what the mainstream societal pushes are for your career or for who you should be. And there's more opportunities than what is traditionally shown to you. Being able to look through time at people who happen to share the same skin color as you and seeing the lifestyles that they lived, it gives you greater possibility and opportunity for what you could do. We as humans are we like to differentiate each other. We like to find associations. We like to group. And if you look at one frame of time, if you look at one area inside of the country, if you look at one block or neighborhood, you limit yourself into the possibilities. And so being able to look back and even at George's life, it shows you there's a wide range of careers. There's a wide range of lifestyles, a wide range of cultures that could be a right fit for you. You know, and in George in all the black cowboys are in that time. They would have met opposition, maybe more so in that world than in others, just because of the nature of it. But they were just up for the task. I mean, you see inside of George's life that he had a lot of, he had a lot of self confidence. He had a lot of tack with people, like he genuinely seemed to understand people and was able to work with all kinds of people from doctors to ranch owners to Mexican vaqueros to outlaws. He used a lot of skill to get where he did. And it probably took some stretch in his comfort zone. I'm sure. I think you know what you're hitting on is really the power of character to go beyond racial lines to go beyond cultural lines, and even to go beyond kind of occupational lines. Because character recognizes character. And I think that's what all these guys are saying is that on the trail rides, the cowboys, you know, they said they quote didn't see color. They just saw whether you were a good cowboy, or a hard work or whether you're skilled. And it's like character sees character. Okay, here's the biggest question though malaka. Do you wish you were a cowboy? Man, you know. Sometimes I do. Right? So I look at George's life, and oh, you're taking this question. Seriously, I want to do. I look at George's life and realize the value of almost living free quote unquote. The first time I had a chance to go overseas, I took a trip to Ghana, which is in Africa. I stayed there for a month. In that trip, I realized how much of my life was built on comfort, right? How much of my life came with an ease? And looking at George's life and seeing his ability to go through a snowstorm on a horse to sleep outside when it's cold, is something that I don't sign up to do. And I value that that ability to forgo Cuban comfort in just in just living life. So sometimes I do. Are you having with me? I have. And that was a we gotta get you on a mule. That was a, that was a temporary hunt, right? This is a good place to do a little clean up on Georgia's life. There are so many stories it's hard to tell them all, but it's important to note that George became the ranch manager of the crowfoot ranch, which was owned by a man named doctor Owens, who is some of Matt's kin. George and doctor Owens had a good relationship and he recognized who George was an entrusted much of his livelihood to him. It's hard to overstate the significance of a black ranch manager in the late 1800s. George would have been the boss of lots of white cowboys. I also can't talk about George without telling you about his telescope. Once George rode up on four unscrupulous characters beaten the tar out of some dude on the side of the road, George rides up on his horse with his rifle laid across the saddle, and he said, pretty hot day for that kind of work, isn't it? The comment insided a scuffle that involved George getting bucked off his horse. The man ran off, leaving the beat up, dude there, thanking George for saving his life. Turns out that guy was a calvary man in the army. And thanks for saving his life. He gave George his telescope. George would treasure it the rest of his life and carry it in his rifle scabbard. Having never looked through one until he was an older man, the technology never lost its luster to George. Here's another story. In 1889, George was on a winner cattle drive and a historic snowstorm rolled in and the temperatures plummeted, causing a total wide out for several days. George took the lead and told the 14 cowboys with him to follow him. He knew the country so well. He guided them to a remote homestead he knew about. The weather was so severe that 1200 cattle and all the horses froze to death. That's some legit cold. They were stranded in a small cabin for 14 days and George was single handedly credited with saving the men's life. What's interesting was that what helped George through this was his sheep wool and deerskin coat that he designed in made. I want to read you a short section from the book about that coat. This is from the book, the black cowboy, by Franklin Folsom. One fall day while George was laying out fence, a cold wind made him shiver. It also gave him an idea. He dropped work and rode to candido, archelaus place. Will you sell me two sheepskins? He asked. Of course, my friend candido replied. I'm gonna make a coat. The ones in the store aren't warm enough in their too short. George chose two skins heavy with fleece and rode home, putting the fleece side in, he shaped and stitched a coat long enough to cover his legs and split up the back so he could wear it in the saddle. Then, to go over the inner coat, he made another from deer skin, he had tanned himself. Nobody around had ever seen anything quite like it, but it was very warm. The dude was a getter done kind of guy and had some skills. I don't want to end this section on a Debbie downer, but it's part of George's story. He never married. Though he overcame many racial stereotypes, marrying a white woman was out of the question, and it was even said that he was rejected by the Mexicans too. And they're just weren't many African American people in the area. Though he always wanted a family, he never married nor had children. Thanks a lot, Deb. Here's Matt Kyle and I discussing the latter part of George's life. In the latter part of George's life, he had become an accomplished ranch manager, accomplished cowboy. He had saved up some money. He started to have his own cattle. Cattle brand. He was a landowner. He built a house right here just outside of Folsom. And he was one of the first people to fence in the west as well. You know, he built a lot of this fence that were just now replacing. Wow. Tragedy struck, though, when lightning struck his house, burned it down with his prize possession, his device in school, the Comanche score of his books is, you know, his life was a lost everything. And it's kind of ironic because he always joked about, oh, lightning won't hit a black guy. Caught him, but so then he ended up coming to town. The stone hotel here in town was kind of like a bachelor pad for all these old cowboys that I don't take care of him and he got a room there and ended up dying there when he came down with the stomach cancer and spent the last little part, bedridden, but was surrounded by all of his friends. They said it was, you know, just packed in there. Wow. So he spent the last few years of his life at that time. A couple months ago, last so his house burned down, then he moved to the Folsom hotel, which, I mean, we're basically looking at this window and he died in that hotel. And Matt, that's where you live. Yeah, it's a little spooky. Some nights, for sure, but another thing is, you know, the outlaws that he ended up catching. That's where they spent their first night in incarceration because there wasn't a jail. Too. That catch him was held in that same hotel. Down the hall, so, you know, the story of him throwing the guy out in preventing him from being whipped, same place, so it's kind of a hotspot, I guess. Right in the back, the hotel was the bucket of blood saloon, which there were several gunfights at one time city Marshall shot and killed right there and Matt's driveway. Bucket of blood saloon, right, man. Yeah, there's several several shootings there. Yeah, still boring. Have you ever gotten a fight there, Matt? Yes, I think the.
Bear Grease
"george mcjunkin" Discussed on Bear Grease
"Back in September, I got a Helix Mattress, and I'm being quite serious when I say it is the most comfortable mattress that I have ever slept on. What's unique about helix is that you take a quiz that takes just two minutes to complete and it matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect customized mattress. Everybody has a unique sleep pattern. Helix knows that, so they have different models for you to choose from. They have soft medium and firm mattresses and mattresses that even help you cool down if you sleep hot, mattresses that are good for spinal alignment to prevent morning aches and pains, which I did have with my former mattress, helix even has plus size mattresses for plus size sleepers. I took the helix quiz and was matched with their midnight model mattress because I wanted something that was medium firmness. And I truly love the mattress. I have slept better in the last several months than I have ever. And that is very true. 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Helix Sleep dot com slash clay for a customized mattress hundred night risk free to ship it to your door. Driven by their passion for the outdoor sportsman's guide has been fueling adventure since 1970. They offer quality gear from the brands we trust, including work sharp, weather be federal prime archery and the full line of vortex optics. The sportsman's guide isn't just hunting. They have everything for your outdoor lifestyle, like a huge selection of fishing tackle, camping equipment, ATV and truck accessories, clothing, and so much more. Join the buyers club today and get 10% off most items and 5% off ammo, plus free shipping on orders of $49 up. Becoming a buyer's club member also gives you the option to use four pay on purchases of a $150 or more, giving you the flexibility to split your payment into four interest free installments and making it easier than ever to afford the gear you need right when you need it, visit them at sportsman's guide dot com and make sure to use the code meat eater at checkout for $20 off your first order. That's the sportsman's guide and promo code, meat eater for $20 off your first order. This was wild cowboy country, but it was also Comanche country. One of the most feared tribes in America. Georgia's whole life he navigated hostile territory and one time was almost killed. Matt and Kyle will tell us about it. When colonel McKinsey finally figured out how to get down into paladuro canyon, which was the stronghold of the quahadi, comanches and corner Parker was the leader. They had always been able to protect their places, their family. They got down there. They didn't capture very many comanches, but is raped before winter, and they did something they'd never done before, but it worked. They killed all the Indians horses. They let them pick out a few to keep the officers and stuff. And they shot the rest of them. Then they burned their lodges. It had all their winter supplies, and a few months later, the once proud horseback nation that ruled a southern plains had to walk into fort seal, Oklahoma and surrender to the army because they were starving. There's only way they ever got them out of there. They had to kill their horses, Comanche your foot, ain't no Comanche, and they can't fight the cat hunt without horses, so in order to save what was left of their population. They had to surrender. Wow. And he would have been going through that same area. You know, in palido, when they were, you know, kind of at the peak of their power. George would have. Yeah, so he actually, like I said, they stole all of the horses and stuff and should have killed him, but they his saddle horse ran off with his gun and everything when they saw the horses and they rode up to him and basically laughed at him and called him a black Mexican and spun around and took off and so, you know, he's lucky to be here. Well, he's if he hadn't been black that had killed him. No, for sure. But he was special. He was touched by the man above because he was not a gringo cowboy. He was black. He was a man of color. So were they. So he had some pretty intense skirmishes with the comanches. So yeah, this was just a wild a wild wild country. And this is where George McDonald became who he was. Matt had some good insight into a very interesting contradiction regarding the treatment of African Americans and Native Americans. Here's what he said. Is this crazy that they can fight a war to free one group of people and then turn around within the same year? You know, have a huge campaign to annihilate a whole nother ethnicity. You know, with Indian wars, and it's the same people that just freed one. You know, it's kind of a contradictory piece of history. George was a naturalist. He was fascinated by the natural world. And it's kind of ironic that he unknowingly discovered such an important archeological site while doing his routine duties on the ranch. So George, he had a lifelong passion for learning. When he was out with a cowboys at night, they had to take watches to watch over the cattle. And they taught him how to look at the stars to tell the time. And he became a lifelong obsession with stargazing and understanding stars and he learned to read. It said that he made some contraptions to learn how to tell how fast the wind was blowing. He made rain gauges. He had a lot of ingenuity, like a lot of just natural, you know, just a smart guy. You know, he had access to in later life, you know, the doctor Owens book collection. So back then, you know, we didn't have the Internet and all this right at the tip of our fingers. So he had access to all these books and just be able to pick the minds of a doctor and stuff. So he gained a lot of knowledge there and he was just a curious guy, you know, and well read and he just happened to be in a really good spot to study archeology and geology and heard a lot of petroglyphs and stuff like that in this part of the country. Campsites. I mean, this is an archeological haven right here. Yeah. And he was, you know, smart enough to know and curious, you know, he would see different things. And he always had that. You know, wonder where we come from where there are people here. It's.
Bear Grease
"george mcjunkin" Discussed on Bear Grease
"Just tell my folks that I went looking for some school and I'm going to be a cowboy. And took off down the dirt dirt road barefooted and he ran into a group of horses that he knew were from that ranch and mcjunkins ranch. He saw a mule there too, and he thought, well, you know, maybe I'll be a little less suspicious being on a mule rather than one of these good-looking horses and that's really took off on and you know once he got outside the Comanche at the head of the cattle drives, you know, going north dabbling. He ended up acquiring a horse and it's the horse Wrangler for the trail going up. When George left, he knew that no one would think much about a black kid riding a mule. In a strong display of character, he would later return that mule, and it was noted by George that his father was concerned about him taking the steed. He had heard that it was stolen, but was glad to see that his son later returned it. George was always adamant that real cowboys rode horses, not mules. And later in life, he'd own and ride as good of horses as any cowboys that ever rode in the west. The next part of his life working on cattle drives would forever change him. The start of George's career as a cowboy was that summer on the cattle trail. Now Matt will tell us how he got connected to the Roberts family and acquired his first ranch job in the Folsom area. So good on that, you know, and really paid attention to all the other cowboys and kind of learned how to read the stars and picked up a lot of stuff from them. And, you know, he ended up securing a job to come back, you know, the next year on the drive. So he decided to head south back home, and wait out the winner. It turned out that when they were there in town, he had started talking to him and conversation led to him being a bronchus and basically led to another bet that he couldn't ride this big gray mirror, you know, and he got on it and made one of the best bronch rides that the Roberts had seen in basically securities his job from their bringing them bringing west. So that's how he got into it. He would have how old would he have been during all that time period in his early because he left his house when he was 17? Yeah. And so he would have got the job with the same year. You know, it was as soon as he returned back. Probably before he was 20. He was just a teenager. He didn't know how to read or write. But the cowboys took him under their weighing and he learned how to read and write, you know, at the chuck wagon at night by the firelight and he had a piece of slate and a nail. And that's how they taught him the alphabet and how to write and read. And then once she learned how to read, he couldn't get enough literature to read, you know. You know, his father told him something. He said, we have to read. It will always be the bottom rail and the fence. I just keep going back to his dad because his dad implanted in these ideas of independence and that it just self worth. What would it have been like for him, though, I mean, that time period for black Americans would have been just a whole new script in front of their life. At the same time, extremely difficult. In Texas, I'm from Texas, so I can tell you this. There was extreme prejudice against former slaves. And if you had a young black man that get out right every cowboy on the outfit, they'd have to eat a little crow to it meant that he might have been in the best cowboy amongst them. If a black cowboy had better ability than most of the cowboys in the outfit and love them boys fought for the stars and bars, you know, they were confederate southerners that come back to Texas and there wasn't nothing there, so they started driving cattle north. There would have been even though even exceptional young man, there have been extreme prejudice right after the Civil War. Yeah. Well, he clearly had a lot of social attack in self confidence that probably was unusual. He built that himself, his dad instilled it in him. And then he was able to go on and make a legend out of himself by being the kind of person that he was. What would he have been so good at to be known as such a great cowboy? Like what skill set would he have had? I think the thing that is most famous for, and I think Matt will agree was him breaking and handling horses. He had a soft touch, and he could ride horses at other people, couldn't. All cowboys. Look up to somebody that can take a Bronx and turn it into a horse that anybody can ride and use on the ranch. You know, can't everybody do that. And a lot of that stuff is just something that you have in. You know, you can't teach it. A lot of it probably has to do also just having that natural talent. But then being able to develop it, you know, all the white guys were off fighting during the Civil War. And he was around all the volcanos and you know the Hispanic culture where he became fluent in Spanish too. That was a big big leg up in life for him moving to this area. He was trained by Mexican cowboys. And there actually were the cowboys that derived from. Believe it or not, the cowboy history goes all the way back to the Middle Ages with the Moors who were from North Africa. They invited Spain. They held Spain for 800 years. They taught to Spain their child to make steel, like the Toledo blades that are so famous. They also taught them leather braiding and horsemanship. So the mowers were in Spain for 800 years when they finally pushed them back across Gibraltar straits. Spain had become a horse nation. They became the bullfighters and the mounted warriors. So when they when Spain brought their horseback technology to the new world, scared the Indians, death they'd never seen like that. For a long time, it was against Spanish love to ever let a Indian straddle a horse. They could feed them and curium and stuff, but they weren't supposed to ride them because they knew if the Indians ever learned their ride. They wouldn't be able to control them. Sooner or later, some of the Indians started riding some horses got loose, got stolen. And in 200 years, they sprayed from Mexico to Canada and probably right through the same corridor. Exactly. Folsom sites on and you know Charles goodnight came across the same pass going through Colorado, so a lot of the history, you know, right in this area. There's just natural corridors that you follow to keep from going over the top of a mountain or across the canyon. You go the way that you're stock can go. When you drive cattle, you want to drive them slow enough as they're driving to the north and eaten or gain in weight. If you drive them too fast, they're either staying the same or losing weight. So you got to know just the right pace and the terrain take them through. Usually about ten miles a day. Was going pretty good. And this area was just a corridor. So there's a gap in the mountains here. There's like three gaps. Basically, this area is a geographical crossroad. It's good cattle driving country for the same reason the pleistocene bison hunters were here too. Animals and humans move across the landscape just end up here. Just like a deer hunter setting up in a place where multiple trails intersect. The same thing brought George here that 10,000 years prior had brought those ancient hunters. And while we're straddling two time periods, it's interesting to note that this was some wild country back when George was roaming around being a cowboy. Yeah, this was the wild west. You know, this is probably more happened in the high low country in this quadrant of New Mexico than anywhere else. Vegas was way more wild than Dodge city, or a million or even some of the former Marshals from Dodge city to Las Vegas to try to clean it up, you know, like Batman masters and Bill Hickok and some guys like that had pretty famous names. And when you say Las Vegas, we're not going to go in New Mexico. The first Las Vegas. Yeah..
Bear Grease
"george mcjunkin" Discussed on Bear Grease
"Sensed that it was an interesting or distinctive. I mean, it is, these were big animals, right? These pleistocene bison were probably about oh estimates 15 to 20% larger than modern bison. And if he had seen one of the big cows down in the bottom of that Arroyo, he would have known, George McDonald, what are known, this is not any ordinary bison. And he started telling people about it. And that's the only reason we know about that site because there's nobody else that was out there that took notice. Here's Kyle again giving us a further look into who George was. He was born a, his parents were slaves, he was born in Texas. It was a buffalo hunter. It excellent cowboy. He didn't know how to read or write. He was self educated. Learn to read and write, and was very interested in archeology and geology and those kind of things at a time in period when it was really hard for a black man with any kind of education to get along with people in this part of the country because there were a lot of extra confederate Siri, you know? But one thing about cowboys, and it holds true today. For the most part, if they're a good cowboys, you don't see color. You just, you know, they're a good cowboy, they're good cowboy, or good bronc rider. It don't matter what color they are. Even back in the old days, I've read that a third of the cowboys that rode up and down these trails were black. And another third were Hispanic and, you know, so the black cowboys and Hispanic cowboys had as much or more to do with shaping this country as anybody did. Also, after George's house burnt down, he moved to the hotel that Matt lives in, and that's where he passed away. There's a room there that's George's room. So yeah, Matt from the Folsom museum, he lives in what was formerly the fulsome hotel. It's a really cool looking old building to say these guys are connected to George is an understatement. He is very well thought of this part of the country in highly respected for his ability as a cowboy, but also as a self made man in a really tough time. Tough time of history for a black man dude to get an education, you know, and he was the foreman of this ranch and usually he didn't go to a ranch and find a black foreman. Over the next couple of podcasts we're going to become George mcjunkin in Folsom side experts. The knowledge gained from understanding what George discovered the site as they call it is absolutely fascinating. It's relevant and will make our current habitation on this continent, more robust. However, humans don't grow on trees. They all have stories. They've all got places they came from, but our deep history is forever shrouded in mystery. And I'm interested in learning about these people that killed those bison. But I'm also interested in learning about George. Sometimes the messenger is as important as the message. George was born sometime in the early to mid 1850s. No one really knows. He was born a slave near midway Texas. He lived and worked on the McDonald ranch and took his slave owners last night. By all indications his father was an incredible man, but we don't even know his first name. He was simply known as shoe boy. He was George's only family. We don't know anything about his mother. George's father once told him, one day, the white people will call me mister Shue boy. He was a blacksmith. He knew how to read. He read the entire Bible, and he worked to buy his own freedom and ran his own blacksmith's shop. In Georgia's early teens, the Civil War was raging in the United States. He lived on a ranch and young George showed great aptitude and learning the skills, revolving around breaking horses and working cattle. The war caused a labor shortage creating an opening for him. However, George was most comfortable around the Mexican cowboys and was trained to break Bronx by them. On June 19th, 1865 federal soldiers came to town to proclaim that the slaves were free. It's believed George was around 14 years old, with this new freedom, though, his life didn't change much immediately, but he found himself running into cowboys camped on a cattle drive, and he was astonished by what he saw. He saw black cowboys, and he saw the blacks, Mexicans, and whites, eating together. They were treated like equals. He'd never seen any other place in his life where these dynamics played out like that. He even noted that the blacks rode as good horses as the whites, and they didn't have to ride mules. Come on, George mules aren't that bad. George knew he wanted to be a cowboy. I want to learn more about George's life from the Gaz who are connected to him. Here's Matt and Kyle. So Matt, you've lived in fulsome, your whole life. So your family would have known George McGann. Yeah, the picture of him standing on the porch, you know, was an old man, and there's a baby at his feet. That would be my grandfather. So, you know, he would have worked for his great great grandfather would be doctor O and so your grandfather's doctor Owens. He would be my great, great, great grandfather, so I think my kids are the 7th generation. Okay. Here on the ranch. Doctor Owens granddaughter. Does your father ever talk about George junkin or was he too young to really understand much about him? He knew a lot, you know, basically the book, the black cowboy was done with help of his mother. So it'd be my great grandmother. She kept all the notes and I guess she realized it was a pretty important deal. So she kept all the letters and correspondence between them and stuff. George was born in 18 50, 50 or so. I don't think they're real certain on the date. About ten years before the start of the Civil War, so that would put it right about 52 or so. Yeah. And he would later become known as a very skilled cowboy. And it's so interesting because he was he became trained as a cowboy because all the white cowboys were off fighting in the Civil War. Exactly. Is that what you understood? Well, from an early age from what I've read, he showed a keen interest in horses, and they started out driving teams and stuff like that, but he wanted to be a cowboy. And so every time he got a chance to get on a horse to break it or anything, you know, just to gain a little knowledge he would, and, you know, Matt's grandfather, Debbie O Dory, but he said, you know, he remembered George in his old age. Still being the best day in with the horse on the ranch. Yeah. There was talk of a school being built for black children near the junk and ranch, but it never happened. George knew you had to make something happen in his life. Without his parents approval at the age of 17, he left home in the night in search of schooling and to work on the cattle drives. You know, he just ended up taking off and told him left to know or told.
Bear Grease
"george mcjunkin" Discussed on Bear Grease
"To be here accepting this prestigious award for a person I consider to be someone that's part of our family. George played an instrumental role in the early success of my family's ranch. After my great, great, great, grandfather passed away. George taught his two children, what it'd be like, ready to take to become good cowboys. And more importantly, good men. George be sold on my great great grandfather, lessons that are still being passed down to my children 7 generations later. I really wish George was here to see the impact that his life made. But George is a man. Well ahead of his time, but it's his honesty, grit, and perseverance, then you'll be remembered by the true cowboy. The idea of a black cowboy is interesting, but that isn't why we're still talking about him today. Matt mentioned that he discovered something of significance. And after I peruse the museum, I jumped in the truck and drove about ten miles out of Folsom. We pulled through the gate of a ranch in my chauffeur jumped out of the truck and told me he wanted to show me something. We're overlooking a broad valley surrounded by rim rock bluffs, junipers, and some open country. It's beautiful. We're located on the Hereford park range in northeastern New Mexico and actually we're right on the union county Corvettes county line. This is Kyle bell. He's wearing a big black cowboy hat, boots that come up to his knees. And he's got strips of tanned Elk had wrapped around his willing Nelson style braids. The jingle of spurs tell you he's a cowboy. He's a longtime resident of Folsom New Mexico and acts almost like a guardian of George mcjunkins character and legacy. Both he and Matt talk about George, like he's their brother. And looking at this valley, you look down there, you can see the house. That house is a landmark in this part of the country. It's been here for well over a hundred years. And that House is where George mcjunkin helped build that house and this is the ranch that he worked on. You can see that hay barn down there. Then there's a drainage that goes back up this way towards that Butte up there. When you get up there, about halfway between here and that beat, that's wild horse Arroyo. And that's the location of the side. And Georgian fortunately, he found the bones and realized that they were probably bison bones, but he'd never seen any of that big before. They knew something was unusual about him. But before anybody came back and actually did excavation, George passed away. So he died not knowing how important his discovery was, which is a shame. It's time to level with you on what George found. That discovery now defines his life, but it didn't while he was living. On this episode, we'll touch on the discovery, but we're going to look deeper into Georgia's life. But here's a glimpse into what he discovered. In 1908, George was in his mid to late 50s. He was riding a horse at the wild horse Arroyo on the ranch he managed when a peculiar bone caught his eye. Recently, a giant flash flood had washed out the drainage exposing a deeper layer of soil. The flood had actually washed away much of the town of fulsome when 14 inches of rain fell in just a few hours and 18 people died. The earth is funny, it seems to want to cover stuff up, but the fast water reverse the process and uncovered what had been hidden for over 10,000 years buried ten feet below the surface. George had spent his whole life paying attention to the natural world and he identified the chalky pile as bison bones. But he knew they weren't normal. He took note of their location and rode on. Over the next 13 years, he told many people about his find and urged them to come see it, but no one came for years. In January of 1922, George passed away and three months after his death an amateur archeologist from raton went to find the bones that George spoke of, and he was shocked. In 1927, 5 years after George's death, the site would be hailed by the leading archeologist in the United States as the most significant archeological find of all time in North America. It proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that humans had inhabited North America for over 10,000 years. The discovery literally made every history book on human arrival in North America irrelevant. George had discovered an ice age bison kill site. It was the ancient evidence of an elaborate hunt, a plan that either came together by chance or incredible hunting prowess or something in between will never know the details. Speculation based on the fans and the exercise of intelligent imagination is the only way to recreate the imagery of the hunt. No one was filming for YouTube. Though George only saw a few bones later they would uncover the skeletons of 32 bison antiques and extinct species of bison. But what would put it in the history books is that inside the pile of bones were stone tools made by humans and they weren't just any stone points. They were a new style that we'd never documented before. They were old. Very old. They would become known as Folsom points. Paleontologists knew bison antiquis has long been extinct and it proved that humans were here thousands of years longer than we thought. It was a wild period of time in the archeological world in the site would become known as a Folsom site. Doctor David melzer is an archeologist and the national authority on the Folsom site. He's a professor at SMU in Dallas, Texas. We're going to get to know him very well on the next podcast, but here's a little bit of what he had to say about George. The thing that has always struck me about George mcjunkin is that he's out checking his fence lines after the great flood comes onto this newly incised more deeply incised portion of the Arroyo there. And he sees bones at the bottom. The best we can tell from the very, very, very few photographs we have of when the site was first discovered. You know, this is ten feet, 12 feet below the surface. He sees bones sticking out. Now, you know, 99 out of a hundred cowboys look down and say, well, okay, so there's bones. You see bones all the time. Out in ranch country. Right. George got off his horse. And George walked down into that Arroyo. George is the one out of a hundred who looked at that realized it was of interest, I have no idea why, except that he was so interested in the world around him that he walked down into that Arroyo, looked at those bones and realized this in a cow,.
Bear Grease
"george mcjunkin" Discussed on Bear Grease
"Matt tell me tell me where we're at. How is this? We're here at the Folsom museum in Folsom New Mexico. And it's a mercantile store in bank, and it was built in 18 86, 89, I guess. And this was your families building. Yeah. Oh, my great, great grandfather's. He came from Ireland, back about turn the century and ran a bank in a mercantile store here. So you guys have been toughing it out here for, you know? Hundred and 130 years or so? Yeah, pretty much. The Folsom museum is one of those places you'd stop thinking it was a cute place to buy a souvenir. There's a hand painted sign on the door that says no horses or dogs allowed in the museum and it's not a joke. However, upon entering, you realize the place is a historical gym. It's a legit museum with over 4000 pieces. What's the most prized possession in here? I don't know. We probably have to be some of the Folsom points. We have stuff from Charles goodnight. Some buffalo skulls from the extermination of the buffalo in the 1860s and a prehistoric buffalo skull from about 9000 years ago. Lots of different things. And then lots of George mcjunkin stuff. Yeah, we have his hat, some branding irons used ledger book that he actually wrote in. For the last three podcasts we've been focusing on the American Southwest and we're continuing on that track. I'm in search of all the Intel. I can get on this man that Matt speaks of George mcjunkin. The information on his life is limited because very few new of the significance of his accomplishments until after he was dead. Like a passing moment we'd wish we'd paid more attention to George's life past like water through fingers. It was only documented by the few people that perceived he was special. But it's probably not that strange when you understand the circumstances around his life. This is the voice of Matt dowry. His family has been in Folsom New Mexico for a long time, and they know a lot about this town's history. It's deep history. So this is George mcjunkins, his old hat, is that right? Yeah, we think so, it was found in the hotel, you know, where he died in the same room in a box that about the same time period and it looks pretty similar to the one in all the pictures. So that'd be a beaver felt hat. Yeah, I would imagine. It's what all the real cowboys wore. Yeah. Yup. None of these beanies that they were today. Human life and I'm talking about the actual act of living is bound by time and has a strict starting and stopping point. We're odd critters when we want to remember a human life which we can't capture and preserve. We memorialize it by gathering up material things that are absent of life that were used in the life of the one that we're trying to remember. If they put your cowboy hat and your horse tack in a museum, I wanna know who you were. If George mcjunkin.
Bear Grease
"george mcjunkin" Discussed on Bear Grease
"He clearly had a lot of social tact and self confidence that probably was unusual. He has dad instilled it in him, and then he was able to go on and, you know, make a legend out of himself by being the kind of person that he was. On this episode, the bear grease podcast were exploring the life of an extraordinary human who overcame the social norms of his time to become a Hall of Fame cowboy and when he discovered a bone in the dirt that rewrote human history, he became a legend, but he would never know it. His life was wrought with peculiar accomplishments, but shadowed by tragedy. I'm in search of justice for this man's legacy and we're going right to the place where he lived to interview the men who now call him family, though he had none. I want us all to meet George mcjunkin. He always had that. You know, wonder where we come from, where are there people here? It's a shame that he didn't really fully realize what discovered. My name is clay Newcomb and this is the bear grease podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten, but relevant. Search for inside and unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by gear. American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear.