Forgotten man: George McJunkin
Aug. 12—details
—The George McJunkin Lectures
—10 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 14; six speakers talk for 10 to 15 minutes each
—Forked Lightning Ranch, Pecos National Historical Park, 1 N.M. Highway 63
—Free; no registration required
Cowboy and ranch foreman George McJunkin died in 1922 without having received credit for discovering the Folsom Paleoindian site — an archaeological milestone that proved that Native American ancestors lived on this continent as the most recent Ice Age ended.
McJunkin, who was born a slave in a small Texas town and later gained freedom, frequently shared his story about finding old bones and artifacts, says applied anthropologist Brian Kenny. But it wasn't until five years after McJunkin's death that Dr. Alfred Vincent Kidder was called from Pecos Pueblo to Folsom, New Mexico, about 40 miles east of Raton, to view the remains. After that, archaeologists, who gathered as part of the then-new Pecos Conference, confirmed the site's importance and link to the Paleoindian period, which occurred about 12,000 years ago as the Ice Age ended.
"It established a connection that man was in North America at the time that Pleistocene animals still lived," Kenny says. "And it confirmed the antiquity of North American Indians in the New World."
Kenny and other speakers will gather Sunday, Aug. 14, to help give McJunkin his due in a series of free talks, The George McJunkin Lectures, at Pecos National Historical Park. The lectures roughly mark the 100th anniversary of McJunkin's death, which occurred at age 65 or so in January 1922.
"The archaeologists who came [to the site] in 1926, in 1927, they discounted George a lot," Kenny says. "They'd say things like, 'Oh, yeah, he discovered the site, but he was really just looking for bones to make paleontological displays that he could sell to a museum.'"
McJunkin ended up in New Mexico as part of a cattle drive and stayed here. He made his discovery after a flood devastated Folsom on Aug. 27, 1908, according to local newspaper reports of the time. The flood was caused by a cloudburst west of Folsom at the Dry Cimarron River's headwaters, resulting in 17 deaths in a town of 800 residents and destroying most of the town's buildings. Folsom's population is now about 85.
Nearly five decades later, Eastern New Mexico University's Department of Anthropology creator George Agogino and writer Franklin Folsom further investigated McJunkin's claims and life, and Agogino gave McJunkin full credit for the discovery. Agogino died in 2000.
Agogino's pronouncement lent McJunkin's claims a legitimacy they lacked during his lifetime.
"From the time of his discovery at Folsom until his death, George was trying to promote the site in a number of ways," Kenny says. "He wrote to a number of individuals and tried to encourage them to come out [and see the site]. He actually had one individual who came to the site and looked at it, but it had not been excavated. So it may not have been clear what was there at the site."
McJunkin apparently recognized that the bones and artifacts he'd found were linked, Kenny says.
"George really only got the credit after the fact for the discovery," he says. "And there are people today who still say, 'Well, he really didn't know anything about the archaeology.'"
Kenny hopes more information will come to light.
"If we happen to come across letters that George has written to museums and archives, or if we come across somebody's diary that further explains what George was saying, maybe we'll have some [more] proof."
While racism might have played a role in the skepticism surrounding McJunkin's discovery, many Black cowboys experienced less race-based mistreatment than their counterparts in jobs, Kenny says. The reason was simple: If you could do the work, the other cowboys treated you as though you belonged, Kenny says.
Kenny shared an anecdote about McJunkin being forced to eat in the kitchen at a restaurant, rather than the dining room, because of his skin color. Numerous white cowboy friends who were with him opted to eat in the restaurant's kitchen as well, crowding the chef. Before long, McJunkin and his associates had all been dispatched to the dining room. (The story comes from Franklin Folsom's book Black Cowboy: The Life and Legend of George McJunkin.)
McJunkin's sociability proved valuable in other ways; he served as a liaison between white ranchers and Mexican cowboys, sold war bonds on horseback during World War I, taught children, and greatly valued community involvement, Kenny says.
"And he had an ability to calm people down and make them feel comfortable around him," he added.
