Science is Stumped by Strange Mummies in Utah 1919 Article

 

The following is an old article of 7/27/1919, Page 47 of the Salt Lake Tribune,

I have never seen this article sent to me by none other than Darrel Sprecher who has sent me many over the years, Thank You Darrel once again.

This already interesting article has several things within that are telling, if you are well read and know your history from several aspects...You may see it... Acadamia will never see it as they do not concider all sources... lets see if there is anything within that raises your eyebrows... contrary to what the article says, I can tell you these people (Mummies) were not the first Americas... Using observation and DNA evidence, if “they” would use dna... will show that the first Americans are no longer here as a people, however their closest living relatives, (Decendants) are but not limited to.... Navajo, Hopi, Inuit, Aleut and others, and none of them crossed a land bridge. There are clues in the article unbeknown to acadamia and the author that will tell you who these people were. There is unintended false information as well...there is no mention of giants, large in stature etc... there are mistakes in the article such as missing words or even missing a sentence. And at the end it is clear the article continues onto a following page however the next page was a failed scanned, the only way to find the remainder of the article is to go to the Marriot Library where the original newspaper is likely held. ENJOY, if you have questions feel free to ask....

Retyped from the original by my sweet Hannah...

Science is Stumped By Strange Mummies In Utah

No Possible Explaination Yet to Account for the Red Headed, Wavey Haired, Perhaps White, Race in America, Thousands of Years Before the Indians or Even the Cliff Dwellers

The Type of Thouroughly Explored Utah Cliff Dwelling, Deep Beneath Which Were Found the Mummies and Remains of the Mysterious Lost Red-Headed American Race

By Dr. W. H. Ballou.

Those who have the habit of thinking that the original inhabitants of America were either straight and black-haired people like Indians, with coppery skins, or little brown-skinned dwellers in the Pueblos of the West like the Hupi Indians, will probably be just as surprised as sience now is to learn that 20,000 years ago, at leasat, there lived in Utah a red-haired, presumably fair-skined, race.

It may be that this vanished folk had their abode in other parts of what is now the United States. There are ledgends extant of a fair people dwelling in the New world long before Columbus discovered it, and these ledgends are found in the very oldest strata of Indian folk lore. In the light of recent discoveries sience is turning away from its scornful disregard of these stories which it has hitherto regardded as absurd.

The mummies which have revealed the existence of these red haired Americans were found in caves under the houses of the Clif Dwellers in Grand Gultch soth eastern Utah. There is clear evedence that they had entirely disappeared centruries before the Cliff Dwellers—themselves now a vanished race—took up their abode within the precipices of the canyons. A number of well preseved bodies, together with wepons, garments, basketware ans utinsels, are now under examination at the American Museum of Natural History, New York. The public will not be permited to see them for some time as they are being studied by Mr. B. T. B. Hyde, the museums expert, from whom no statement will be issued intill his reserches are complete. Other museums at Harvard, Pennsylvania, Chicago, Yale end Denver universities also have their quota of the mummies. But these institutions will await the verdict of Mr. Hyde before giving out any resalts of their own examination.

The bodies, although so ancient, have been excellently preserved by the extraordinarily dry air of the place in which they lived and were buried. Their hair ranges from what is called Titian to a violent red; the hair of the babies and Youngsters is distinctly wavy.

At least one important fact can be deduced from this-the red-hatred Americans, whoever they were, did not come from Asia, as there is good reason for believing the American Indian did. Anthropologists have all agreed on just three types of hair for mankind, existing and extinct. These types are straight black hair, kinky hair and wavy blonde hair. All shades of red are included in the word blond. We do not know yet whether these three types originated simultaneously in diferent sections of the world, or wether one tyoe followed another, nor do we know which is the oldest or the original type, if single origan of mankind, a matter in hypothetical dispute, be decided upon, but we do know that the Asiatic, in its pure stock, invariably possesses the straight hair.

How did these people live and what caused their extinction? The first question we can answer –atleast in part-- from the necessarily superficial examination made of their homes the artifacts and weapons found in their strange Graves. The second question is unanswerable— as yet. They may have been wiped out by an epidemic of disease and examination of their withered skin and muscle and bones may reveal what this was. or they may have died out through some weakening of the racial strain. Whatever the cause, it was not warfare. There must have been a period when the dwindling remenants of the tribe lived in a great loneliness. In one of the caves, the searchers found what may be called a page from the end of their volume. And it can be read in part.

We know that the burial ceremonies of this people must have been extremely elaborate. They took their dead and placed them in “pot holes,” [SEE Image Below] which they dug in the floor of their caverns, these pot holes, they lined with a baked clay, and in them they put, doubled up and squatting, the body of the dead. Then they covered the cadaver with beautiful feathers and sometimes rabbit-skin robes, placing beside the man or woman or child arms, ornaments, dishes, and toys. After that, the body was covered with closely woven baskets, the taps of which were covered with sand and earth.

Owing to the peculiar dryness of the caverns, the bodies, instead of decaying, slowly dried

“The flesh,” write Dr. George H Pepper of the American Museum, “wasted away until the skin flattened on the skeleton, leaving their hair and eyebrows intact, with ears, nose and skin on the face and other fleshy parts of the body in so perfect a condition as to be sometimes almost lifelike”

In one case searchers found the withered body of an old woman crouching against the side of the rocky wall. [SEE Image Below] Her hair still retained some of its auburn coloring. The mummy squatted there, and even the centuries had not wiped out from her face and her attitude the seal of resignation and sorrow. They found in this cave seven pot holes in each of which was a body— One of them of a little child. The withered old figure, still sitting so patiently, and bend the last of this family, perhaps the grandmother. One by one she had seen her mate, her children and her grandchildren die, and she had helped to place them away according to the customs and rituals of her people. And at last she was left alone. There she sat and waited for death to come to her— among her own dead. There was no one to bring her food or water, and when at last she died, there was no one to give her the burial which had been afforded her own beloved dead.

Was she the last woman of the red–haired Americans? it is not possible, for had there been others living about her and any of the other caverns, they surely would have prepared her body, even as she had prepared so often others who had passed into the unknown. and if this were so, what must her loneliness have been? In all the world outside, she must have thought that no other being like herself existed. Outside the cave for nothing but prowling beasts and perils. Someone had written that the most awful fear one could feel would be to know one’s self the last living person in the world and then to hear at one’s door someone knocking.

Anticipation of such terror, this old woman of the red haired Americans conceivably experienced, squatting there in the dark cavern alone.

The mummies of Grand Gulch formed the greatest riddle with which anthropologist have had to deal. No other known race has presented such perplexities. They were found while the workers were excavating the cliff dwellings which originally towered along almost the whole stretch of the canyon for fifty miles. Invariably, when they dug down to the sellers of the Cliff Dwellers, then dug through the floors, they would find that there were still beneath, filled-up caves in which a mummy or several mummies were buried in the artificial pot holes, covered with the most primitive basketry known. no pottery whatever was found with the remains. The only weapon found with them was an occasional atlatl, or stick-thrower or spear-thrower, As they have been successively, termed, of the most primitive form of the four types of this weapon. It was noticed by experiment that the stick-thrower could be sent with power just enough to kill a rabbit only.

It was further noted that the skulls in the caves were long heads, while The skulls of the Cliff Dwellers above were flattened behind. These and other puzzles have caused anthropologists to defer decisive investigation in hopes of getting more evidence on which to base conclusive facts. By common consent of the institutions involved, the problem has been left to Mr. Hyde to solve from the scanty material unearthed from time to time. It is doubtful if he will be able to point to a finality without organizing another expedition, with ample means to clean up the whole gulch along its bottom. Such an expedition is certain to be formed and financed directly by the American Museum.

The late Otis T. Mason. of the Smithsonian Institution, took up one phase of the problem, which is regarded as conclusive. He was our great authority on basketry, and at first, the Grand Gulch troglodytes were named “Basket Makers,” but have since been taken out of that class because basket making has never been universal from the beginning. He noted that their basketry was of positively the most primitive coiled type, as distinguished from the more modern woven type. In this, he was supported by Dr. George H. Pepper. He wrote as follows in his great work on basketry published by the Smithsonian institution. “Their baskets were of the coiled type made of willow, the bottoms reinforced with heavy yucca cord border, finished with the ordinary, coiled stitch, but in some the last inch or two was finished off with false braid or herringbone. The type in general is still in used by the Piutes (Paiutes) and Shoshone’s and is seen in ordinary Japanese cinch baskets and baskets of Samoa and straights of Magellan.

“ The coiled type was that Of the most ancient tribes of Egypt, made of palm leaf, excavated by MacIver and Wilkins at El Armah, 6 miles south of the site of Abydoa middle Egypt. It is the oldest type in the world. El Armah dates back to the earliest “new race,” through the entire middle period down to the late prehistoric of Egypt. It was the single type through 6,000 years, extending far up the Nile to Aden and into Hindustan. Long caravans took it into the heart of Africa, where it still persists.”

The presence of the wooden stick, or sperar, and its slight killing power shows completely isolated. No other human beings or tribes could have been near. Had they been they would have been forced to develop a primitive armament.

Dr. George H. Pepper, quoting Richard Wetherill, describes their home as follows: “Grand Gulch drains nearly all the territory southwest of the Elk Mountains, from the McComb Wash to the Clay Hills, about 1,00 square miles or territory. It is the most tortuous canyon in the whole southwest, making bends from 200 to 600 yards apart almost the entire length, or for fifty miles, and each bend means a cave or overhanging cliff. All of those cliffs which have an exposure to the sun have been occupied either for cliff houses or burial places. The canyon is from 300 to 700 feet deep, and in many places tword the lower end the bends are cut through by nature, making natural bridges. Under these bridges in some cases, are houses, and in such places are pictographs in the greatest profusion.

“Ingress and egress is very difficult, there being not more than five or six places where even footman can get into or out of the canyon. Water is fairly plentiful. Springs occur at very frequent intervals, running a short distance and sinking in the sand, perhaps to rise again lower down. Wherever there are slopes a small growth of pinon and cedar occurs; about the springs are cottonwoods, mountain ash and hackberry; in shaded side canyons are mountain ash and hackberry. The usual bush of the canyon is scrub oak. Canes or rushes cover the bottom lands in the vicinity of water.

“This then was the home of the Basket Maker, so afr as we know. The Cliff Dwellers practiced artificial flattening of the head confined to the back portion of the skull, as pronounced in women as men. The skull of the Cliff Dweller was broad, short and flattened; of the Basket Maker narrow, elongate and normal. The Cliff Dweller used the bow and arrow; the burial caves is twenty-two feet in Basket Maker a throwing stick, the nearest or which was found in Chihuahua, Mexdico, in form of the atlantl. There were other implaments peculiar to the Basket Maker. One of which is similar to the rabit stick used by then Hopi Indians to-day.

“The most striking feature was the absence of houses in caves and the mummification of dead in pot holes under baskets. The pot holes, lined with baked clay, were diameter, where skulls and mummies are found, long since filled with sand and debris.”

The Basket Maker rsank below mummies from Pelechuco, Bolivia, excavated by the late Dr. Adolph F. Bandelier for the American Museun. These Bolivians made pottery, a step in advance of the Basket Makers. The next higher type of mummies were found by Dr. Charels W. Cordillera, also for the American Museum, also used for storing grain. The largest of ???? Continued? 

I hope to find the following page to get the rest of the story.... wish me luck... After posting this article I found that a few others have also found this article and created some short snippets... Here you can at least read the entire article as it appeared in 1919.