Bear Grease - Ep. 28: The Folsom Site - The Amazing Life of George McJunkin (Part 1)

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

Born a slave in the 1850s, George McJunkin became an accomplished cowboy under the most trying of circumstances. He was self educated and had a life-long thirst for knowledge of the natural world. His life was wrought with accomplishment, as well as tragedy and injustice. In 1908, he discovered what would become the Folsom archeological site. On this episode we’ll mine into the old cowboys life to be inspired by who he was, be introduced to one of the most spectacular Bison kill sites ever found, and learn how a freed slave revealed this archeological find to the world without ever knowing it.Connect with Clay and MeatEaterClay on InstagramMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop Bear Grease Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. He clearly had a lot of social tack and self-confidence that probably was unusual. His 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 of the Bear Grease podcast, we're exploring the life of an extraordinary human who overcame the social norms of his time to become a hollow. 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. You always had that, you know, wonder where did we come from, where, you know, why 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 Greece podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight in unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.

presented by FHF Gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Matt, tell me where we're at. What's this? We're here at the Folsom Museum in Folsom, New Mexico, and it's a mercantile store and bank, and it was built in 1886, or 89, I guess. And this was your family's building? Yeah. Oh, my great-great-grandfathers. He came from Ireland back about the turn of the century

and ran a bank in a mercantile store here. So you guys have been toughing it out here for, you know, 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 4,000 pieces. What's the most prized possession in here? I don't know. It would probably have to be some of the Folsom points. We have stuff from Charles Goodnight, some buffalo skulls from, you know, the extermination of the Buffalo in the 1860s, and a prehistoric buffalo skull from about 9,000 years ago. go, lots of different things. And then lots of George McJunkin stuff. Yeah, we have his hat, some branding

irons used, a 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 knew 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 passed like water through fingers and 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 Dowdery. His family has been in Folsom, Newport,

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 at about the same time period, and it looks pretty similar to the one in all the pictures. That'd be a Beaver felt hat? Yeah, I would imagine. It's what all the real cowboys wore. Yeah. Yep, none of these beanie that they wear 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 want to know who you were. If George McJunkin could attach one label to himself,

I think he'd call himself a cowboy, but there's more. The bronze statue over there is what they gave him when they inducted him into the Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2019. So. 100 years. Yeah. Post-humus. Right? Well, better late than ever.

But, yeah, and he never even knew what he actually discovered anyway. That's the wildest thing about him is he never He never would have known that anything he did Had any, you know, national or global significance Yeah, and he was a pretty smart guy And he actually, you know, pondered that exact thought His whole life, you know, where people come from And he's really interested in that kind of thing

So it's a shame that he didn't find out What he actually discovered In 2019, Matt accepted on behalf of George A bronze statue when he was a bronze statue when he was inducted into the National Hall of Great Westerners, also known as the Cowboy Hall of Fame. But you see, George wasn't a regular Hollywood cowboy as one might envision. George was black.

Here's a clip of George's induction. Please join me in honoring George McChunkin with his induction into the Hall of Great Westerners being accepted by Matt Doherty and Abby Reeves from the Folsom Museum in New Mexico. The museum is dedicated to McJunkin's contributions to history. Good evening. Thank you. I'm honored 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 would be like, what it would take to become good cowboys, and more importantly, good men. George bestowed on my great-great-grandfather lessons that are still being passed down to my children seven generations later. I really wish George was here to see the impact that his life made, but George was a man well ahead of his time,

but it's his honesty, grit, and perseverance that he'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 perused the museum, I jumped in the truck and drove about 10 miles out of Folsom. We pulled through the gate of a ranch,

and my chauffeur jumped out of the truck and told me he wanted to show me something. We're overlooking a broad valley surrounded by Rimrock Bluffs, Juniper's, and some open country. It's beautiful. We're located on the Hereford Park Ranch in northeast of New Mexico. And actually we're right on the Union County, Coffax 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 hide wrapped around his Willie Nelson-style braids. The jingle of Spurs tell you he's a. cowboy. He's a long-time resident of Folsom, New Mexico, and acts almost like a guardian of George McJunkin's character and legacy. Both he and Matt talk about George like he's their brother. And looking at this valley, if you look down there, you can see the house. That house is a landmark in this part of the country. He's been here for well over 100 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 but that's Wild Horse Arroyo and that's the location of the site. And George, unfortunately, he found the bones and realized that they were probably bison bones, but he'd never seen any that big before. So he knew something was unusual about him. But before anybody came back and actually did an 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. 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 George'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 up the wild horse Oroyo 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. The flood had actually.

washed away much of the town of Folsom 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 reversed the process and uncovered what had been hidden for over 10,000 years buried 10 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 archaeologist from Ritone went to find the bones that George spoke of, and he was shocked. In 1927, five years after George's death, the site would be high. hailed by the leading archaeologists in the United States as the most significant archaeological 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 finds 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 hunt. the skeletons of 32 bison antiquis and extinct species of bison. But what would put it into 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 fulsome points. Paleontologists knew bison antiquist. had 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 archaeological world, and the site would become known as the Folsom site. Dr. David Meltzer is an archaeologist 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 on to this newly incised, more deeply incised portion of the Arroyo there, and he sees bones at the bottom. Best we can tell from the very, very, very few photographs we have of when the site was first discovered, you know, this is 10 feet, 12 feet below the surface. He sees bones sticking out. Now, you know, 99 out of 100 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 100 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 isn't a cow, it's a buffalo, and he must have sensed that it was an interesting or distinctive. I mean, these were big animals, right? These Pleistocene bison were probably about, oh, estimates, you know, 15 to 20 percent 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 McJunkin would have 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. His parents were slaves. He was born in Texas.

He was a buffalo hunter, an excellent cowboy. boy. He didn't know how to read or write. He was self-educated, learned a reading right, and was very interested in archaeology and geology and those kind of things. At a time and 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 ex-confederates here, you know, and But one thing about cowboys, and it holds true today, for the most part, if they're good cowboys, you don't see color. You just, you know, if they're a good cowboy, they're a good cowboy, or a good bronch 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 Folsom 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 in this part of the country and highly respected for his ability as a cowboy, but also as a self-made man in a really tough time of history for a black manhood to get an education, you know. And he was the foreman of this ranch. Usually, you didn't go to a ranch and find a black foreman.

Over the next couple of podcasts, we're going to become George McJunkin and Folsom Sight 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 McJunkin Ranch and took his slave owner's last name. 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 Mr. Shoeboy. 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 in 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 his 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 of 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 guys who are connected to him. Here's Matt and Kyle. So Matt, you've lived in Folsom.

your whole life. So your family would have known George McJunkin. 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 Dr. Owen. So your grandfather was Dr. Owens?

He would be my great-great-great-grandfather. So I think my kids are the seventh generation here on the ranch, Dr. Owens' granddaughter. Does your grandfather ever talk about George McJunkin, 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 would be my great-grandmother. She kept all the notes, and I guess she realized that it was a pretty important deal. So she kept all the letters and correspondence between them and stuff.

George was born in 1850, 50, 50 or so. I don't think they're real certain on the date about 10 years before the start of the Civil War, so that I'd 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 became trained as a cowboy because all the white cowboys were all fighting in the Civil War. Exactly.

Is that what you understood, Kyle? Well, from an early age, from what I read, he showed a keen interest in horses. and they started him out, like 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, W.O. Dordy, but he said, you know, he remembered George in his old age,

still being the best hand with a horse on the ranch, you know. There was talk of a school being built. for black children near the McJunkin Ranch, but it never happened. George knew he 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 a note, or told the neighbors, I guess. He said, just tell my folks that I went looking for some school and I'm going west to be a cowboy.

And took off down the 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 what he took off on. And, you know, once he got outside of Comanche at the head of the cattle drives, you know, going north to Abilene, he ended up acquiring a horse and just 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 horse. 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, you know, and wait out the winter. It turned out that when they were there in town, he had started talking to him. And conversation led to him being a Broncbuster. And basically it led to another bet that he couldn't ride this big gray mare, you know, and he got on it and made one of the best bronch rides that Roberts had seen.

And, you know, basically secured his job from there bringing him. bringing him west so that's how he got into this country. And now 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 this, he would have got the job with the same year, you know, it was as soon as he returned back. Yeah, probably before he was 20.

Yeah, so he was just a teenager. He didn't know how to read or write, but the Cowboys took him under their wing, 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 he 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 or 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 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 say this, there was extreme prejudices against former slaves. And if you had a young black man that could outright every cowboy on the outfit, they'd have to eat a little crow to admit that he might. of being the best cowboy amongst them. If a black cowboy had better ability than most of the cowboys in the outfit, and a lot of 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 he was an exceptional young man, there would have been extreme prejudice right after the Civil War. Yeah. Well, he clearly had a lot of social tack and 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, you know, make a legend out of himself by being the kind of person that he was. What would he have been so good at to have been known as such a great cowboy?

Like, what skill set would he have had? I think the thing that he's most famous for her, and I think Matt will agree, was him breaking and handling horses. He had a soft touch, and he could ride horses that other people couldn't. All cowboys look up to somebody that can take a bronch 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, 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, while all the white guys were off fighting during the Civil War.

And he was around all the Valkeros and, you know, the Hispanic culture where he became fluent in Spanish too. So that was a big, big leg up in life for him moving to this area. He was trained by Mexican cowboys, vicaros. And they're actually where the cowboys derive 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 invaded Spain. They held Spain for 800 years. They taught the Spaniards how to make steel, like the Toledo blades that are so famous.

They also taught them leather braiding and horsemanship. So the Moors were in Spain for 800 years when they finally pushed them back across the Gibraltar Straits. Spain had become a horse nation. They became the bullfighters and the mounted warriors. So when Spain brought their horseback technology to the new world, scared the Indians' death. They'd never see anything like that. For a long time, it was against Spanish law

to ever let an Indians straddle a horse. They could feed them and curry them and stuff, but they weren't supposed to ride them because they knew if the Indians ever learned how to 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 spread from Mexico to Canada.

Probably right through the same corridor. Yeah, right? The Folsom sites on and, you know, Charles Goodnight came across the same path, going through Trincherra to 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 your stock can go. When you drive cattle, you want to drive them slow enough. As they're driving to the north and eating, they're gaining weight.

If you drive them too fast, they're either staying the same or. losing weight. So you've got to know just the right pace and the terrain to take them through. Usually about 10 miles a day was going pretty good. And this area was just a corridor. So there's a, is there a gap in the mountains here? Yeah, there's like three gaps. Basically, this area is a geographical crossroad. It's a good cattle driving country. For the same reason, the Pleistocene bison hunters were here too. Animals and humans move. across the landscape just to 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, and this was the Wild West. You know, this is probably more happened in the high-low country, in this. this quadrant of New Mexico than anywhere else. That's right. Vegas was way more wild than Dodd City or Halloween or even Deadwood.

Well, they even sent some of the former marshals from Dodge City to Las Vegas to try to clean it up, you know, like Batmantersson and Bill Hickok and some guys like that had pretty famous names. And when you say Las Vegas, we're not talking. New Mexico. New Mexico. Las Vegas, New Mexico. The first Las Vegas.

Yeah. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps games. calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts now i'm going to tell you i love mine because it's easy to use i'm not going to go i'm not going to win a turkey calling contest it's just not going to happen but when i run this call i get the sounds that gobblers are looking for i have a great turkey hunting track record if you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods they're not going to win calling contests right that's who i listen to i can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts.

Check out Prime Cuts at Phelps Game Calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. This was wild cowboy country, but it was also Comanchee 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 McKenzie finally figured out how to get down into Paladuro Canyon, which was the stronghold of the Quahadi, Comanches, and Quana Parker was their leader. They had always been able to protect their places there. Finally, they got down there. They didn't capture very many Comanches, but it was right 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 that had all their winter supplies. And a few months later, the once proud horseback nation that ruled the Southern Plains had to walk into Fort Seale, Oklahoma, and surrender to the army because they were starving. That's the only way they ever got them out of there. They had to kill their horses.

Comanchee afoot, ain't no Comanchee. And they can't fight, they can't hunt without horses. So in order to save what was left of their population, they had to surrender. Wow. And he would have been coming through that same area, you know, in Paladuro, when they were, you know, kind of at the peak of their power. Yeah, George would have. Yeah. So he, and actually, like I said, they stole all of the horses and stuff and should have killed him,

but his saddle horse ran off with his gun and everything when they stole 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, lucky to be here. Well, he's, if he hadn't been black, they'd have killed him. Oh, 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 Comanchee. So, yeah, this was just a wild, a wild, wild country. Yeah. And this is where George McJunkin 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. It's just crazy that they can

fight a war to, you know, free one group of people and then turn around within the same year. You know, have a huge campaign to annihilate a whole other ethnicity. Yeah. You know, with Indian wars and it's the same people that just freed one. You know, it's kind of a contradictory kind of history, you know. George was a naturalist. He was fascinated by the natural world, and it's kind of ironic that he unknowingly discovered such an important archaeological site

while doing his routine duties on the ranch. So George, he had a lifelong passion for learning. When he was out with the 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, you had 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, to Dr. Owen's book collection. So back then, you know, we didn't have the internet and all this, you know, right at the tip of our fingers. So he had to, you know, access to all these books and just be able to pick the minds of, you know, 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 archaeology and geology. And there are a lot of petroglyphs and stuff like this part of the country, campsites. I mean, this is an archaeological 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, you know, why are there people here? It's a shame that he didn't really fully realize what discovered. You know, I think going back to that idea that George McJunkin was thinking about where humans came from, he found a human skull. Yeah, and that was on his way into the area, and he knew it was Comanchee, too, and he was pretty scared to even pick it up and stuff.

They said he put it in a bag of beans in the chuck wagon hoping they wouldn't catch him with it. But, yeah, he kept that his whole life. and there's a picture of his house. Yeah, I mean, it's... Well, you can see the picture of him standing by his mantle. You can see the skull there on the mantle. You can just imagine him sitting 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 had good timing, I guess. You know, there's 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 at the right place at the right time and impacted American history really in several different occasions. Yeah. You know, and it's just a shame that it's an unsung hero. Outlaws, you say? Once while George was outriding, he came across a suspicious camp.

He went and talked to the guys and got a bad vibe. He reported the men to the law, and turns out they were a notorious outlaw band of train robbers who were later captured and convicted. fist bump to George. Even though George didn't know about his discovery and how important it was, 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 brunk rider in this part of the country. He wasn't a show off. He was just a good person.

Yeah. You know, people love George McJunkin. I mean, now we're talking about him, but like locally, Like there's accounts of, there's one story I remember where he was in a restaurant. Presumably here in Folsom. At the Rock Hotel that he actually died in just down the street. Tell me that story. Okay, we're there, and there's a new guy in town, you know, just bought a ranch or something. He came in and they were sitting there and George was eating and stuff. And he said, you know, I'm not going to eat with a black man, you know.

You can't sit here. And yeah, so his buddies, you know, that were right there that said, oh, we'll handle this for you. And they took him and threw his ass out outside. in the mud and they were going to whip him and George actually came out and stopped him. That's right. George looked out and they had a whip and we're 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 he 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 Carlitos Corni told him, oh, 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 that George had just... Yes, he sold to George. And then George said, don't whip him. 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 I'd have had 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 his 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, there's still bullet hole. holes 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 buddy pulls out his pistol, throws it down on the table and says, looks like your policy changed and so it did. So they serve 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, Dr. Malachi Nichols. He's been on the render several times, and he taught me about correlations. Malachi is 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 George'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, there's a, there's a famous day called Juneteenth inside of the black culture. and it's the day that Lincoln freed the slaves and, you know, the news got down to the slaves. And so, you know, we still celebrate it. That's in Midland. Yeah, that's in Midland, Texas, right? There's a parade that we do that goes, starts one place and travels all the way to the park. And at the end of the line, every year, there were black cowboys. Black cowboys on big horses that kind of finished the parade. And that kind of stood out to me as, hey, I don't.

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, right? 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 George, in all the black cowboys during 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, 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, he, he had a lot of tack with people. Like, he, he genuinely seemed to understand people and was able to work with all kinds of people from doctors, right. To ranch owners, to Mexican vicaros, to outlaws. He used a lot of, a lot of

skill to get where he did. And it probably took some stretching his comfort zone, I'm sure. I think, you know, what you're, what you're hitting on is, 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. Yeah. They just saw whether you were a good cowboy or not, whether you're a hard worker, whether you're skilled. And it's like character sees character. Okay, here's the biggest question, though, Malika. 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 like it. I really 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. 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, right? To sleep outside when it's cold. It's something that I don't sign up to do. And I value that, that ability to forego human comfort in just, in just living life.

So sometimes I do. You have been coon hunting with me. I have. I have. And that was a- We got to get you on a mule. That was a, that was a, that was a temporary. hut. You're right? This is a good place to do a little cleanup on George'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 Dr. Owens, who is some of Matt's kin. George and Dr. Owens had a good relationship, and he recognized who George was and 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 his saddle,

and he said, pretty hot day for that kind of work, isn't it? The comment incited a scuffle that involved George getting bucked off his horse. The men ran off leaving the beat-up dude there thanking George for saving his life. Turns out that guy was a cavalryman in the army. In 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 winter cattle drive and a historic snowstorm rolled in and the temperatures plummeted, causing a total whiteout 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 1,200 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 deer-skinned coat that he designed and 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 Archilada's place. Will you sell me two sheepskins? He asked. Of course, my friend, Candido replied. I'm going to make a coat. The ones in the store aren't warm enough and they're 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 deerskin 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 there 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. He had his own 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 and burned it down with his prized possession is the bison skull the comanji skull all his books his you know his life was there lost everything and it's kind of ironic because he always joked about oh lightning won't hit a black guy so you know that caught him but so then he ended up coming to town the stone hotel here in town uh was kind of like a bachelor pad for all these old cowboys that had known to take care of him and he got a room there and ended up you know dying there when he came down with 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 the hotel just a couple months i guess last wow so his house burned down

then he moved to the fulsome hotel which i mean like we're basically looking at through 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 uh And 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. So there was the jail, too. Black Jack Ketchum was held in that same hotel. It's just down the hall.

So, and, you know, the story of him throwing the guy out and preventing him from being whipped, same place. So it's kind of a hot spot, I guess. Right in the back of the hotel was the bucket of blood saloon, which there were several gunfights at. One time, a city marshal shot and killed. right there in Matt's driveway at the bucket of blood saloon, right, Matt? Yeah, and there's several shootings there. Yeah. Have you ever gotten a fight there, Matt?

Yeah, I think the wildest days of the place are still yet to come, you know? Well, there's a couple of us outlawed well. I'm impacted by stories of people overcoming all varieties of obstacles to accomplish great things in their life. George was a gritty son of a gun, an intellectual, a voracious, learner and someone who didn't bow to the social norms. He used his character, work ethic, and genuine care for people to overcome the mainstream social norms of the day. But what's so sad and even hard to understand why is when he died in his mid-60s, he would never know that 100

years later we'd still be talking about him. And we haven't even uncovered the incredible details of the ancient bison kill site he found that rewrote our understanding of human history. Justice is an odd thing. We all want it but often it's just out of reach. We don't

have the power to go back and change history or tell George or give him any credit for what he did. But with what I do have, I would like to do this as a symbolic gesture. I'm officially extending

a post-humist invitation to George McJunkin to be a feature guest on the Bear Grease podcast. That would have been a cool interview. Thanks so much for listening to Bear Greece. I can't thank you enough for following along. Please share our podcast with a buddy this week if you can. On the next episode, we'll talk with the nation's leading expert on the Folsom site and dive in deep into ancient human history.

It's going to be wild. If you get a chance, plan a trip through Folsom, New Mexico. To visit the Folsom Museum, just don't take your horse or dog in there. And you can also see the Folsom Hotel. Matt's mom has a pretty cool VRBO that you can stay in. And when you're there, tell Matt and Kyle that I said, hey. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called Prime Cuts.

Now I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut.

I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did. And you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.