George McJunkin: The African American Cowboy Who Made A Monumental Impact On American History

In fact, his singular discovery radically changed our understanding of how the North American continent developed in the first place! Something like that belongs in the history books, so why was he forgotten for over 100 years? Let’s find out.

He was an African American cowboy born to enslaved parents in 1856. As he grew up, he took work as a cowboy, taught himself to read, speak Spanish, play the guitar, and be an amateur archeologist. The natural world fascinated him, so he collected plenty of artifacts during his travels.

He moved around a lot, mixing in his buffalo hunting with farm work. Eventually, however, he settled down in Folsom, New Mexico for a while. On the nearby Crowfoot Ranch, he got himself a job as a foreman.

As you might have guessed, Crowfoot wasn’t looking too good. However, in the midst of surveying the wreckage and repairing a broken fence, McJunkin found something that stopped him in his tracks. Like many monumental discoveries, McJunkin had no idea just how monumental it would turn out to be.

McJunkin went to the grave without knowing the full impact of what he found. About five years after his death, however, the archeology world gradually changed its tone. They took note of McJunkin’s discovery, but he wasn’t around to see the praise. 

It’s a life that began in 1856 … if you want to believe his tombstone. However, quite a few other commentators say that George McJunkin’s life began in 1851. Although dates are disputed, everyone agrees he was born in Texas before the Civil War. After the bloody Civil War came to an end, McJunkin decided to head over to New Mexico.

Finally, he was very skilled with ropes. Taken all together, the horseriding, metal work, and rope skills meant that George had all the skills required to work on a ranch. So that’s exactly what he did over in New Mexico. 

He became incredibly skilled at what he did, and pretty soon all the local ranch hands were well aware that he was one of the most talented cowboys around. It didn’t stop there, however. McJunkin also had an insatiable curiosity – especially when it came to learning about science. 

His cowboy partners taught him to identify the letters, understand the punctuation marks, and comprehend entire sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and books. McJunkin loved it. As if the work of being a cowboy and learning to read wasn’t enough, he also practiced speaking Spanish and played the fiddle. 

The ranch was known as Crowfoot Ranch. It was a remote place just outside the small little town of Folsom in northeastern New Mexico. Here was where McJunkin would eventually make a world-shattering discovery. That discovery would later be named after the town of Folsom.

Folsom was not looking good. Water levels surged all throughout the small town, completely overwhelming it. The Folsom flood of 1908 was an absolute disaster. Not only was it the most destructive flood in living memory, but it was also the most destructive flood since records began.

Furthermore, all the houses and bakeries and saloons were completely destroyed by the force of the waters. Residents scampered to their roofs, the highest place they could find, to find safety. Unfortunately, not everyone was so lucky – at least 18 people died that day.

They rode together to get the best picture they could of how the flood affected the entire ranch. It wasn’t pretty. However, somewhere along the way, George’s eye noticed something odd. He looked again to find a newly created waterway that must have formed from the flood. 

Within minutes of investigating the stream, he found something far more interesting than the stream: a pile of bones. Not just any pile, these bones were massive – far larger than the bones of any buffalo he knew.

Instead, they must have belonged to something long dead – an extinct species not seen for who knows how long. Although he didn’t have the specifics to back him up, he had a hunch that this was a remarkable discovery, so he brought back some of the bones.

McJunkin tried to bring the bones to the attention of archeologists and others with a serious interest in the past. However, all his efforts were in vain. For some reason, no one wanted to pay attention to the huge discovery being offered to them. Regardless, George kept on trying for 14 long years. 

Nothing. None of the experts took enough interest in the bones to come to investigate them or the site further. Why? It’s hard to tell, but it is so. In 1922, nearly a decade and a half after his discovery, George McJunkin passed away.

His name was Carl Schwacheim, and he didn’t come alone. Instead, he brought a proper team along to investigate in-depth. Shortly after they arrived, they knew that George was right: this was the home of giant bison bones.

However, in 1926, there was a glimmer of hope. One of Schwacheim’s crew members managed to persuade one of the experts at the Colorado Museum of Natural History to come down to the site for a visit. His name was J. D. Figgins, and he instantly knew the site was important.

In short, they confirmed what McJunkin thought ever since he discovered the bones in 1908: the bones belonged to a species of extinct bison. Furthermore, the crew found that the extinct bison bones weren’t the only bones there. Instead, the remains of 30 other animals were nearby as well!

That may be true. But along the way, Figgins’ crew would discover something even more fascinating about the site: extinct animal bones weren’t the only thing buried there. Something closer to home was as well.

So, while he spent his days excavating and detailing the finds, Figgins also had the idea of ancient North Americans in his mind. However, he never thought the two interests would collide in one convenient place: McJunkin’s site. 

Instead, it was an artifact. As the crew members examined it closer, it became clear that the artifact was the head of a spear. The entire thing was made of stone and buried in the ground long ago.

So, the following year, they went back to the site for a second excavation. Sure enough, they found another spearhead made of stone. They reached out to other archeologists to get a better idea of what was going on there.

Namely, the ancient people were very ancient – far older than any civilizations that people studied at the time. Soon a number emerged to give a precise date to how ancient they were: 11,000 years old!

Back in the first few decades of the 20th century, the most respected archeologists and historians believed that people had been on the North American continent for 3,000 years or so. Finding out that it was actually four times longer must have been mind-blowing.

That being said, many Native Americans didn’t find it as mind-blowing as the archeologists. That’s because they already knew their history went back a lot longer than prestigious archeologists assumed. The Folsom site excavations simply vindicated their knowledge.  

Although it was ultimately in vain during his lifetime, in death, his site was vindicated many times over. Without McJunkin’s discovery, archeologists would have taken a lot longer to understand just how ancient the history of the Americas really is.

And yet, despite his lack of formal qualifications and academic interest, he knew in his gut and through his reading that the site had to be significant. That’s why he tried so hard to spread the word. So why isn’t the name “George McJunkin” better known?

Examining some of their political affiliations yields an uncomfortable answer to the reason for McJunkin’s absence. J.D. Figgins, who headed the excavation, was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. As part of that notorious white supremacy organization, Figgins was uncomfortable giving a Black man any credit.

It was at that time that the author Frank C. Hibben published a book titled The Lost Americans. In it, he claimed that George McJunkin found the bison bones. However, he also claimed that McJunkin found the spearheads as well, and did it all in 1925. 

Agogino wanted to know McJunkin’s exact role in the Folsom site discoveries. So, he set about reading all the material he could and mixed that with oral stories passed from person to person. 

He confirmed it after looking through all the available archives. Later on, Agogino wrote that there wasn’t “a single sentence suggesting that McJunkin found, or even considered, the hand of man in the destruction of the bison.” Although that may seem like it diminishes McJunkin’s role, it respects him by being accurate.

That chapter was in a book that told the story of American prehistory, something that archeologists had precious little knowledge of before the Folsom site was found. Eventually, it grew into a story of how Paleoindians crossed the Bering Strait over 12,000 years ago.

This muddle origin tale contributed to McJunkin’s erasure from history. If only the first archeological crew wrote honestly about how they came to find the Folsom site, all this unpleasantness would have been avoided.

And, although it took a very long time, that finally came to be. In 2019, almost a century after his death, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum added George McJunkin to its Hall of Great Westerners. He’s in great company, remembered alongside other cattlemen, ranch managers, and historians as well as business leaders and politicians.

Then, it took another 20-some-odd years before his name was attached to the discovery. After that, it would be another 73 years or so before he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners. As a cowboy, George knew how to be patient – but a century is a bit too long.

The same has happened to many other minorities who made important discoveries throughout history. As Stephan Nash wrote in his Sapiens article, the “credit often goes to the powerful and connected, not to the people who actually do the work.”

Despite his monumental discovery – a discovery that fundamentally rewrote our understanding of American prehistory –, he was forgotten for many years. Unfortunately, a lot of that “forgetting” had to do with McJunkin’s race – the fact that he was a black man in a white man’s world.

Whether that’s true or not, we can never know because George is long gone. However, his spirit, his “inquiring mind, intrepid spirit, and perseverance” lives on to this day. In between speaking Spanish, playing the fiddle, and managing a ranch, McJunkin transformed archeology forever.