||| FROM NANCY STILLGER for ORCAS ISLAND HISTORICAL MUSEUMS |||
16,000 years ago bison grazed in the meadows of Orcas Island. 14,000 years ago human beings harvested, butchered and ate bison meat in a meadow near Olga on Orcas Island, Washington State. Even today an artistic interpretation of a bison (created by George Post) grazes peacefully with living sheep at Fowler’s Corner on Orcas Island.
Some of the most complete skeletal remains of prehistoric bison ever discovered were unearthed in 2003 in an excavation in Olga. The bones, which were carefully gathered and brought to the Burke Museum at the University of Washington for evaluation, were carbon-dated at University of California, Irvine and said to be about 14,000 years old. Archeological staff identified a large male bison, with head almost completely intact, a smaller male, and one other. Some of the bones bore evidence of butchering with some kind of stone tools.
At this point the bones were returned to the Orcas Island Historical Museum. Facsimiles were made to display, and the originals were safely stored.
A new installation featuring the bison presence and the significance of these particular bones will become part of the museum’s permanent exhibits, and open to the public on July 28, announced Museum Executive Director Nancy Stillger. Key sponsors for the exhibit include the Humanities Washington, Orcas Island Community Foundation, Island Hardware & Supply, Orcas Island Food Co-op, San Juan County Lodging Tax Funds, Bond
Lumber – Andrew Stephens, Tony and Nancy Ayer, Antoinette Botsford and Vance Stephens. The new exhibit has been designed by Chris Erlich and is being realized by museum staff, numerous volunteers, and local craftspeople.
“The significance of this discovery cannot be underestimated,” said Carol Kulminski, President of the Museum’s Board of Directors. “Nowhere else has such a complete skeleton been found. The evidence of human presence shows that people were here long before the Clovis-first model.”
“This discovery helps to validate Indigenous tales of antiquity,” noted Antoinette Botsford, exhibit chair.
Museum hours are Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 11 a.m. – 3 p. m. and Saturday 11 a.m. – 2 p. m. Requested donation on entrance is $5.
To add to what Carol Kulminski said, the Orcas bison find added to the growing evidence that humans first came to the Americas by boat (more exactly kayaks and umiaks) along the Pacific shores of North American, NOT on foot through an opening between the Cordilleran and Laurentian Ice Sheets, which happened later.
The suggestion that the Burke Museum somehow contributed to the Ayer Pond Bison research is simply not true. The Burke Museum has had no involvement in the identification, analysis, interpretation, dating, or documentation of these bones. None.
In fact, when I originally took the bones to the Burke and asked for technical assistance I was told by the museum curator that they could not be involved because the discovery “had been illegally excavated”.
Research proceeded successfully in spite of the Burke museum not because of it.