00:00:00 Speaker 1: M He clearly had a lot of social tech 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 were exploring the life of an extraordinary human who overcame the social norms of his time to become a Hall 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 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 Nukelem and this is the Bear Grease Podcast where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land, presented by f HF Gear American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Matt, tell me, tell me where we're at. We're here at the Folsom Museum and Folsom in Mexico. And uh, it's a mercantile and store and bank and it was built in eighteen six or eight nine, 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 uh rent a bank in mercantile store here. So you guys have been toughen it out here for you know, hundred hundred thirty years or so. Yeah, pretty much. The Fulsome Museum is one of those places you'd stopped 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 four thousand pieces. What's the most prized possession in here. I don't know. We probably have to be some of the folsom points. We have stuff from Charles Goodnight, Um, some buffalo skulls from you know, the extermination of the buffalo in the eighteen sixties, and a prehistoric buffalo skull from about nine thousand years ago. Lots of different things, and lots of George mcjunkin and stuff. Yeah, we have his hat, some branding irons used 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. It 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 Dowdry. His family has been in Folsom, New Mexico for a long time and they know a lot about this town's history. It's deep history. So this is George McJunkins is old hat? Is that right? Yeah? We we think so. It was found in the hotel you know where he died in the same room, in a in a box that about the same time period. And it looks pretty similar to wanting all the pictures, so be a beaver felt hat. Yeah, I would imagine it's what all the real cowboys wore. Yep, none of these beanies that they were 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 hue in 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 attack 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 broad statue over there is what they gave him when they inducted him into the Cowboy Hall of Fame and dozen nineteen, so posthumous, right, a little better late than ever. But yeah, and he never even knew what he actually discovered anyways. So 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 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 didn't find out what do you actually discovered? In twenty nineteen, Matt accepted on behalf of George 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 the clip of George's induction. Please join me in honoring George mcjunkin with his induction into the Hall of Great Westerners being accepted by Matt Doherty at Abby Reeves from the Fulsome Museum in New Mexico. The museum is dedicated to McJunkins contributions to history. Good evening, Thank you. I'm honored to be here accepting this prestigious award for a person I considered 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 would be like? What did you 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, great and perseverance that he will be remembered by a 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 ten miles out of Folsome 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 rim rock bluffs, junipers, and some open country. It's beautiful. We're located on the Herford Park Ranch in northeastern New Mexico and Union. Actually we're right on the Union County Colfax 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 longtime resident of Fulsom, New Mexico, and acts almost like a guardian of George McJunkins character and legacy. Both he and Matt talked 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 landmark in this part of the country has been here for well over a hundred 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 Beaute up there. When you get up there, about halfway between here and that Beaute, that's wild Horse Royo and that's the location of the side and George, unfortunately, he found the bump and realized that they were probably bison bones, but we've never seen any of that big before they 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, but it didn't while he was living on This episode will 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 night. George was in his mid to late fifties. He was riding a horse up the wild Horse arroyo 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 washed away much of the town of Fulsome when fourteen inches of rain fell in just a few hours and eighteen 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 ten thousand years, buried ten ft 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 thirteen years, he told many people about his find and urged them to come see it, but no one came for years. In January of nineteen twenty two, George passed away, and three months after his death, an amateur archaeologists from Atone went to find the bones that George spoke of, and he was shocked. In nineteen twenty seven, five years after George's death, The site would be hailed by the leading archaeologists in the United States as the most significant archaeological find of all time in North America. It proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that humans had inhabited North America for over ten thousand 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 fines 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 skeletons of thirty two 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 antiquois 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 Fulsome Site. Dr David Meltzer is an archaeologist and the national authority on the Folsome site. He's a professor at s m U in Dallas, Texas. We're gonna 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 onto this newly in size, more deeply in sized portion of the arroyo there, and he sees bones at the bottom. Best we can tell from you know, the very very very few photographs we have of when the site was first discovered. You know, this is ten ft twelve feet below the surface. He sees bones sticking out. Now, you know, out of a hundred cowboys looked 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 a hundred 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 in the cow, it's a buffalo. And he must have sensed that it was that it was an interesting or distinctive I mean it is. These were big animals, right these these places seen bison were probably about, oh estimates, you know, fifteen larger than modern bison. And if he had seen one of the big cows down in the bottom of that arroyo, um, 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 that took notice. Here's Kyle again, giving us a further look into who George was. He was born, his parents were slaves, He's born in Texas. It was a buffalo hunter, an excellent cowboy. He didn't know how to read or write. He was self educated, learned to read and write, and was very interested in archaeology and gall g and those kind of things at a time in 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 if they're good cowboys, you don't see color. You just 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, they're 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 Georgie's room. So yeah, Matt from the Falsome Museum, he lives in what was formerly the Falsome Hotel. It's a really cool looking old building. To say these guys are connected to George is an understatement. He's very well thought of in this part of the country and uh and highly respected for his ability as a cowboy, but also as a self made man in a really tough time of history too for a black man dude to get an education, you know. And he was the foreman of this ranch, and usually he didn't go to a ranch and find a black foreman. Over the next couple of podcasts were going to become George mcjunkin and fulsome site 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 a message. George was born sometime in the early to mid eighteen fifties. No one really knows. He was born a slave near Midway, Texas. He lived and worked on the junking 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. Shoe Boy. 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 George's early teens, the Civil War was raging in the United States. He lived on a ranch, and young George showed great aptitude and 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 nineteenth, eighteen sixty five, federal soldiers came to town to proclaim that the slaves were free. It's believed George was around fourteen 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 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 fulsome your whole life, your so your family would have known George mcjuncan. Yeah, the picture of him standing on the porch. You know, if 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 Owen's granddaughter. Does your grandfather father ever talked about George mcjunkan 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 would be my great grandmother. She kept all the notes, and I guess she realized that it was a pretty important important deal, so she kept all the letters and correspondence between him and stuff. George was born in eighteen fifty or so. I don't think they're real certain on the date, about ten years before the start of the Civil War, so that I would put it right about fifty two or so. Yeah, and he would He would later become known as a very skilled cowboy. And it's so interesting because he was he became trained as a cowboy because all the white cowboys were all fighting in the Civil War. Exactly is that what you understood? 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. Doherty, but he said, you know, he remembered George in his old age still being the best hand with the horse on the ranch. There was talk of a school being built for black children near the junking ranch, but it never happened. George knew you had to make something happen in his life without his parents approval. At the age of seventeen, he left home in the night in search of schooling and to work on the cattle drive. 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 today, I went looking for some school and I'm going west to be a cowboy. And took off down the road barefooted, and he ran into a group of horses that he knew were from that ranch and mc jenkins ranch. He uh 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 commanche at the at the head of uh the cattle drives, you know, going north to Abilene. He ended up acquiring a horse and the horse wrangler for 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 road horses, not mules, and later in life he'd own and ride as good of horses 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 Falsome 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 uh, 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 the conversation led to him being a bronch buster and and basically led to another bet that he couldn't ride this big gray mayor you know, when he got on it and made one of the best bronk rides that the Roberts had seen and you know, basically secured his his job from there, bringing them bringing them west. So that's that's how he got into 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 seventeen, and so this he would have got the job with the same year. You know, it was as soon as he returned back, probably before he was twenty. He was just a teenager, and before 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 to alphabet and had 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 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 him these ideas of independence and that just self worth. What what would it have been like for him though? I mean that time period for black Americans would have been a I mean 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 he is. There was extreme prejudice against former slaves. And if you had a young black man that could outride every cowboy on the outfit, they'd have to eat a little crow to ad meant that he might have been the best cowboy amongst him. If a black cowboy had better ability than most of the cowboys in the outfit, and love 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 were been extreme prejudice right after the Civil War. Yeah, well, he clearly had a lot of social tech 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 what would he have been so good at to being known as such a great cowboy? Like what skill set would he have had? I think the thing that he's most famous for, 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 bronx and turn it into a horse that anybody can ride and use on the ranch. You know, can't everybody to do that. And one of that stuff is just something that you 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, you know, while all the white guys were off fighting during the Civil War, and he was around all the Bucarro's and you know the spinning 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 and they're they're actually where the cowboys that derived 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 eight hundred years. They taught to Spaniards how to make steel like the Toledo blades that are so famous. They also taught him leather braiding and horsemanship. So the Moors were in Spain for eight hundred years. When they finally pushed him back across the Gibraltar Straits, Spain had become a horse nation. They became the bullfighters and the mounted warriors. So when they when Spain brought their horseback technology to the New War Old scared the Indians death. They've never seen anything like that. For a long time. It was against Spanish law to ever let an Indian straddle of horse. They could feed them and curry them and stuff, but they wasn't supposed to ride them because they knew if the Indians ever to learn 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 two hundred years they spread from Mexico to Canada and probably right through the same corridor right exactly, fulsome sights on and you know, Charles Goodnight came across the same past going through Trania to Colorado. So 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 their gaining weight. If you drive them too fast, they're either staying the same or loosing way. You gotta know, just the usually about ten miles a day was going pretty good. And this this area was just a corridor. So there's a is there a gap in the mountains here, there's like three gaps. Basically, this area is a geographical crossroad. It's good cattle driving country for the same reason the pleist to seen bison hunters were here too. Animals and humans moving across the landscape just end up here, just like a deer hunter setting up in a place where multiple trails intersect. The same thing brought George here that ten thousand years prior had brought those ancient hunters. And while we're straddling to 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 this in the high Low country, in this quadrant of New Mexico than anywhere else in Vegas. Was way more wild than Dodge City. Or they even sent some of the former marshals from Dodge City to Las Vegas to try to clean it up, you know, like bat Master Soon, Billy Hickock, and some guys like that. They had pretty famous names when you say Las Vegas, New Mexico, Las Vegas, the first Las Vegas. 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 Mackenzie finally figured out how to get down into Palladuro Canyon, which was the stronghold of the Quahati Comanches, and Corna Parker was their leader. They had always been able to protect their place there. Finally they got down there. They didn't capture very many Comanches, but it's right before winter, and they did something they'd never done before, but it worked. They killed all the Indians horses. They let him pick out a few to keep the officers and stuff, and they shot the rest of them. And 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 Sill, 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. Commanch your foot ain't no Comanche, 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, and he would have been coming through that same area, you know, in Palladero when they were, you know, kind of at the peak of their power. George would have. Yeah, so he and actually they, like I said, they stare off of the horses and stuff and should have killed him. But they 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, that had he killed him. 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 he had some pretty intense skirmishes with the Comanche. So yeah, this was just a wild a wild, wild country. That's and this is where George mcjuncan 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 too, you know, free it one group of people and then turned around within the same year. Can you know, have a huge campaign to annihilate a whole another ethnicity, you know, with Indian wars and the same people that just freed one. You know, it's kind of a contradicting. 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 he they taught him how to look at the stars to tell the time, and he became yet a lifelong obsession with star gazing 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 access to all these books and 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's a lot of picture glyphs and stuff like that in part of this part of the country camp site. I mean, this is an archaeological haven right here. Yeah, and he was you know, smart enough to know and curious. You know, you could see different things and 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, 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 in to the area, and he knew it was Comanche too, and he was pretty scared to even pick it up and stuff they said he put it in the bag of being in the chuck wagon, hoping they wouldn't catch him with it. But yeah, he kept out his whole life. You know. When there's a picture of Mantle, yeah, I mean it's so you can see the picture of him standing by his man, or he can see the skull here on the man. 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 was you know, had good timing. I guess. You know, there's certain people and that you come across that just always seemed to be in the right place at the right time. And he 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 he was just always the right place the right time and and impacted American history really several different occasions, you know, and it's uh just to same that he's it's an unsung hero outlaws, you say. Once, while George was out writing, 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 trained robbers who were later captured and convicted. Fist bumped to Georgia, even though George didn't know about his discovery and how important it would 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 bronk rad in this part of the country. He wasn't a show off. He was just a good person. Yeah, you know, people loved George mcjunkin. I mean, now we're talking about him, but like locally, like there there's accounts of there's one story I remember where he was in a restaurant presumably here in fulsome at the Rock Hotel that he actually died in. Just this tell me that story. Hey, we're there, And then there's a new guy in town, you know, just butter rants or something. He came in and they were sitting there and George was eating and stuff, and he said, you know, I'm I'm not gonna eat with a black man. You know, you can't sit here and yeah, and so his buddies, you know that right there, they said, oh, we we'll handle this for you. And they took him and threw his outside in the mud and they were going to whip him, and George actually came out and 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 was. But then it was even funnier because that guy was having a welcoming party for everyone in the community, you know, and I couldn't find any musician, so I think it was Carlitos. Corn I 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 so this is the guy, this is the guy that George had just didn't and then George said, don't whip him, and then he went and played fiddle at his party exactly. So it's 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 we're white, and I think there was an Hispanic guy with him, and they've been known to shoot up the bar, not George, but the guy he was with, So they're kind of rough guys. Yeah, I mean there's still bull whole Yeah, in the 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 there, and so his buddy pulls out his pistol throws it down on the table and says, it looks like your policy changed, and so it did. So they served 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 renders several times and he taught me about correlations. Malachi's 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 aspired to be. I can remember when I was young, um, and there's a there's a there's a famous day called June tenth inside of the black culture, and is the day that that Lincoln freed the slaves. And you know, the news got down to the slaves and so you know, we still celebrate it. Yeah, that's in Midland, Texas, right, there's a parade that we do um that goes starts one place and travels all the way to 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 never hear about black spin cowboys and George this 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, for who you should be and 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 we like to differentiate each other. We like to find associations, right, We 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 and George in all the black cowboys during that time, and they would have met opposition, maybe more so in that world than in others, just because of the nature of it, but they were just up for the task. I mean, you see inside of George's life that he had a lot of had a lot of self confidence, he had, 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 to ranch owners to Mexican Vaccaro's too 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 recognize this 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. They just saw whether you were a good cowboy, whether you're a hard work or whether you're skilled. And it's like character sees character. Okay, here's the biggest question, though, Alica, 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 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 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 old is something that I don't sign up to do. Uh, And I value that that ability to to forego Cuban comfort in just in just living life so sometimes I do I have, I have, and that was we gotta get you on a mule. That was a that was a that was a temporary hunt. Right. This is a good place to do a little clean up 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 matts Ken. 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 eighteen hundreds. 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 the 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, and 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 eighteen eighty nine, George was on a winter cattle drive and a historic snowstorm rolled in and the temperatures plummeted, causing a total white out for several days. Is George took the lead and told the fourteen 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 twelve hundred cattle and all the horses froze to death. That's some legit cold. They were stranded in a small cabin for fourteen 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 Archilata's place. Will you sell me two sheepskins? He asked of horse my friend Candido replied, I'm gonna 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 deer skin he had tanned himself. Nobody around had ever seen anything quite like it, but it was very warm. The dude was a get or 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, Dad. 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, cattle brand. He was a landowner. He built a house right here, just outside of Folsome, 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. Tragedy struck though when light lightning struck his house burned it down with his price possession. As the bison skulled the commands, she skull all his books is, you know, his life was. And it's kind of ironic because he always joked about lightning won't hit a black guy caught him. But so then he ended up coming to town to still hotel here in town was kind of like a bachelor pad for all these old cowboys that had going to take care of him. And he got a room there and ended up, you know, dying there when he came down with the 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 of months last so his house burned down. Then he moved to the Falsome 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 sometimes for sure. But 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. Black Black Get Catchum 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 the same place, so kind of a hotspot, 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 Marshall shot and killed right there and Matt's driveway at the Bucket of Blood Saloon, right man. Yeah, And there's several several shootings there. And yet have you ever gotten a fight there, Matt? Yes? I think that wildest days of the place as still yet to come. Well, there's a couple of us outlaw. 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 sixties, he would never know that when hundred 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 posthumus 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 Grease. I can't thank you enough for following along. Please share a podcast with a buddy this week if you can. On the next episode, we'll talk with the nation's leading expert on the Fulsome site and dive in deep into ancient human history. It's gonna be wild if you get a chance playing 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 Fulsome Hotel. Matt's mom has a pretty cool v R b oh that you can stay in and when you're there, tell Matt and Kyle that I said, Hey,