13 Discoveries in the American West #jordan

From an amazing Atari dump site that was dug up and made a huge profit to finding an ice age hunting camp filled with artifacts.

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1. The Bear River Massacre
   Members of the California Volunteers raided a camp of Shoshone Indians on a bitterly cold January morning in 1863 killing up to 250 tribesmen. No one knew exactly where the largest single massacre of Native Americans in the United States took place, only that it was somewhere on the banks of the Bear River in southeastern Idaho. That all changed in 2015 when a group of archaeologists reported that they had most likely discovered the site of the camp that was previously thought to be permanently lost to history.

2. Two 1,300 Year Old Villages
   Two nearly identical villages were recently discovered in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park that date back over one thousand years. Within the villages 50 to 75 structures were discovered along with fragments of brown ceramics and stone points. The discoveries give us a better understanding of a period when people in the area were transitioning from nomadic foraging to a more sedentary, agricultural and complex society.

3. Central California Study of Violence
   A lot of people tend to think that prehistoric California was a place without much violence. However,a recently concluded study tells a very different story. The study spanned 13 years and chronicled 16,820 burials from 329 different sites among 13 different ethnographic groups. This showed that the most common type of violence was sharp-force trauma caused by arrows or darts which appeared in a little over 7 percent of the burials studied.

4. Whaling Disaster Wrecks Found
   Wrecked ships from a whaling expedition were recently discovered off of Alaska’s coast. A whaling fleet was wrecked by packs of ice in the Arctic Ocean in 1871 stranding its 1,200 crew members and their families. The passengers were all eventually saved, but the ship's cargo of whale blubber, oil and bones was lost. At the time the loss made national headlines and ended up being the beginning of the end for commercial whaling in the United States. The loss was costly, totaling more than 25 million in today’s dollars.

5. 2,500 Year Old Bison Kill Site
   Archaeologists discovered a bison kill site that dates back over 2,500 years just north of the Montana border. The site contained over 200,000 fragments of bison bone and strangely more than 100 stone points that were fashioned from a rock that is found over 600 miles from the site. Also unearthed were 8 arrangements of bison bones found standing on end in precise patterns. This stumped the discoverers and nobody's quite sure what the arrangements mean or why they were put there.

6. Japanese American Labor Camp
   The first World War 2 internment camp was found in 2013 in Northern Idaho. The Japanese men were prisoners of war whose job was to build a highway across the Rocky Mountains. More than 250 men were detained to do the work from May 1943 to May 1945. Few traces of the actual labor camp remain but thousands of artifacts were found that tell the story of the prisoners that were retained there. Compared to other internment camps, the prisoners here were treated relatively well. They were paid as much as $60 a month for their work and received medical and dental care.

7. Sylvester the Mummy
   This mummy from the old west is one of the best preserved mummies in existence thanks to an embalmer who must have injected the body with an arsenic based fluid shortly after the man’s death. Recent examination of the mummy showed that its brain and internal organs are amazingly well preserved and the tongue still has moisture on it! Researchers can also see that his liver is healthy, meaning the man most likely didn’t drink. Legend has it that two cowboys found the body in the deserts of Arizona in 1895. The body has been in a curiosity shop in Seattle since the 1950’s.

8. Old Saloon
   The Boston Saloon was likely one of the nicest saloon’s in the old west and it was owned by William A.G. Brown, a free black man from Massachusetts. It was open for business from 1864 to 1875. The saloon was discovered about 20 miles southeast of Reno, Nevada and was excavated in the early 2000’s. It is thought to be the first black-owned saloon of the 19th century American West ever excavated. Inside of the saloon some 40 thousand artifacts were discovered from poker chips and pistols too crystal-stemmed goblets and a mouthpiece from a trombone. There was also a 130 year old Tabasco bottle discovered in the saloon that is the oldest style of Tabasco bottle known to exist.