A reconstruction of Washoe Indians skinning and butchering a bison 200 years ago. Illustration by Emily Waldman
A paleontologist who excavated what he believes is a Washoe hunting camp in the flood plain of the Carson River is scheduled to speak 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Carson Valley Museum & Cultural Center in Gardnerville.
UNLV Professor Emeritus Steve Rowland will discuss the excavation of he believes is a 200-year-old butchering site.
Carson City resident Tom Gordon was digging a waterline when he found the bones.
Rowland was called by Gordon’s daughter and the scientists started digging, finding an entire bison skeleton, parts of three more bison and a pronghorn antelope.
“We think Tom’s backyard was a Washoe hunting camp 200 ago,” Rowland said.
Some of the bones had cut marks on them, indicating that the animals were butchered and likely skinned.
According to a paper published in the journal “Palaios,” on Jan. 27, the cuts in the bones were too deep and narrow for stone tools, indicating that the Washoe were trading for metal tools.
First contact between Europeans and the Washoe was in May 1827 when trapper Jedediah Smith crossed the Sierra Nevada. John C. Frémont and Kit Carson encountered the Washoe in 1844. It would be five years later that the Forty-Niners passed through Washoe lands on their way to the gold fields.
Between that and the near extinction of bison in North America by the 1880s, Rowland’s paper estimates the bones date to between 1812 and 1870.
The team used blowfly pupae to determine that the animals were butchered in the spring.
It appeared that the bones were then buried in a Carson River flood preventing them from being scavenged by wolves and coyotes.
Doors open for Rowland’s talk at 6 p.m.
The museum is located at 1477 Main St. Admission is $5 or free to Douglas County, Alpine County and Dayton Valley historical society members.
