Friday, May. 25, 2001

Richland scientist's new book details saga of old bones

By Mike Lee Herald staff writer

"What is your story, old man?" With those words ringing in his head, archaeologist James Chatters said goodnight to Kennewick Man on July 28, 1996.

"I went off to bed unaware of the adventure that lay before me," he said in his new book published by Simon & Schuster.

As long as people talk about the ancient remains found in Kennewick five years ago, they will talk about Chatters, the Richland scientist who was the first - and for months the only - scientist to investigate bones that would renew international interest in the peopling of the Americas.

Chatters' book, Ancient Encounters: Kennewick Man and the First Americans, will be released officially June 7, less than two weeks before what could be final oral arguments in the federal district court case spawned by Chatters' interpretation of Kennewick Man's bones as something other than American Indian.

Chatters started writing in June 1999, hoping to explain both the first emotional weeks after the discovery and what the ancient remains mean to all Americans.

"I feel very close to this man," Chatters said. "I feel very close to most of the dead I work with because you get to know them real well."

And he wanted to get past sometimes simplistic media accounts of the issues involved.

"Focusing on the politics draws attention away from the exciting story that these messengers from the past are telling us," he said.

And, he said, "I wanted to show that the politics is about something important - that is, we learn something as a result of doing this work that we're trying to do."

The book starts 9,000 years ago on the banks of the Columbia River with Chatters' vision of how Kennewick Man died in the river, a place where Chatters believes he sought cooling comfort for the burning pain in his hip. Many years before, Chatters writes, Kennewick Man had been injured defending his young bride from attackers, and he still carried the stone spear point embedded in his hip.

From there, things got really interesting for Chatters: A heated conversation with a tribal agent angry about his work; a quiet moment when his wife reminds him she's part Indian and she wants to know more about Kennewick Man; and a meeting with Army Corps of Engineers officials anxious to squelch mounting publicity about the bones.

"There is a surprising amount of pathos in the story," said Chatters, soon to start a Northwest book-signing tour. "I guess in part writing was cathartic for me. It's been a real emotional roller coaster."

After facing Corps officials, Chatters was convinced the agency would give Indians the bones immediately. In one of the many peeks inside Chatters' brain, he writes: "I put my professional ego aside, swallowed my fear of being steamrollered and put in a call to the Smithsonian."

There, he found Doug Owsley, a renowned scientist who ended up suing the federal government for the right to study the bones. "Hang in there," Owsley assured Chatters. "We'll get it studied."

Things didn't happen quite as quickly as Chatters hoped once Kennewick Man got embroiled in federal district court.

When the story line stalls in court, Chatters turned his pen toward science and the questions that drive the study of the first Americans. Finally, he exits the book with an epilogue that deals on a personal level with some of the core issues generated by Kennewick Man, namely the conflict between science and American Indian beliefs.

"As a humanist and as a man, I would like to see (Kennewick Man) at rest, back at peace in the same ground that held him for 95 centuries," Chatters writes. "He has been sorely abused."

The scientist in Chatters, however, wants Kennewick Man under tight security as an enduring object of study. And the moralist in Chatters agrees with the scientist - that to bury Kennewick Man now would rob him of his rightful place in history.

However, said Chatters: "If the tribes prevail and rebury him, I hope to be present to pay my respects to one who has had such an impact on my life."