Monday, Jul. 24, 2006

Kennewick Man's biggest fans

By Chris Mulick, Herald Olympia bureau

In the 10 years since Kennewick Man was first discovered along the Columbia River shoreline, he has been rediscovered thousands of times over and over again all across the globe.

Not by ax and pick mind you. More like mouse and click.

Online archaeologists mining for history over the Internet have been drawn to Kennewick Man's dramatic and ever-unfolding story. For them, it's a loaves and fishes tale, a good book with too few pages that somehow never ends.

There's just never enough information to satisfy the insatiable K-Man appetite.

"I'm hungry for answers," said Barbara Repko of Lowell, Ind.

She and scores of other Kennewick Man followers gobble up e-mail updates that are sent out by the Herald and the occasional stories that appear in trade journals or national periodicals.

"I consider myself a Kennewick Man newsaholic," Art Allgauer of Metuchen, N.J., wrote in an e-mail. He relies on Herald updates "and anything else I can get my hands on."

To find proof of Kennewick Man's staying power and the array of new followers who have taken an interest, you need to look no further than the East Benton County Historical Society Museum.

In January, more than nine years after the discovery, the museum unveiled a permanent Kennewick Man exhibit. Attendance has jumped 25 percent since then, with visitors coming from across the country and even the world.

"There's a lot of interest out there yet," said Corene Hulse museum administrator.

A common reaction? Many had seen pictures of the bust created from Kennewick Man's skull and had assumed that was all of the skeleton that was discovered.

"Most of them are amazed they found the whole skeleton," Hulse said.

"It's a broad brush stroke," the Tri-City Visitor and Convention Bureau's Tana Bader Inglima said of the people who call asking about Kennewick Man. "People are interested. People are still talking about it."

Jim Frame is still talking about it and he says some of his friends probably wish he'd stop.

The retired Dallas businessman and educator first learned about Kennewick Man in an archaeology class he took for fun five years ago. Before long he was debating Kennewick Man's origins with his community college professor and developing his own theories.

"It just fascinated me. I could not get it off my mind," Frame said. "I was like a sponge. I could not absorb enough information.

"I bore all my friends with the forwards from your Web page," he said, noting that he's transmitted the Kennewick Man bug to two of them.

At 94, Warren Dexter of Elkhart, Ind., has been researching and following the story for only a year, but he's also hooked.

In Kennewick Man, the retired photographer and longtime fan of early history said he's found a welcome debate about North America's earliest inhabitants and support for his belief that other peoples traveled to North America besides the Native Americans.

"A lot of our history is being covered up by not acknowledging that the waterways, rivers and lakes were used (as highways)," he said.

Others are interested in Kennewick Man for other reasons. Milo Andrus, a graduate student at the University of Hawaii, said he has watched the case to see how the government has applied the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

Native American tribes tried to use that law, ultimately unsuccessfully, to claim Kennewick Man for their own. Native Hawaiians can make similar claims under the law.

Bob Howe has been watching from even farther away. He sent an e-mail to the Herald from his home in Queensland, Australia, this spring "just to let you know that the Kennewick Man story is of interest to people in places other than the USA."

"I am just a run-of-the-mill bloke but have been following the story for some years," he wrote.

But no one has been following longer than Repko, a self-described "K-Man Super Fan." She has long been interested in how the world was populated and has studied other ancient cultures.

When Kennewick Man was found, her son who lives in Pasco called her to read her the Herald's story. He mailed her that article and each one that followed, all of which Repko still keeps in a folder.

After Jim Chatters, a deputy coroner who was first to inspect the bones, published his book Ancient Encounters: Kennewick Man and the First Americans, Repko used the pictures in it to try and find the site where the bones were found during a trip to the Tri-Cities.

Using a small fishing boat, Repko and her son used a magnifying glass to identify features in one of the photos and locate them while cruising the river.

"We went up and down the river I don't know how many times," she said. "We were kind of like detectives. It was so much fun."

Finally, they found a spot in which features appeared to match up with the photo. And using binoculars from the boat they spied a few stakes on the shoreline, newly planted bushes and netting covering what they were certain was Kennewick Man's one-time resting place.

"I tell you, when we found the spot I was so excited I could hardly contain myself," Repko said.

Back home, she can't wait to hear more about what scientists learn from Kennewick Man.

"I want to know who he was," she said.