Red haired people are quite odd among the Native Americans, and after reading about the mummy from Lovelock Nevada, I decided to check online what else had been found. And I came across quite a bit of information, that I tied in with other things that I had read in the past. The outcome is a series of posts beginning with this one (it was too long to put in one post):
First we will go East, to the Eastern U.S. seaboard. Then we will go back to the West Coast and tie in Lovelock with other natives in that area. We will go down the Pacific coast to South America and Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia and try to see how all these places are linked by "red" hair and bones and common burial practices and a similar mtDNA.
An article from a 1815 Magazine
The article, is from Analetic Magazine, Philadelphia. Page 260 of the Vol 6. Series 33. And I have copied some key phrases (read the article following the previous link and go to page 260), which is inserted below:
The letter was written by a Mr. Samuel L. Mitchill in August 1815 describing a mummy he found in a cave in Kentucky, U.S. Which was the remains of a young man whose: "scalp, with small exceptions, is covered with sorrel or foxy hair.".
Now the word Sorrel is new for me, so I looked it up, and found out that it is used to describe the coat color of horses. It is usually used to refer to a copper-red shade of chestnut or, directly, chestnut. It is applied to any "reddish" horse coat. The word derives from the flowers of the sorrel herb (see photo below).
The body was wrapped in deer skins and a "cloth" of knotted twine not made on a loom. The innermost cover was also a cloth and had feathers. The body was in a squatting position with one arm forward.
The mummy in a foetal or squatting position is not uncommon among South American natives, and the "feathers" rung a bell in my mind, I had read about a mummy, with feathers, in a squatting position... in Patagonia, but that is part of my next post.
So we have a red-haired mummy in Kentucky. Buried in a cave wrapped in several liners, including feathers and squatting.
I have not found any references regarding where this mummy is stored. In which museum. Was it dated? analysed? returned for burial?
I am aware that a red haired native on the East coast will elicit comments about a European transatlantic crossing (Solutreans and Cro Magnons peopling America long before Asians entered America via Beringia. But the fact is that Asians did enter the New World, the point is that they were not the current people of Eastern Asia (no Han Chinese here), they were earlier people, maybe even Neanderthals.
Next post, the Mummy at Cueva del Gualicho, Patagonia.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall ©
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