2A — THE OBSERVER
D AILY
P LANNER
Ancient Nez Perce village shows ancient human habitation
Ellen Morris Bishop
TODAY
EO Media Group
Today is Friday, Sept. 6, the
249th day of 2019. There are
116 days left in the year.
The oldest known human
habitation in North America,
more than 16,000 years in
age, is located at the site of
an ancient Nez Perce village
known as Nipéhe, near the
confl uence of the Snake and
Salmon Rivers. Oregon State
University anthropologist Dr.
Loren Davis and colleagues
have dated animal bones
and charcoal at the site, also
known as Coopers Ferry, to
16,560 years ago. The Nez
Perce Tribe participated in
the excavations.
“Nipéhe is an ancient
village founded by a young
couple after a flood destroyed
their previous home,” said
Nakia Williamson, the Nez
Perce tribe’s director of cul-
tural resources. “Our stories
already tell us how long we’ve
been here. … This (study) only
reaffirms that. This is not just
something that happened
16,000 years ago. It’s some-
thing that is still important to
us today.”
The oldest North American
known sites previously recog-
nized include Paisley Caves
in southeast Oregon, dated at
about 14,000 years, the Galt
site in Texas, dated at 16,000
years, but by a less precise
method than Davis used, and
another site in Pennslyvania
which claims a 16,000 year
date, but is controversial due
to possible contamination of
the dated material.
“The Cooper’s Ferry site
is located along the Salmon
River, which is a tributary of
the larger Columbia River
basin,” Davis said. “Early
peoples moving south along
the Pacifi c coast would have
encountered the Columbia
River as the fi rst place
below the glaciers where
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
On Sept. 6, 2006, President
George W. Bush acknowl-
edged for the fi rst time that
the CIA was running secret
prisons overseas and said
tough interrogation had
forced terrorist leaders to re-
veal plots to attack the United
States and its allies.
ON THIS DATE
In 1901, President William
McKinley was shot and mor-
tally wounded by anarchist
Leon Czolgosz at the Pan-
American Exposition in Buffa-
lo, New York. (McKinley died
eight days later; Czolgosz was
executed on Oct. 29.)
In 1909, American explorer
Robert Peary sent a telegram
from Indian Harbor, Labra-
dor, announcing that he had
reached the North Pole fi ve
months earlier.
In 1943, 79 people were
killed when a New York-
bound Pennsylvania Railroad
train derailed and crashed in
Philadelphia.
In 1949, Howard Unruh,
a resident of Camden, N.J.,
shot and killed 13 of his
neighbors. (Found to have
paranoid schizophrenia, Un-
ruh was confi ned for the rest
of his life; he died in a Trenton
nursing home in 2009 at age
88.)
In 1972, the Summer
Olympics resumed in Munich,
West Germany, a day after
the deadly hostage crisis that
claimed the lives of eleven
Israelis and fi ve Arab abduc-
tors.
In 1985, all 31 people
aboard a Midwest Express
Airlines DC-9 were killed
when the Atlanta-bound jet-
liner crashed just after takeoff
from Milwaukee’s Mitchell
Field.
In 1995, Baltimore Orioles
shortstop Cal Ripken broke
Lou Gehrig’s record by play-
ing his two-thousand-131st
consecutive game.
In 1997, a public funeral
was held for Princess Diana
at Westminster Abbey in Lon-
don, six days after her death
in a car crash in Paris. In Cal-
cutta, India, weeping masses
gathered to pay homage to
Mother Teresa, who had died
the day before at age 87.
In 2002, meeting outside
Washington, D.C. for only the
second time since 1800, Con-
gress convened in New York
to pay homage to the victims
and heroes of September 11.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The lesson of history is
rarely learned by the actors
themselves.”
James A. Garfi eld, 20th
president of the United States
(1831-1881)
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2019
LOCAL
they could easily walk and
paddle in to North America.
Essentially, the Columbia
River corridor was the fi rst
off-ramp of a Pacifi c coast
migration route.”
Davis’ research is espe-
cially important because it
supports the idea that the
fi rst peoples who arrived in
North America came via a
coastal route, rather than
an ice-free corridor through
central Canada which did
not open until about 14,800
years ago. The idea of the
fi rst human migrations into
North America through this
central-Canada corridor has
faded with the discovery
of dates older than 14,000
years for archeological sites.
And there is one more
compelling argument for ar-
rival via a coastal route. The
carefully crafted projectile
points found at Nipéhe/
Cooper’s Ferry are near-
matches for points produced
and used at the same time
in Japan.
“The age, morphology, and
technology of Cooper’s Ferry
LU3 artifacts share notable
similarities with the projectile
point traditions dated from
~16,000 to 13,000 cal yr B.P. in
Japan,” Davis notes in his pa-
per. Davis and his colleagues
also concluded that the age
and forms of these tools sug-
gest a cultural connection with
northeastern Asia, which, he
says “complements current
evidence of shared genetic her-
itage between late Pleistocene
peoples of northern Japan and
North America.”
Importantly, the tools found
at Nipéhe/Coopers Ferry were
manufactured right there,
on-site, and are truly North
American-made. They were
not imports, or tools trans-
ported by these hunters from
a Japanese site. Davis and his
team found multiple flakes
that were produced during
the manufacture of the points
at the site. Or, as he writes,
“Lithic tool maintenance is
reflected by a burination flake
bearing an exhausted unifa-
cial working edge and by an
igneous toolstone chopper tool
edge rejuvenation flake. Arti-
fact 73-61176 is an early-stage
bifacial overshot thinning
flake discovered in situ with a
finely faceted bifacial platform
and distal termination that
removed a square edge from
an opposing tool margin.”
In addition to providing the
oldest known human habita-
tion in North America, the site
has also revealed a long histo-
ry of human occupation, from
about 8,300 to 16,560 years
ago. The range and sources of
dates include charcoal from
hearth fires dating to about
9,000 to 9,250 years before
present, bone fragments dated
from 8,300 years BP to 16,560
BP and charcoal dating from
8,300 to 15,945 years BP.
Dates were provided by
Davis’ colleagues at Oxford
University, using a highly ac-
curate radiocarbon accelerator
mass spectrometry technology.
There were horses in the
landscape in those days.
Bone fragments and one
partial tooth (all undated so
far) indicate the presence of
an extinct North American
horse, of unknown species.
Unfortunately, the frag-
ments were found among
other large mammal bones
at a site that Davis inter-
prets as a “food processing
station.” The age of the
horse tooth is probably
between 14,400 and 15,000
years, Davis notes. These
tooth fragments, along with
the site’s ancient dates,
mean that Nipéhe/Cooper’s
Ferry is the oldest radio-
carbon-dated site in North
America that includes clear
cut evidence that humans
hunted and consumed
horses, Davis said.
Davis’ work at the Nipéhe /
Coopers Ferry site began in
the 1990’s as an archeologist
for the BLM. Recognizing its
probable antiquity and impor-
tance, in 2009 he established
the Oregon State University
archeology field camp there.
Students and faculty have
been slowly uncovering the
past ever since. In 2017,
members of the Nez Perce
tribe began participating in
the research.
“Prior to getting these
radiocarbon ages, the oldest
things we’d found dated
mostly in the 13,000-year
range, and the earliest
evidence of people in the
Americas had been dated to
just before 14,000 years old
in a handful of other sites,”
Davis said. “When I fi rst saw
that the lower archaeological
layer contained radiocarbon
ages older than 14,000 years,
I was stunned but skeptical
and needed to see those num-
bers repeated over and over
just to be sure they’re right.
So we ran more radiocarbon
dates, and the lower layer
consistently dated between
14,000-16,000 years old.”
The dates from the oldest
artifacts challenge the long-
held “Clovis First” theory
of early migration to the
Americas, which suggested
that people crossed from
Siberia into North America
and traveled down through
an opening in the ice sheet
near the present-day Da-
kotas. The ice-free corridor
is hypothesized to have
opened as early as 14,800
years ago, well after the
date of the oldest artifacts
found at Cooper’s Ferry,
Davis said.
“Now we have good
evidence that people were
in Idaho before that cor-
ridor opened,” he said.
“This evidence leads us to
conclude that early peoples
moved south of continental
ice sheets along the Pacifi c
coast.”
Exactly how long ago that
might have been remains
unknown. Encampments
along the coast would have
been submerged as glacial
melt drove sea levels higher.
The Columbia River, and
Columbia River basin, as
Davis noted, would have
been “the fi rst off-ramp of
a Pacifi c coast migration
route.” It is likely that the
inhabitants of Nipéhe/
Cooper’s Ferry were not the
fi rst people to explore and
inhabit the river valleys of
the Columbia basin. But
much of the evidence of
possible earlier habitations
along those rivers was likely
erased by late Pleistocene
Ice Age Missoula fl oods
that persisted until about
15,000 years ago and the
single Bonneville fl ood
that raged down the Snake
River 15,500 years ago. It is
fortunate that the ancient
Nipéhe/Cooper’s Ferry en-
campment was high enough
to avoid the Bonneville’s
fl oodwaters.
“We have 10 years’ worth
of excavated artifacts
and samples to analyze,”
Davis said. “We anticipate
we’ll make other exciting
discoveries as we continue
to study the artifacts and
samples from our excava-
tions.”
Gov. Brown’s task force calls for more psychiatric beds for Oregon foster kids
By Aubrey Wieber
Oregon Capital Bureau
SALEM — Oregon is now
housing 37 foster care children
in out-of-state facilities, down
from its peak of 88 in March.
A joint effort between the
Oregon Health Authority, De-
partment of Human Services
and the Governor’s Office
hopes to continue to reduce
that by finding 15 more beds
at in-patient facilities in Or-
egon by the end of the year.
The move is part of a
greater goal to not house any
children out of state, but there
is no timeline to achieve that.
“That’s what we’re working
towards,” said Kate Kondayen,
Gov. Kate Brown’s spokes-
woman. “It’s been a priority for
the governor to make sure we
have placement in Oregon.”
Kondayen referred all other
questions to DHS.
Oregon’s foster care system
has about 7,500 kids, but some
need more treatment than
what a standard foster home
can provide. The state has
struggled to find placement for
those kids in Oregon, and has
resorted to sending some out
of state.
In response to frequent
issues within the system,
Brown created a “child welfare
oversight board” and embed-
ded executives from her staff
into DHS. That board recom-
mended finding 15 new beds.
The beds will be in “psychi-
atric residential treatment
services” facilities where kids
with severe psychiatric needs
get 24-hour care. Since 2015,
the state lost 67, or half, of
these beds available to foster
care kids, according to a joint
report put out by OHA and
DHS this year. The report
found the state needed 38 ad-
ditional beds in these facilities.
The report called for 15 more
beds by 2020, and another 15
by June 2020. So far, Brown
has only called for the initial
15-bed increase.
Jake Sunderland, spokes-
man for DHS, said they had
to start somewhere, but said
there is no timeline to get all
kids back in state.
“Our intention is to get that
number down to zero and to do
it in a way that doesn’t disrupt
the current treatment that
they are undergoing, but also
part of that requires build-
ing more capacity within the
system,” Sunderland said.
Sunderland stopped short of
saying the state will no longer
send kids out of state. That’s
the goal, he said, but the state
needs to have the facilities
within the state to provide the
level of care they need.
Some of the new beds could
be filled by new kids entering
the foster care system rather
than bringing someone back
from out of state. Also, not all
kids brought back to Oregon
would need to be in a psychi-
atric facility. Sunderland said
some return to their family or
enter a standard foster home
as their level of need goes
down.
State Sen. Sara Gelser, D-
Corvallis, said she’s happy to
see the increase, but doesn’t
want DHS or Brown to view
them as a “magic bullet.”
PACIFIC NORTHWEST
Gelser has been a strident
critic of the state’s practice
of shipping foster kids out of
state.
“I believe we also need
substantial investments in
therapeutic foster care and
family supports,” Gelser said. “I
would love for us to think of fos-
ter care as finding supportive,
loving family networks rather
than finding beds.”
In the spring, the state had
80 kids out of state evaluated
and found 69 were receiving
the appropriate level of care,
six needed more care, two
were receiving a higher level
of services than necessary and
evaluators were unable to
come to a determination for
five kids.
The kids are experienc-
ing things like drug abuse, a
history of committing sexual
assault or other violent acts,
repetitive trauma or other
intellectual, behavioral and
psychological issues.
However, some of the places
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The issue is Oregon doesn’t
have many facilities to take
these kids, Sunderland said.
“All of the kids that were
placed at out of state facilities
were placed because there
wasn’t capacity for them
within the Oregon system,”
Sunderland said. “Nearly all
of them with a few exceptions
had really intensive treatment
needs.”
Gelser said it’s important to
make the investment in the
overall foster care system to go
alongside this so that kids in
intensive treatment also have
family support outside of the
facility.
“Our current system struc-
ture does not refl ect that, but
I hope someday it can and
will,” she said.
Sunderland agreed that
adding new beds in psychiat-
ric facilities does not fi x the
division’s issues.
“This isn’t the only thing
that needs to be done,” he
said.
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where the state has sent kids
have proved to be inadequate
care providers. One example
is Red Rock Canyon in St.
George, Utah, which in May
held 23 Oregon kids. But me-
dia reports describing reports
of staff assaulting students,
and a brawl, put pressure on
the state to reduce its reliance
on the facility.
According to the Salt Lake
Tribune, since 2017, police
have been called to the facility
72 times, and 24 staffers were
investigated for child abuse.
By July, the state reduced the
number of kids at Red Rock to
11, according to Oregon Public
Broadcasting, and the facility
said it would close by the end
of the year. Sunderland said
Oregon no longer has any kids
there.
On Wednesday, Brown
tasked DHS and OHA with
securing new beds. Sunder-
land said that work is still in
the process, but it will be com-
pleted by the end of the year.
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