Feds Refuse to Share Info on Mysterious 'Escalante Man'

This is an interesting story about the discovery of the remains of a Native American which dates to the mid to late 1800s, the strange part of this is the way the excavation has been handled by the feds, why in the world would the FBI want to be involved with this discovery.

www.redorbit.com


An aging American Indian with rotting teeth and arthritic joints sat down and died in the Utah desert outside Escalante with a musket, ammunition and a bucket. Blowing sand covered his corpse for more than a century before a hiker stumbled across it last year.

This is the likely scenario of how a nearly complete skeleton, dubbed "Escalante Man" in BLM documents, came to be buried a few hundred paces off Highway 12 in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. What remains a mystery is why a dozen FBI agents excluded archaeologists from its April 16 excavation, treating the site as a crime scene rather than the historic site many believe it clearly was. "It's an ongoing investigation. Our policy is we cannot comment on it," FBI spokesman Juan Becerra said. Agents stress they had legitimate reasons for excluding the monument's own archaeologist from the dig, even though they invited a TV news crew to document it, and the U.S. Attorney's Office signed off on the investigation. While the BLM and FBI acted in partnership on the dig, the episode has attracted criticism from state officials charged with protecting cultural resources and triggered dissension within the BLM.

"It seems the FBI is running roughshod over the BLM, scientific procedures and legal requirements in their unexplained zeal to excavate an historic site," Matt Zweifel, the BLM's excluded Kanab-based archaeologist, wrote in a four-page memo documenting a litany of concerns two days before the agents descended on the site with shovels and screens.

I guess the FBI had to proceed as if it were a crime scene in the beginning, but after results showed the age of the remains shouldn't it have been turned over to archaeologists?

Another example of federal agency turf war?

Who knows, just thought I would share and maybe some of the more knowledgeable in these procedures can bring some clarity to a novice like me

It may just be a case of a federal agency trying to be overly secretive and clandestine.

This is a good find. Something worthy of discussion. I hope we see an explanation.

it sure beats the dragonfly post.
(not one line)

very interesting indeed, cue in x-file intro music
here's what i googled. hope we find more info. thanks for sharing.

reply to post by JacKatMtn


I missed this and I read the SL Tribune like 4 days a week.
There are politically incorrect skeletons, in today's world, like the Irish type bones in New Zealand that predate the Maori (supposedly)...but if these bones were anti-timeline or something, what doesn't fit is the mention of a camera crew being invited to document...although they don't say like which TV crew, or where the film is viewable...but the film crew militates against it being anything other than ignorant government workers behaving strangely, in my view.
But I will look for round two/three/and four in the local press now, thanks for posting...

reply to post by JacKatMtn

why in the world would the FBI want to be involved with this discovery.

Maybe they are looking for viruses they can use for biological warfare.
They use the FBI instead of the CDC, so people do not suspect what whey are doing?

reply to post by nine-eyed-eel


Cool keep an eye out, while it appears that this was just one lost soul who had simply travelled as far as he could, sat down, and left this existence.

I don't know the area well myself but could it possibly have been someone who just lost his way?

I wouldn't expect remains of a Native American in the desert to bring to light anything new in the ways of past inhabitants of the continent but, science is one thing that has a way of throwing curve balls now and then which keeps the quest exciting.

Maybe there is an old local news piece from last winter that might shed some light on this puzzle.

reply to post by jmdewey60


Woah! Now that's a conspiracy! I am not ready to travel that far as I am not too well informed about the FBI and their ties to the CDC and any projects involving bio-warfare, I am interested in the inter-agency politics that could have been going on with their decision to keep this investigation close to the vest.

reply to post by JacKatMtn


Can you say "the tomb"?

Skull and Bones will use the corpse at Yale, it is what they do, defile Native Americans. Just look at DIA.

or maybe FBI is just protecting gov't assets.
They can now build a profitable Indian Gaming Casino there.