Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries (17 page)

Kinkaid surmised that more than
50,000 people could have been comfortably accommodated within the
caverns. The newspaper mentioned
that some of the artifacts had been
shipped off to Washington, D.C., and
that the Smithsonian Institute, under
the direction of Prof. S.A. Jordan, was
carefully investigating the citadel.
The discoveries, they claimed, "almost
conclusively prove that the race
which inhabited this mysterious
cavern.. .was of oriental origin, possibly from Egypt, tracing back to
Ramses."

What is the truth behind this amazing story? Is there any other evidence
apart from this isolated and anonymous newspaper article? If fact, there
is a previous article in the same newspaper from March 12, 1909, also relat

ing to G.E. Kinkaid. The article gives
a short description of Kinkaid's trip
down the Colorado and mentions
"some interesting archaeological discoveries" being made, but nothing is
indicated of the staggering nature of
these finds. For some reason, the Arizona Gazette never followed up the
story. After May 1909 there is complete silence on the subject until the
article was rediscovered by ancient
mysteries writer David Hatcher
Childress and published in the conspiracy magazine Nexus in 1993. It subsequently found its way onto the
Internet, and the Egyptians in the
Grand Canyon story has now been
used by hundreds of Websites. Most of
these are merely reprints of Childress'
Nexus article, and all derive from the
original newspaper story. In fact, since
1909, no further evidence at all for
truth of the claims has been added to
the original source.

In January 2000, researchers into
the mystery contacted the Smithsonian Institution on the subject. They
were told that over the years the Institution had received many inquiries about the 1909 newspaper article,
but that its Department of Anthropology could find no mention in its files
of a Professor Jordan, Kinkaid, or a
lost Egyptian civilization in Arizona.
Researchers did turn up mention of an
archaeologist called Prof. S.A. Jordon,
spelled with an o, not an a, but apparently he was European, not American.
However, for some researchers this is
proof that the entire discovery has
been covered up. They point to the
many unexplored caves, tunnels, and
holes in the canyon and the fact that
much of the area around where
Kinkaid allegedly made his discovery is now government property and
closed to the public. This is certainly
true of the 400 foot deep Stanton's
Cave, which, when excavated, was
found to contain thousands of ancient
Indian artifacts, and the remains of
10,000 year old giant California Condors. It is a significant archaeological
and palaeontological site, and is now
listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This cave, along with others in the area, is now sealed of from
the public with a huge steel gate. The
sinister reason behind this? To protect
the colony of Townsend's big-eared
bats living in the cave from being
disturbed by visitors.

Another curious feature of the
Grand Canyon-which appears to link
it to the 1909 newspaper story-is the
wide variety of oriental and Egyptian
names given to many of its peaks and
buttes, particularly in the area of
Kinkaid's strange caverns. Around
Ninety-four Mile Creek and Trinity
Creek there are names such as Isis
Temple, Tower of Set, Tower of Ra,
Horus Temple, Osiris Temple, while
in the Haunted Canyon area there are
the Cheops Pyramid, the Buddha
Cloister, Buddha Temple, Manu
Temple, and Shiva Temple. Perhaps
the mysterious origin of these names
gives a clue to the location of Kinkaid's
hidden treasure?

Unfortunately, the explanation for
these names is far more prosaic. It
comes in the form of Clarence E.
Dutton, Captain of Ordnance in the
U.S. Army, whose most important
work, The Tertiary History of the
Grand Canyon District, appeared in
1882. It was Dutton who, noting the
similarities between the Grand Canyon peaks and some of the great archi

tectural works of mankind, gave the
Grand Canyon most of its exotic
names. The remainder were named by
Francois Matthes, a government cartographer, who in the spring of 1902
undertook the topographic mapping of
the Grand Canyon for the U. S. Geological Survey. There is no mystery
about this; most decent histories of the
Grand Canyon (Frommer's Grand
Canyon National Park and Stephen J.
Pyne's How the Canyon Became
Grand, for example) give these facts.
Indeed, it is more than possible that
the Egyptian and Indian place names
of the Grand Canyon provided part of
the inspiration for the Gazette article.

But is the article anything other
than a simple newspaper hoax, akin to
that published in The Dallas Morning
News, of April 19, 1897, telling of a
UFO crash in Aurora, Texas? Many
details of the 1909 article do suggest
this. First of all, nobody has ever seen
the photographs Kinkaid is alleged to
have taken in the caverns or the artifacts he apparently retrieved. Surely,
in more than 90 years someone would
have seen them. Another problem is
the lack of documentary evidence to
back up the existence of either G.E.
Kinkaid or Prof. S.A. Jordan. In addition, in the May 1909 article the Gazette refers to the Smithsonian as an
Institute instead of an Institution (many
Websites using the story have copied
this error). It is surely fair to suggest
that anyone employed by the
Smithsonian would know the difference. A further error in the article is
the statement that Kinkaid was "the
first white child born in Idaho." In fact,
this was Eliza Spalding, born at
Lapwai on November 5, 1837, to Henry
and Eliza Spalding.

Another interpretation is that the
story of the Grand Canyon discoveries were inspired by Hopi Indian legends of ancestors who once lived in an
underworld in the Grand Canyon. In
fact, a description of this Hopi Indian
tradition was appended to the original Gazette newspaper article. These
legends could be partly responsible for
the origin of the story, but there were
other inspirations for the anonymous
author at this time. In 1869, Major John
Wesley Powell led the first successful
expedition down the Colorado River
and through the (then unknown) region of the Grand Canyon. Interestingly enough, when Powell came upon
a huge river cave called Redwall Cavern; he stated that if it were used as a
theater it "would give seating to 50,000
people" bringing to mind Kinkaid's estimate of 50,000 people being
accomodated within the caverns.

The Brown-Stanton expedition of
1889 may also have provided some inspiration. This expedition was undertaken to survey a gorge in the Grand
Canyon for possible railroad construction along the Colorado River into
California. After three members of the
expedition drowned in Marble Canyon,
the remainder decided it was impossible to continue and attempted to
make their way out of the canyon. They
passed the spectacular springs of
Vasey's Paradise and, after scaling the
limestone wall above the river, discovered "a whole row of cliff dwellings,
with pieces of broken pottery all over
the cliff." Stanton decided to store the
remaining supplies, and explore. He
found a cave in the limestone rock face
about 160 feet above the river (the
Stanton's Cave mentioned previously).

From there they followed a prehistoric
trail up South Canyon and to safety.

It also must be remembered that
in the late 19th and early 20th century,
stories about fantastic lost lands such
as Atlantis, Lemuria, and Mu were
rife. Kinkaid's supposed career also
seems to be partly based on the explorer/antiquarian type of the era, exemplified in traveler, photographer,
and amateur archaeologist Augustus
Le Plongeon (1825-1908). The idea of
the lost land of Mu first appears in the
works of Le Plongeon. Born in Jersey,
off the coast of Normandy, France, he
led a colorful life, which included photographing Mayan ruins in the
Yucatan Peninsula, working as a surveyor in San Fransisco, and studying
photography in London. There were
also great archaeological discoveries
being made at this time, and their
larger than life discoverers were often in the news. Examples include
Heinrich Schliemann, who investigated the supposed site of Troy in
northwest Turkey and the palace of
Mycenae, Greece, in the 1870s. Other
examples include the English
Egyptologist, Flinders Petrie, who began excavating in Egypt in 1884, and
Arthur Evans, who started work at the
prehistoric palace complex of Knossos,
on Crete, in 1900. Some, or all, could
have provided part of the stimulus for
the story.

It is in such accounts of the early
explorers of the Grand Canyon, the intrepid archaeologists and antiquarians
of the era, and in the Indian and Egyptian place names of the Grand Canyon,
that the origins of G.E. Kinkaid and
the 1909 newspaper article can be
found, rather than in real discoveries
inside a mysterious, lost cavern.

© Government of Ireland

Aerial view ofNewgrange.

Brit na Boinne (Dwelling on the
Boyne) is an area located on a hilltop
overlooking a loop in the River Boyne,
in County Meath, Ireland. It consists
of various prehistoric archaeological
sites, including a cemetery containing
around 40 Passage Graves. A Passage
Grave is a tomb, usually dating to the
Neolithic period (c. 4000 B.c.-c. 2000
B.C.) where the burial chamber is
reached along a low passage. The most
well-known and impressive of the sites
within the Bru na Boinne complex are

the passage graves of Newgrange,
Knowth, and Dowth, of which
Newgrange is perhaps the finest.

One of the greatest prehistoric
monuments in the world, the huge
Neolithic tomb of Newgrange (Si An
Bhru in Irish-perhaps meaning fairy
dwelling) was probably built around
5,100 years ago, making it more than
600 years older than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, and 1,000 years
earlier than the Stonehenge trilithons.
It is roughly circular, with a diameter of around 264 feet and covers an area
of more than one acre. The mound of
the monument was constructed from
small stones layered with turf and is
surrounded by 97 large stones known
as kerbstones, some of which are elaborately ornamented with megalithic art.
On top of the kerbstones is a high wall
of white quartz. The large slab which
now stands against the wall outside
the passage entrance was originally
used to block the passage when construction of the tomb was complete.
The 62 foot long passageway, covering
only a third of the length of the mound,
is lined with roughly hewn stone slabs,
and leads to a cross-shaped chamber
with a magnificant steep corbelled
roof, 19 feet in height. The recesses in
the cruciform chamber are decorated
with spirals and contain three massive
stone basins, two carved from sandstone and one from granite, which archaeologists think once contained
cremated human remains.

It was not until 1699, when the
overgrown hill of Newgrange was being used as a source of small stones to

build a nearby road, that the
Newgrange passage tomb was rediscovered. One of the first people to enter the tomb, which he described as a
cave, was Welsh antiquary and one
time keeper of the Ashmolean Museum
in Oxford, Edward Lhuyd (1660-1709).
He made the first study of Newgrange,
which consisted of descriptions and
drawings that were published in 1726
by Thomas Molyneux. In 1909, George
Coffey, Keeper of Irish Antiquities in
the National Museum, Dublin, catalogued numerous Passage Graves
including Newgrange, which he published in 1912 as "New Grange and
other Incised Tumuli in Ireland." However, it was not until 1962 that the
first major excavations at the site took
place under Professor Michael J.
O'Kelly from the Department of Archaeology, University College, Cork.
During a program of excavation which
lasted from 1962 to 1975, the massive
passage grave underwent extensive
restoration, including the rebuilding
of the supposedly original facade of
sparkling white quartz using stones
found at the site. This restoration, however, has not been without its critics,
who see it as a 20th century view of
how someone thought the building
would have appeared c. 3200 B.C.