by W. L. Rusho
After the meeting, Kevin Jones, Utah State Archaeologist, published a statement on the Utah State History Website stating in detail his belief that the DNA tests had not been properly performed:
...the DNA work was done in a modern genetic laboratory without the proper facilities to conduct low copy number DNA extractions and analysis from skeletal remains. It is incredibly hard to use the tests they used on older material. At best when it is done well, at a lab with the proper facilities, there is potential for substantial contamination when applied to older bone....The tests they conducted cannot be a “match” in any stretch of the imagination. At best they can be consistent with frequencies shared between relatives. That is even a stretch, as they cannot be sure that they are looking at the DNA from the skeleton and not that of contamination. The DNA analysis from older bones needs to be done in a sterile facility dedicated to this type of work with all of the controls necessary, the modern DNA laboratory the analyses were conducted in do not fit these criteria.
On 2 July 2009, the Associated Press reported:
Kevin Jones said Ruess’ surviving dental records don’t match the condition or characteristics of the teeth on a lower jawbone that was found among the remains. The worn teeth suggest a strictly Native American diet heavy with stone-ground grains. Jones also said the shovel-shaped lower front teeth are characteristic of an American Indian.[55]
In addition, the mandible seemed to lack the two teeth fillings that Everett had received in 1933. Dr. Van Gerven, exasperated by skepticism about the confirmation that the bones were those of Everett, finally wrote to David Roberts, including the following:
...It is incontrovertible evidence for kinship! It established the identity of the skeleton beyond any shadow of a doubt as that of someone who is related to the living Ruess kin at the level of an uncle. Let me repeat that beyond a shadow of a doubt at the level of an uncle. I’ll say it one more time, beyond a shadow of a doubt. That is a fact, and it trumps dental wear, dental fillings or anything else. It ends this conversation.
...I’m done now because this entire issue has become absurd and I am not interested in endlessly, and I mean endlessly, responding to people who don’t or won’t understand the power of the science that has been brought to bear here.
In the meantime, the bones had been sent to the Ruess family in California for disposal. Brian Ruess had indicated that the family intended to cremate the bones, then with ceremony, toss the ashes into the Pacific Ocean, as they had done with the ashes of Stella (Everett’s mother), Christopher (Everett’s father), and Waldo (Everett’s brother). Yet, fortunately, the Comb Ridge bones were still intact when Kevin Jones publicly asked them to authorize a new DNA and dental analysis. With probable reluctance, they agreed to do so.
For the Ruess saga, it was a long summer. Then, finally, on 21 October 2009, Brian Ruess sent out a press release. As stated in the Portland Oregonian:
After further DNA testing, the Ruess family is now convinced that the remains found last year and reported to be those of Everett Ruess are in fact the remains of someone else.
The new tests were done by the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (AFDIL) in Rockville, Maryland.
As a result of the AFDIL findings and the reanalysis, the Ruess family has accepted that the skeletal remains are not those of Everett Ruess. The bones and associated artifacts will be returned to the Navajo Nation Archaeologist for disposition.
In an e-mail statement to me dated 10 November 2009, Ken Krauter discussed his DNA testing at the University of Colorado:
I erred in the interpretation of our data but found no evidence for contamination despite exhaustive searching.
We did extensive post hoc analysis in close association with the Army labs that did the deciding work and we did figure out where we went wrong.
It was really an unforeseeable technical error associated with applying the latest technology to a problem that could have been solved using more traditional approaches. For that I am entirely to blame and so that is why I admitted my mistake and plan to move on with the work that I actually do and put this behind me.
I was obviously overconfident about our results because of the confluence of the anthropologic data [the facial matching done by Van Gerven] and the now-erroneous DNA data and feel very badly about the disruption it caused for the Ruess family and others.
This mistake in the lab does not, of course, discredit ordinary police lab testing on fresh DNA. But it does show that testing old DNA is in a different ballpark. Old DNA is likely degraded, is quite difficult to examine, is easily contaminated, and requires a specialized laboratory. Also, the technique of matching facial bones with a photograph is tentative at best.
The lab mistake did cause disruption in the Ruess family, who had hoped to obtain closure in their long search for Everett’s bones. For the writer, David Roberts, he was again frustrated, this time after painstakingly having brought in experts to make sure that there was no error along the way. Yet Roberts may not give up, considering his investment of time and effort in his search for Everett’s final resting place. He, and perhaps Navajo Dennis Bellison, may continue to look at Comb Ridge; yet, hopefully, their search has concluded, for they must be aware that the Navajo Nation outlaws grave robbing, and considers even searching among graves as a sacrilege.
Everett’s bones may lie buried somewhere along Comb Ridge in another crevice as yet unexamined. But that is most unlikely.
The inconclusive ending to the 2008–09 Comb Ridge saga would probably be to Everett’s liking. In his five years of fervent vagabond travels, he had become so imbued with wilderness that wondrous natural scenery, wherever it may be found, had become part of his own soul. He would not have wished to be identified, even in death, with any particular site, but rather with the whole of magnificent Nature. Like an errant knight of old, Everett was a romantic knight wanderer of the wilderness who sought, in his short lifetime, to see and experience it all.
I like to think that Everett belongs to the entire landscape, and that his spirit still resides throughout the great wilderness stretches of the American West.
A Sonnet for Everett Ruess
You walked into the radiance of death
through passageways of stillness, stone, and light,
gold coin of cottonwoods, the spangled shade,
cascading song of canyon wrens, the flight
of scarlet dragonflies at pools, the stain
of water on a curve of sand, the art
of roots that crack the monolith of time.
You knew the crazy lust to probe the heart
of that which has no heart that we could know,
toward the source, deep in the core, the maze,
the secret center where there are no bounds.
Hunter, brother, companion of our days:
that blessing which you hunted, hunted too,
what you were seeking, this is what found you.
—Edward Abbey Oracle, Arizona 1983
Everett Ruess. Photo by Dorothea Lange. Courtesy of the Oakland Museum, photo archive.
Everett Ruess—A Chronology
28 March 1914
Everett was born in Oakland, California
1914–1926
Lived with parents as they moved to Fresno then Los Angeles, California; Brookline, Massachusetts; Brooklyn, New York; Palisades Park, New Jersey; Valparaiso Indiana
1926
Commuted from Valparaiso to Chicago Art Institute every Saturday for several months for art classes
1928–1931
Moved to Los Angeles. Attended Los Angeles and Hollywood High Schools, graduating in January, 1931
1930
While in high school, also attended Otis Art School for six months
July–August 1930
Solo trip to Carmel, Big Sur, and Yosemite, California
It was on this trip that he met photographer Edward Weston
February–May 1931
Monument Va
lley, Arizona–Utah. Met John Wetherill family
May–June 1931
Canyon de Chelly and San Francisco Peaks, Arizona
July 1931
Grand Canyon, Arizona
August 1931
Zion National Park, Utah
September–October 1931
Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona
October–December 1931
Salt River Valley and Superior, Arizona
December 1931–March 1932
Los Angeles
March–June 1932
Salt River Valley and Roosevelt, Arizona
June–July, 1932
Ganado and Canyon de Chelly, Arizona
August 1932
Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado
September 1932
Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona
September 1932–February 1933
Attended University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)
December 1932
Christmas vacation at Carmel, California
February–June 1933
Los Angeles
June–October 1933
Sierra Nevada Mountains, Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks, California
October 1933–March 1934
San Francisco, with a side trip to Crescent City, California. Met painter Maynard Dixon and photographers Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams
April–June 1934
Monument Valley, Arizona–Utah
June–July 1934
Navajo Mountain and Rainbow Bridge, Utah
July 1934
Worked with Rainbow Bridge Monument Valley Expedition, Tsegi Canyon, Arizona
August–September 1934
Gallup, New Mexico, Hopi villages, Grand Canyon, Flagstaff, Oak Creek Canyon, and return to Grand Canyon, Arizona
October–November 1934
Bryce Canyon National Park, Tropic, and Escalante, Utah
November 1934
Left Escalante, camped in Davis Gulch, then mysteriously disappeared
* * *
[46] Rusho, W. L. ed., Wilderness Journals of Everett Ruess, Gibbs Smith, Layton, Utah (1998).
[47] Taylor, Mark A., Sandstone Sunsets, Gibbs Smith. Layton, Utah (1997).
[48] Orr, Diane, Lost Forever, DVD.
[49] Plan B Theater, Debora Threedy, author, The End of the Horizon, 2008, Salt Lake City, Utah.
[50] Bergera, Gary, ed., On Desert Trails with Everett Ruess, Gibbs Smith (2000).
[51] Arnold Alvey, telephone interview with the author, 10 September 2009.
[52] Chester Lay, interview with the author, 9 September 1982.
[53] Thybony, Scott, Burntwater, Tuscon, Arizona: University of Arizona Press (1997), p. 58. W. L. Rusho attempted to follow up this story but could obtain no further leads as to what happened to the bones.
[54] Thybony, Scott, e-mail to W. L. Rusho, 13 January 2010
[55] 55. Associated Press, 2 July 2009, quoted in Ogden Standard Examiner.
