The jury is still out on Kennewick man.

I used to live in Kennewick, while I was working at a radio station in Pasco, across the Columbia River. I've heard two different reports as to where Kennewick man's bones were found:   one, that he was found in Columbia Park, just up the pike from the town of Kennewick by a couple of people (Will Thomas and David Deacy) attending the annual "Atomic Cup" hydroplane races on the Columbia River. Another, that he was found on the shores of the lake raised by McNary dam, downriver from Kennewick.

The bones now reside in the Burke Museum at the University of Washington, just a ten minute drive from where I now live in Seattle. Analysis is still under way and not many conclusions have been arrived at yet.

It is not certain where Kennewick man came from. Some 9,000 years ago, there were several waves of migrant hunters who followed game herds over ice bridges, and although many anthropologists and paleontologists think he might have been Caucasian, that is uncertain. And trying to claim that he was one of the "original" settlers and what we now consider to be Native Americans are the "immigrants" is hypothetical at best.

Kennewick man apparently died with an arrowhead in his body. So—who done it? Maybe someone who regarded himself as one of the original settlers and Kennewick man as an unwelcome immigrant.

I wouldn't try to base any kind of argument about immigrants, or who got here first, on Kennewick man.

Don Firth