Base Camp Yenchingkou, Szechwan Province, 1921-1926: Chinese village life through the eyes of a...

Morgan, V.L., 2008, “Base Camp Yenchingkou, Szechwan Province, 1921-26,” TGPP Paper No. 2, - p. 1

(Working manuscript) Base Camp Yenchingkou, Szechwan Province, 1921-1926:Chinese village life through the eyes of a resident fossil hunter

By Vincent L. Morgan

Contact: [email protected]

Copyright 2010 (Working Manuscript) by Vincent L. Morgan

ABSTRACT

Walter Granger was the first trained paleontologist to explore for fossils in China and Mongolia. In 1921, as a key member of the American Museum of Natural History’s Central Asiatic Expeditions (CAE), he began the hunt in the Yangtze valley, along the Upper River at Wanhsien in Sichuan Province. For generations, the Chinese had been pulverizing fossils into powder for use as medication. One healer, Lei Hiao, wrote in 400 AD that if one twice washed a "dragon bone" in hot water, then reduced it to powder and placed it in a thin bag with two young, eviscerated swallows for one night and afterward mixed it in with a medicinal preparation, it would provide an "effect...as if it were divine"; Andersson/Shapiro]. Fossil teeth, known as “lung ya,” and bones, known as “lung ku,” were obtained from peasants by Chinese wholesalers who supplied the vendors. Reports of fossils emanating from the Yangtze area had intrigued western paleontologists for years. Western residents and travelers reported occasionally spotting uncrushed fossil, usually in an apothecary shop. They were thought to be Pleistocene, but this was not certain because no in situ examination had been conducted. The Chinese druggists were not telling. Finally, an enterprising British consul stationed in Ichang known as John “Fossil” Smith reported that some of the fossils were being found at a location up river in the mountainous region of Yenchingkou. Yenchingkou (Salt Well Valley) was a vale of rice paddies tended by villagers who lived in a remote mountain hamlet of the same name. Yenchingkou was located ten miles up the river west of Wanhsien and another ten miles inland to the south. It was reached only after a steep one thousand foot climb––much of it on stone steps––up from the south bank landing at the river. For reasons not explained, the village was split into lower and upper. Both fronted the main trail along White Water Creek (Pei Shui Chih) that flowed down to the Yangtze. Perhaps that was the explanation: expansion of the village accommodated ease of access to water and trail. Another seventeen hundred feet above the hamlet lay a Paleozoic limestone ridge paralleling the Yangtze hundreds of feet below. As Granger approached the district in September of 1921, he wondered how a more ancient Paleozoic formation could hold fossils from the Pleistocene. The answer was discovered soon enough and between 1921 and 1926 he spent three winter seasons of about six months each in that region collecting fossils, surveying geography and geology, studying natural history and observing the daily lives of the locals. His expedition headquarters were in an ancestral temple he rented from the Tan family of the lower village. Granger appears to have been the first westerner to live and work in Yenchingkou and to chronicle its people and their customs. While he worked, he also documented local life. His diary, letters and camera narrate routine to tribulation including encounters bandits and clashing warlords. Granger’s wife Anna accompanied him for the second two seasons and added to the written record, narrating, supplementing and at times interweaving with Granger’s.

mailto:*[email protected]


[]. Backdrop.

British and Japanese navies are plying the waters of China with powerful, post-W.W.I navies in September 1921. Germany is routed, mainland Europe is recovering and the U.S. is too. Withdrawing militarily from world affairs seems, to most in the U.S., preferable to global expansion or military mission. The U.S.’s conquest of the Philippines gives it some international presence in Asia if little protection of its western flank. The now-obsolete U.S. Navy is hardly a match to that of the British or the Japanese. If the two were to ally, their combined sea power would be overwhelming. Some U.S. naval officers are worried that they are not in a position to protect the mainland from attack, let alone the Hawaiian Islands.

Post-Qing Dynasty China has become rife with factionalized politics, maneuvering warlords and confused expectations. The settlements at the 1919 Versailles peace conference undermined the Chinese and left them empty-handed on the world stage. Though it thinks not, it is vulnerable; it is exploitable. The “occupying nations” that ensconced themselves and their commerce in Shanghai under the treaties of the 1800s, await and wonder what their pieces are worth.

J.B. Powell, a journalist of China affairs, concludes at the close of 1921:

For the position of China and her lack of gain it would seem two things are responsible, her own lack of unity and force, and the mutual jealousies existing between the various powers of the world. For the former China can blame herself, although she is in a process of governmental evolution; for the latter she must blame the nations collectively, realizing that the much-talked-of age of international sympathy, understanding and justice has not yet arrived. [The Weekly Review of the Far East (formerly Millard's Review), Millard Publishing Co, Volume XIX, Shanghai, China, Saturday, January 7th, 1922, Number 6, p. 230.]

China, nevertheless, has begun its own territorialism, upon the lands and commerce of its neighbor to the northwest, Inner Mongolia. (‘Inner Mongolia’ refers to the southeastern Mongolian territory that eventually would become a part of China.) Chinese farmers, traders, telegraph- and trade-post operators constitute the frontline of advance. Further west, post-Revolutionary Russia has taken control in Outer Mongolia. (‘Outer Mongolia’ refers to the northwestern Mongolian territory that would claim independence in 1921 as the ‘Mongolian People’s Republic.’) Urga, the capital of Outer Mongolia, has already been compromised and the Russian-Mongolian Buriats government is hard at work subverting the once absolute power of the Mongolian princes elsewhere. Pro-Russian terror squads roam the countryside to help make the point. Scores of citizens are slaughtered to make the point that the rest of Outer Mongolia shallow follow Urga.

A vast barren of Gobi stretches northeast along the border between Inner and Outer Mongolia and intersects a main route between Kalgan and Urga. It blocks China and Russia from advancing against each other. Each is content with its own Mongolia. The Japanese, in the meantime, seek control over China and, in addition to flexing its muscle all over China’s inland and coastal waters, has begun military encroachment in north China’s Manchuria.

***

Commercial opportunity in China has drawn the attention of the western world for years. The Americans were the first to make inroad. American, British, and French obtained a foothold by treaty rights in south China long ago. Their ‘concessionary’ interests now line the Bund in Shanghai with stately embassies and three varieties of the red, white and blue waving over the skyline and on their trade and war ships lying at anchor in Yangtze waters just yards away. ?The British run Customs and Inspection. ?The French run the postal service. British, Japanese and Chinese passenger steamships dominate the River. The Robert Dollar Line, British and American Tobacco Co., Standard Oil, Anderson-Meyer Co., and China Inland Mission are familiar western names all along the River.


Business is brisk everywhere as swarms of merchants, traders, travelers, diplomats, foreign military and missionaries and Chinese workers operate side by side along the Yangtze from Shanghai to Chungking. Separate residential enclaves throughout allow most foreigners to keep with their own when desired–and for most that is much of the time.

China seethed under the egocentricity of a manipulative, domineering, insulated west:

One morning, riding in a rickshawDown Nanking Road in Shanghai,I watched six cooliesstruggling, single-file,A rope stretched tightAcross their backs and shoulders,Their faces grim and twisted,Slowly pullingA great load of heavy broken rocksOn a protesting two-wheeled cart.And hanging on the ropeBetween two of the straining menThere was a bird-cage.

And the bird was singing.

Portrait of China–1923 by Ann Wallin. [Danbury, Richard S., ed. Dan River Anthology. South Thomaston, ME, U.S.A.: Dan River Press, 1986.]

The Japanese are present, too, along with the Italians and the Chinese. They also have fleets of gunboats plying the Yangtze, protecting, it was said, their citizens and commerce.

The American gunboat fleet lags behind those of the British and Japanese, as does its grasp of Asian affairs. Predominant post-war sentiment in the U.S. is isolationist––few at home want to expend resources to bolster an Asian presence. Nevertheless, some key players––capitalists, politicians and military––in the U.S. think that increased exploit in Asia will present greater opportunity. These Americans know what they are after and want a stratagem for staking a better claim [presence] in the economic and political affairs in China and the Mongolias. Osborn knows many of these people––J.P Morgan, for example, is his uncle and Admiral Welles of the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence is a friend. Osborn also wants to get deep into China and the Mongolias. He has a theory to prove and that desire coincides with those of his powerful friends. And scientific investigation, they know, is one judicious way to travel around. Exploration for scientific purposes can accomplish other goals. Lewis & Clark, John C. Fremont, Roy Andrews (codenamed ‘Reynolds’) and others had demonstrated that for the Americans.

* * *

Granger’s scientific results in the Yangtze will be less significant in comparison to his accomplishments in the Mongolias beginning in 1922. The Mongolia work will attract attention worldwide for decades and commence work that continues to this day. It will be his pioneering presence as the first trained scientist to investigate and produce results in both regions that constitutes the major U.S. achievement. The American scientific venture will grab the spotlight practically overnight. The other western powers are left only to follow it all in press accounts.

Traveling about in China and Mongolia in 1921 offers a potpourri. The Peking scene is quite refined. The foreigners all have their walled compounds, privileges, and pleasures. Travel outside of Peking isn't bad because it is usually done in luxury. The Mongolias are rugged and wild, but, except for rogue Russian killing squads, are peaceful, even gentle. Women travel the auto route between Urga and Kalgan with considerable normality. In the spring of 1922, the wife of a Buriat dignitary will feel


free to divert her car off the auto route and over to Granger's field camp at Iren Dabasu in Inner Mongolia to drop off the Urgan passports required for travel into Outer Mongolia!

The “wild west,” if anywhere, is in the Yangtze River area. The region is hostile from a variety of quarters and for a number of reasons. While westerners earlier had been held to be immune from much of it, that changes considerably during the 1920s. [from Howell.] [p. 156, Howell] - It was still understood in 1921 that foreigners had immunity during riots and revolutions. But recent ‘small outrages’ against them were beginning to occur. Moreover, Sichuan Province is in a state of rebellion against Peking. The embryonic and prosperous South China Republic [?further to the south?] is also fighting for independence. Granger’s undertaking for the sake of science seems impressive (see pp. 154-158, Howell). J.G. Andersson and the Chinese had declined to go.

***

Howell, p. 80 - “Officers of all the armed forces gathered intelligence reports of the areas they visited in China. This especially applied to the officers of the Yangtze Patrol.”

***

Scattered western scientific intrigue focused on China and Mongolia well before the commencement of the CAE in September of 1921. In 1897, the Royal Geology Society reported Russian geologist Vladimir Obruchev’s fossil discovery in 1892 of a lower rhinocerid jaw together with broken teeth. Obruchev made his discovery south of the salt lake Erdene Dabbas [Ihren Dabasu near Ehrlien] while on his way across the Gobi desert along the main caravan route from Urga in Outer Mongolia to Kalgan in northern China. Western scientists had mentioned fossils said to be from Mongolia as early as [ ] when [Lydekker, etc.] wrote [ ]. But none of those fossils had the provenance of Obruchev’s find and that is what led to Henry Osborn’s articulation in 1900 of his Central Asia mammalian origination and dispersal theory.

In 1898, an American zoologist named Charles R. Eastman described a large fossilized bird's egg (Struthiolithus chersonensis) found near Kalgan. A year later, German naturalist K.A. Haberer acquired a quantity of "dragons' bones and teeth" from apothecary shops in Shanghai, Ningpo, Ichang and Peking and sent them to the German paleontologist Max Schlosser who then published on them. In a monograph on Haberer's "dragons' bones and teeth" (Andersson) in 1903, Schlosser concluded that the fossils were of mammals from the Tertiary and Pleistocene ages and included bear, hyena, ape, elephant, rhinoceros, horse, camel, hippopotamus, giraffe, and antelope. Schlosser’s study, however, was not scientifically determinative since he studied only isolated fossil fragments of an unknown location. It was not known where the material supplied by Haberer had originally come from, so study of its in situ environment could not be made.

After seven years of study abroad, a Chinese geologist named Ting Wen-chiang (1887-1936) returned to his China homeland. He had originally moved to Japan to study politics. When he returned to China in 1911, however, he bore degrees in zoology, geology and geography from universities elsewhere in Europe. (Wang). (M.A., Glasgow, B.Sc., Cantab, D.Sc., Freiburg––Hughes, p. 216)) Ting decided to settle in Kiangsu in southern China where he would teach middle school, write a book on zoology, and study the geology of the Yangtze Valley.

In 1912 a geology section was formed by the government in Peking and placed within the Ministry of Industry and Commerce and Ting was asked to become its head and initiate a training course in geology. (Wang) The following year, in 1913, a German missionary named R. Mertens reported discovery an apparent dinosaur fossil in Meng Yin (Ning Chia Kou?). The Chinese responded with increased interest in its natural resources and artifacts.

In 1914, Chang Ch'ien of the new Ministry of Agricultural and Commerce established the Chinese Geological Survey and named Ting as its head. That same year, a Swedish geologist, Johann Gunnar


Andersson (1874-1960), was asked by the Chinese government to conduct a survey of coalfields and ore resources as an adviser to the Department of Agriculture.

Not long after these events, a German mining engineer named W. Behagel retrieved a block of sandstone from a construction site in the Men Ying district of Shantung that contained three large fossil vertebrae. He turned it over to the Chinese Geological Survey. Otto Zdansky, a young Austrian paleontologist visiting with his former geology professor Andersson in Peking a few years later, examined the vertebra and concluded they were dinosaurian. Walter Granger confirmed that analysis in 1921. (Andersson).

In the meantime, Andersson had amassed a considerable collection of early plant fossils discovered in southern China and shipped the entire collection back to Peking. It was lost when the S.S. Peking sank in the Yellow River. To the north, Russian paleontologist A. N. Krystofovich had discovered a dinosaur deposit in extreme northern Manchuria near the Amur River in Heilungkiang Province. The Russians success included "three or four species representing widely different groups of dinosaurs." (Andersson).

By 1916, Andersson was wandering through parts of southern China collecting whatever fossils he found. He and an assistant spent long periods in the field and would "live alternately in country farms and small village temples." (Andersson.) In southern Shansi Province Andersson discovered mollusk fossils. At Yuan Chu Hsien in Honan Province he found fossils of freshwater shells that indicated occurrence of Eocene deposits in China.

In 1917, the Chinese Geological Survey resolved to determine from where dragon's bones originated. Presumably it would be in China's Tertiary deposits. (Andersson.) The Survey made inquiry to mission stations and foreigners throughout China asking for information and assistance in this quest. They received immediate responses from missionaries (of several faiths and denominations, including catholic) in southern China and eastern Inner Mongolia. Andersson decided to begin his search for dragon bones in [central] Honan Province. Almost immediately, he was shown a rhinoceros skull and directed to the loess deposits southeast of Honan-fu where the skull was said to have been found.

In 1918, he discovered prehistoric coral-like animals and recognized their connection to similar fossils found in the pre-Cambrian area of North America. (Andersson). Andersson also located, in 1918, the first Hipparion field known to exist in China. This find was significant because . As he searched for the source of the dragon bone, Andersson had occasion to visit a small town thirty miles to the south west of Peking. (p. 35 Shapiro.) This little peasant town of Chou Kou Tien had held geological curiosity for Andersson, but, in early 1918, he was summoned there by something else. J. McGregor Gibb, a chemistry professor at Peking University, reported finding some fossils there at a site called "Chicken Bone Hill." Andersson arrived on March 22 and stayed for two days. He determined that "Chicken Bone Hill" which was really a "red clay pillar rising out of the base of an old limestone quarry" (Shapiro) was a remnant fill that had existed in a crevice in the limestone before the limestone was quarried away. The column of red clay fill was left standing because the Chinese workers thought evil spirits lurked within it.

What actually lurked inside the column were hundreds of fossilized bird bones. This led Andersson to speculate that the elsewhere in the site there could exist a wealth of fossil material; but he felt too extended and inexpert to develop it. He felt he needed to find someone with paleontological expertise and time; he put off any further excavating at Chicken Bone Hill until he could.

During 1919, Andersson ventured into ?Inner Mongolia and found fossil remains of a beaver ?fauna at Ertemte.

In 1920 another ?western-trained Chinese geologist, Li Ssu-kuang (1889- ), began to teach at Peking University which freed Ting to offer a course in vertebrate paleontology. Interest in the earth sciences


of China was growing; but scientific work in geology was still in its infant stage and in paleontology it was still a blank.

By 1920, when Ting invited him to relocate to China, Amadeus William Grabau (1870-1946) should have been comfortably established as the esteemed author of many works in geology, paleontology, and stratigraphy and professor at Columbia University. The German-descended midwestern American born Grabau was educated at MIT and Harvard, was a professor at Columbia for twenty years, and lived fashionably upscale in the village of Scarsdale in Westchester County just north of New York City. He was an acknowledged expert of North American and European geology.

But a world war broke out with Germany dominating the aggressive side. When the United States contemplated entry into the contest to oppose Germany, Grabau voiced openly and vigorously against it. His position was costly. For Grabau, born in Wisconsin of German descent, lost his professorship at Columbia University. Ting made his offer while visiting with Grabau in New York and it clearly presented a good opportunity for Grabau. It gave Grabau the chance to expand his expertise globally.

Ting wanted Grabau to teach at the Peking University. But to sweeten the deal, he also offered Grabau the position as chief paleontologist of the Chinese Geological Survey. Grabau accepted both. (Ting would soon resign from the CGSurvey and become an executive of a coalmine in Jehol until 1926)

Grabau's move to China in 1920 actually was a boon to North America's earth scientists; he became the first direct link between them and China. Grabau's instant rapport with his former colleagues at Columbia University and its sister institution, the American Museum of Natural History, held the promise of a smoothly paved way.

Suddenly a door was opening to allow serious scientific study of Central Asia. The American Museum was in a unique position to do it. There even was talk of forming a Chinese Geological Society, maybe even a Chinese Paleontological Society as professional counterparts to those that existed in the US. Walter Granger, Grabau's colleague in geology, stratigraphy and paleontology at the American Museum, would soon come to China as chief paleontologist and second-in-command of the American Museum's decade-long Third (later Central) Asiatic Expeditions beginning in 1921. Charles Peter Berkey, a colleague of Grabau's at Columbia, followed Granger to China a year later as the Expedition's geologist. Henry Fairfield Osborn, president of the American Museum and honorary curator of its paleontology department, founding professor at Columbia of the joint earth science studies program between the American Museum and Columbia, and supreme commander of the multi-disciplined group of scientists marshalling in Peking to launch a near-military, scientific foray into China and Mongolia.

Roy Chapman Andrews, the titular leader of the 1920s Central Asiatic Expeditions, had been to Central Asia several times as a hunter for the American Museum. His trek through China's Yunnan Province in 1916 and 1917 with his wife, some Chinese assistants, and the naturalist Edmund Heller, was called the First Asiatic Expedition. It was Heller, veteran of an expedition to East Africa with Teddy Roosevelt in 1909-10, who did the collecting. Andrews returned to New York City in [].

For $8.00 a day ($4.00 as pay and another $4.00 in lieu of expenses, which expenses were picked up by the American Museum of Natural History) and Roy Chapman Andrews signed on to spy as a civilian on China and Mongolia for the U.S. Navy's Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). His cover was Curator of Mammals, American Museum of Natural History, New York City, New York, and he based himself in Peking. For United States Asian interests, policy and preparedness –– political, military and commercial –– the need to know what was happening in the far east, particularly China and Mongolia was crucial.

Given the world Osborn's vast political and commercial connections, Andrews' spy work for the U.S. Navy was probably more than just military. Or, in any event, benefitted more than just the ONI mission. It certainly was an excellent arrangement that provided him great range of access and opportunity in China.


[[But in 1918, Andrews returned to China to reconnoiter for the US military and report on the fluid, post-Russian revolution situation there and in Mongolia as the US fathomed (assessed) the geopolitical implications of its involvement in W.W. I. It is not clear what Andrews actually did for the US military in Asia or for precisely how long; his own accounts are opaque, even if highly suggestive.* As one peruses this subject in Andrews' elaborate accounts of his other adventures, there is the sense that if he had done something significant for the military, he would have been the first to tell us. Although, unlike the bravado of his Museum adventures, any claim to miltary prowess would have been subjected to a different scrutiny.]]

It is not even clear whether Andrews' was actually a member of the US military, or how his relationship with the American Museum remained during this period. Nor is it clear how his efforts were regarded by the US military. What is clear, however, is that the general framework of Andrews' accounts (FN) underscores America's actual involvement in Asian affairs during this time and the subsequent direction events took.]

[develop]

By the summer of 1919, with the active hostilities of World War I ended, Andrews returned to hunting for the Museum in China/Mongolia. This venture was later called the Second Asiatic Expedition (1919). It involved and included .

By early 1921, J.G. Andersson was able to convince the young Austrian paleontologist, Otto Zdansky, to spend a summer at Chou Kou Tien conducting paleontological research. Zdansky arrived at about the time Walter Granger was steaming into the China Inland Sea toward the last leg of his journey to Peking from New York in June.

Granger, accompanied by the young American Museum herpetologist, Clifford Pope, finally reached Peking by train from Shanghai on June ?25th. They were welcomed at the station by Andersson and Davidson Black (1884-1934), a Canadian anatomist and Peking Medical Union College professor. Andersson soon asked Granger to go with him to meet with Zdansky at Chou Kou Tien and give his assessment of the situation. Granger readily agreed.

Granger made no known primary account of his Chou Kou Tien visit; there is no mention of it anywhere in any of his existing private letters and diaries. Nowhere in published or unpublished material is he found to have mentioned it, or even to allude to it. In fact, his China diary entries for 1921 skip directly from June 23, 1921, when he docked at Shanghai, to August 24, 1921, when he departed from Peking for Szechuan; two pages between those dates were left blank. None of his letters to his family refers to Chou Kou Tien either. [develop and add about Shapiro]

Andersson and Granger had corresponded well before Granger left New York for San Francisco and on to China in late May of 1921. Granger was current with the developments in China on all fronts including scientific and political. Granger knew that Chou Kou Tien was a source for the "dragon bones" found in Peking's apothecaries. He was aware that another source existed somewhere in Szechuan Province; but finding it could prove difficult. Granger had no precise location map and little specific information; roving bands of robbers and army deserters festered throughout the southern provinces while armies of opposing Chinese warlords clashed at will. Granger recorded his departure from Peking on August 24, 1921:

Left Chien Min Station at 11 P.M. for Hankow . . . Have 15 boxes of equipment (empty to be filled at Hankow with groceries) and several duffle bags of tents, clothing, etc. 31 pieces were checked at Station –– including several servants' bundles, and an excess baggage fee of $10 paid. . . Dr. Andersson, Dr. Zdansky, [Clifford] Pope and Miss Ruth Wood (Chemist of Rockefeller [Peking Union] Medical School) were at train to see us off and Miss Rosenius [Andersson's affianced] sent a box of sweets & a box of "Hung Clays."


Granger's chief assistant and interpreter was the western-trained Chinese James V. Wong. Andersson had undertaken to ready Wong for his winter-long fossil hunting expedition with Granger by taking him on a few of Andersson's collecting trips to northern China and Manchuria.FN (note Andrews' contradictory claim.) Granger and Wong were accompanied by Chow, the "No. 1 Boy" who had previous experience in Szechuan and Yunnan; Yang, the cook; Lieu, an assistant in general field work; Van, an assistant to Lieu; and Chih, a taxidermist. And more.

Their equipment included

. . . a 7 x 9 green silk tent, two Biddle tents (both without poles). Two McClellan saddles. Complete paraphernalia for collecting both fossils and living fauna of all sorts. Two shotguns with auxillary barrels, two Savage .250 rifles, two Savage .38 automatic pistols. My own Colt revolver and a .32 pistol of Wong's . . .

They also took a sheet iron stove and cooking outfit; boxes of local make with hinges and padlock and of a size adaptable either for carrying coolies or mules; six smaller boxes patterned after Andersson's for carrying heavy fossils; and two larger boxes with wooden trays for transporting bird and mammal skins.

Granger had to develop his information once he got into Szechuan Province. The Yangtze River basin was particularly unstable, even volatile. Its shores teemed with thieves, roving groups of bandits, and substantial warlord armies attracted to the easy wealth and targets of river commerce. The two dominant foreign powers in the area, the Japanese and the British, each were exhibiting strong, seemingly cooperative –– but potentially conflicting –– financial and military presences on the river. Poverty and drug use were rampant throughout the countryside. Even Andersson would not venture there.

Andrews' references to discussing the looming world war with Teddy Roosevelt and Ted and Kermit Roosevelt during 1914 are not entirely idle. The ex-American President, Teddy Roosevelt, was a staunch supporter of the American Museum. He and Henry Osborn were extremely close friends –– and allies. It was as President that Teddy Roosevelt provided the letter of introduction Osborn presented to Lord Cromer of Egypt in 1907 smoothing the way for the American Museum's six-month fossil-collecting expedition in the Fayûm. As ex-President, Teddy Roosevelt provided "an open letter of introduction" (UALSp.134) for Andrews' and the naturalist/explorer, Edmund Heller, (UALS p.133) for use by the American Museum's (RCAndrews') First Asiatic (Big-Game Hunting and Zoological) Expedition (?1916-17) to China's Yunnan Province.

But it is Colonel Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt, Teddy's son, who is to play a most critical role concerning Asia in these times. His role eventually became a tether to Asia for Andrews and the American Museum.

[]. Setting.During the summer in the region of Yenchingkou, the farmers living along the limestone ridges overlooking the lush rice paddies in the valleys seventeen hundred feet below eked out their own living by cultivating whatever small patches of earth they could find among the rock. In the off-season, they mined the vertebrate fossil-bearing deposits left in the rock for the remains of ancient animals buried in fissures and vertically eroded pits in the Paleozoic limestone. No one knows how these fossils were first discovered, though it is said to have been accidentally while a farmer was digging for water. Fossils were not unknown to the Chinese. They had been in Chinese medicine for hundreds of years. Most knew that whether a find was a fossil was determined by whether one’s tongue stuck to the specimen.

Once mining began, the fossils of Yenchingkou were sold wholesale to local drug merchants who crushed them into powder for retail as a curative [healing cure]. Fifth century Chinese philosopher Lei Hiao had advised that if one washed a dragon bone twice in hot water, then reduced it to powder and placed it in a thin bag with two young eviscerated swallows for one night, and afterward mixed it in


with a medicinal preparation, it would provide an effect divine. Walter Granger, the first scientist to visit there, wrote,

[F]or generations vertebrate fossils, known to the Chinese as Dragon Bones and Dragon Teeth (Lung Ku and Lung Ya), have been articles of the Chinese [pharmacopeias]. They are prescribed by Chinese physicians of the old school for all sorts of complaints, ranging from headache to Bright’s disease, and are usually taken in powdered form, although sometimes the fossils are soaked in alcohol and then the alcohol is drunk, or fired in grease and the grease is eaten, it presumably having absorbed the virtue of the dragon’s bone.

An ancient treatise, he continued, “described the different kinds of dragon bones and gave a long list of human ailments for which the bones, teeth, or horns were considered specific.”

Wholesaling fossils to druggists was a big business for the villagers, and a somewhat dangerous one. Men were lowered by rope into shafts sometimes fifty feet deep. Each carried a digging tool and a basket that was winched up once it was filled. The fossils were then dumped onto the ground for sorting and drying and the basket was returned to the miner for refilling.

Fig. 1. – A fossil pit operation located along the limestone ridge above Yenchingkou.

That fossils existed in Szechwan Province was not unknown. In 1915, in a paper entitled “On some fossil mammals from Sze-chuan, China,” Japanese paleontologist Hikoshichiró Matsumoto summarized the history of fossils from that province as follows:

Fossil mammals from China are recorded by Waterhouse (1853), Busk (1868), Owen (1870), Gaudry (1871), Koken (1885), Lydekker (1885, 1886 & 1891), V. Lóczy (1898), Suess (1899), Schlosser (1903), &c. Among these authors’ works, Owen’s, Gaudry’s, Koken’s, Lydekker’s and, especially, Schlosser’s are most important.

Matsumoto had studied at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and Columbia University earlier in his career and was therefore personally familiar to Granger. Granger also had met the German professor Max Schlosser, of whom he later wrote:

It is interesting to note that the first real information paleontologists had of the fossil mammalian faunas of China was from a large collection of fossils purchased by a German doctor [who had no information] about the source of these fossils themselves, but from bits of matrix still adhering to some of the fossils themselves, [Schlosser] was able to classify the specimens in a fairly satisfactory way and to draw the first adequate picture of the mammalian life of the region during late Cenozoic time.

[]. The Science.


The Pliocene and Pleistocene were periods of time known as Epochs that occupied the late Cenozoic Era. The Pleistocene began 1.8 million years ago and ended ten thousand years ago. The Pliocene preceded it for several million years. The Pleistocene was characterized by the alternate appearance and recession of northern glaciers. The appearance and spread of hominids ensued, as did the extinction of megafauna–– basically any animal greater than 100 pounds such as the mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed tigers and giant panda. The Paleozoic limestone in which the Pleistocene fossils were found was formed at a much older period of 540 to 250 million years ago. In the Pleistocene, fissures and deep pits eroded by water into the soft limestone became permanent catchalls for animals or their remains.

For several years following Matsumoto’s summation in 1915, the sources for the druggists fossils continued to remain unknown to western scientists. The druggists obviously were keeping that information confidential for competitive purposes and no trained expert had ever ventured into the area now considered by most to be too unsafe to explore. However, such knowledge did finally come to an amateur fossil collector and geologist, J[ohn] Langford Smith, a British consul posted in Ichang. He had learned specifically that some of the fossils emanated from a region near the remote mountain hamlet of Yenchingkou located in the highlands of eastern Szechwan Province that paralleled the Yangtze River to the south. Yenchingkou was twenty miles up the river from Wanhsien, the first major port after the Three Gorges.

Smith was known locally as ‘Fossil Smith’ and was always showing his collection off to anyone interested. He had on occasion, also sent items out to academics for study and description, such as a Dr. Mahan [ ].

Smith promptly informed the newly established Chinese Geological Survey about Yenchingkou. The Survey had put out the word a few years earlier that it wished to receive any information about fossil localities in China and Mongolia. There always was a segment of western missionaries, diplomats, entrepreneurs and travelers in China that held an interest in fossils and these were good sources to tap into. Smith’s acquaintance, Miss Moore, of the Scottish Mission in Ichang was also "keenly interested in fossils & zoology and has a small collection of vertebrate fossils picked up in drug stores," noted Granger. She attended a talk he gave at Consul Smith’s in Ichang on March 6, 1922.

Another source of information about the Yenchingkou site, Granger learned, was the amateur collector Father Lombard of the Catholic Mission in Wanhsien. Granger met with him shortly after settling in there in 1921. Lombard had lived in Wanhsien for twenty of the twenty-three years he lived in China. He spoke only French and Chinese, so James Wong interpreted. Lombard told Granger that the fossil pits of Yenchingkou extended all the way into neighboring Hupeh Province.

Matsumoto’s summation of the matter in 1915 had been based on such scattered reporting. The Chinese government had, at the suggestion of it’s newly arrived Swedish mining advisor, Johan Gunnar Andersson, hoped to better organize the process. Almost immediately upon his arrival in China in 1914, Andersson began finding fossils as he went about the countryside inspecting China’s various mine operations. Though a geologist, he immediately recognized the significance of his finds and instituted a scientific, systematic approach for collecting, analyzing and reporting on them. He also recognized the need for a trained paleontologist and other assistance as the scope of his discoveries expanded significantly.

Despite Smith’s specific information, however, Andersson and the Survey considered that region of China too volatile because of warlord and bandit activity. Instead, they passed the information along to Granger who planned to arrive in Peking in June of 1921. This was a year ahead of the AMNH’s Central Asiatic Expeditions (CAE and formerly Third Asiatic Expeditions) into Inner and Outer Mongolia scheduled to begin the following year in April. Despite the dangers, Granger believed he could accomplish the trip to Yenchinkou. He would go well briefed, well equipped and well armed. Fossil Smith was one of his first stops and Granger took an instant liking to him:


Consul Smith is a bachelor and lives in a large roomy house with only a fox terrier for company. He is keenly interested in fossils geology and makes a very agreeable companion. Consulate office is in a small separate building fifty feet or so away and the compound grounds, enclosed by a high wall, are very pleasant. Consul Smith by virtue of his position is No. 1 in Ichang. Everyone goes to him for advice.

Granger’s success was nearly immediate. In the words of Andrews written to Henry Osborn on March 2, 1922:

[Granger’s Stegodon material is perfectly bully––two young skulls, with milk dentites, one adult skull and lots of jaws and teeth. He has one primate skull, a Gibbon, which I believe will prove very interesting[,] and another monkey jaw. He has 33 cases of fossils and will write either to you or Dr. [W.D.] Matthew himself[,] so that I shall not attempt to describe his material.

In addition to the Pleistocene fossil mammals, Granger had hoped also to find evidence of hominids, the early members of the human family and would become the first scientist to do so. He would also collect and record recent mammals and birds. His explorations in Szechwan and those of his CAE colleague, the herpetologist Clifford H. Pope, in regions nearby initiated the "China Branch" of the CAE. Granger, as head paleontologist, chief of science and second in command of the CAE, also made all the Mongolia trips over summers, in addition to his three winter trips to Szechwan and another to Yunnan. Between them in China, Granger and Pope developed a significant assemblage of fossil vertebrates, modern birds, recent mammals, fish and reptiles. Their scientific results are treated in works cited in Note 3 below.

Granger’s scientific results from Yenchingkou are well published. Less known, however, is his day-to-day life and experiences for five or so months he was there. It was said that only two westerners had ever been to Yenchingkou, and they were just passing through. So Granger’s observations of the place and its inhabitants are unique, as are those of his wife Anna who may have been the first western woman the villagers had ever seen.

[]. Expedition Routine.After traveling up the Yangtze from Ichang to Wanhsien by steamer, Granger made a stop in Wanhsien to acquaint himself with the locals and reorganize. He then reloaded his party and equipment aboard sampans and moved up the river to the landing below Yenchingkou called Pei Shui Chih, or White Water Creek. For the first trip in 1921, the druggist Chang of Wanhsien, who was now the primary buyer of Yenchingkou’s fossils, and his apprentice agreed to act as Granger’s guides. Chang would introduce Granger to the pit operators that would also initiate the delicate situation of the two, Granger and Chang, would be competing for fossils. Granger assured Chang that he was looking only for the best pieces and, in any event, would not try to outbid him. Wong had gone ahead with them to set up camp and commence operations with Chang’s assistance. Granger soon followed

On Thursday the 6th I, with the cook and No. 1 and our personal equipment took a sampan up river under guidance of the apprentice. Left Wanhsien at 8:30 and reached Pei-Sui-Chih at Fu Tan at 1:30. Progress up stream is by oars, poles and tracking rope. We had a good[-]sized sampan manned by four men and a small boy. Had tiffin upon landing and engaged five coolies to carry luggage to camp. Route is the usual stone paved trail––following along sides of a deep valley.

He also noted that he had crossed the Yangtze from the Wanhsien side one half mile below the landing at Pei Shui Chih that sat by the mouth of a creek by the same name (White Water Creek) that flowed down from Yenchingkou into the Yangtze. Just above the mouth of the creek lay the base of the Fu Tan, the first set of rapids encountered as one moved up the Yangtze from the landing.

[]. Yenchingkou.Yenchingkou was accessible only by path––all travel and commerce to and fro were by foot and that is how Granger and his small party of Chinese assistants and carrying coolies reached it. Once in Yenchingkou, Granger made his base camp in a rented ancestral hall that sat on the main path and


overlooked White Water Creek as it ran through rice paddies and down to the river. The hamlet simply was a couple of short double rows of houses lined up on either side of the trail. The trail crossed creek for first time at lower edge of the village. The hills soon rose sharply on either side (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 2. – Walter Granger’s CAE headquarters at end of a ten-mile climb from Yangtze beyond. White Water Creek wends through the rice paddies.

There were probably no more than 25 families in Yenchingkou, Granger surmised. It was entirely self-sufficient. There was no store, even though there were three inns.

Every patch of ground at all smooth is dug up and planted clear to the crest of the hills and on slopes of 35˚ or 40˚ off horizontal. All places suitable for rice paddies are so utilized, this being the most profitable crop I presume. Just now the rice fields are being plowed and harrowed. About the only garden stuff grown here is turnips, sweet potatoes (rather tasteless & watery) a few beans and that is about all. We have been getting fine persimmons recently––at 5 [––-?] each (8 for 1¢. U.S.). These are the soft kind but there is also a hard sort growing here––not yet ready to eat. Tangerines are still green.

[]. Expedition HQ: the T’an Family Ancestral Hall.The ancestral hall was patterned after a temple and belonged to the T’an family who were prominent in the region. It was located in the Upper Village, two hundred yards up the main trail from the Lower Village. The family agreed to rent it to Granger for $2.50 (US) a month. “Had the hay, corn and other things moved out, the place cleaned up and made very inhabitable,” he wrote. Some use of it, however, was to be retained by the family for daily religious ceremonies and other purposes.

The hall’s front door opened directly onto the main trail. The front section of it held a stage, as shown as “1” in Fig. 3. Two connecting galleries (“3” and “4”) ran down either side of an open courtyard to a back section (“2”) that contained an altar and kitchen. A beggar and his family lived in a shed (“5”) built off the right side as one faced the building. There were no fully enclosed rooms in the hall.


Fig 3. – Granger’s diagram of temple headquarters shown at roughly the same angle as in Fig. 2 (above) with the front door at left.

Once arrived and settled in on October 11, 1921, Granger wrote:

Our headquarters is a roomy place with plenty of space to spread out in. The men sleep on one of the galleries. We [Granger and Wong] have the stage and the other gallery is used for alcoholic specimens, etc.––a place to admit the natives with their offerings of snakes, lizards, fish, crabs etc. The cook has a kitchen and an anteroom and No. 1 has a large room on the opposite side of the shrine.

The construction of this hall is similar to that of a temple––but the temple idols are replaced here by stone tablets inscribed with the names & probably history of the various Tan ancestry. On the 9th there was a gathering of the Tan family before the shrine, with food offering and burning of paper money and firing of a big bunch of crackers. Also an extra lighting of candles the night before and the night after the ceremony. A caretaker comes early each morning and in the evening and beats a drum and an iron kettle and burns joss sticks before the shrine––just as in a temple. At [another] temple in Wanhsien the morning ceremony took place at dawn and always woke me up. There were three sets of idols there and the racket had to be performed before each set. Here it is over with quickly and is done at more seemly hours.

There was a good roof and a back wall, Granger noted, but otherwise they were essentially out in the open working on the levels above the square, open courtyard. Fortunately the weather was mild there in the winter. 47˚ is the lowest he had recorded so far and when the sun shone the temperature was just right, he thought. “Our first month was rainy and dismal but the past week has been delightful,” he wrote his father.

Our little village is inexpressibly filthy but the temple is clean and we enjoy the place very much. People are coming in continually during the day to watch the foreigners work and eat but they have to stay down in the courtyard and so they annoy me little. Sometimes there are twenty of them all staring at me in silence. Then presently they all go out and another lot comes in. Children come in and play about the court and sometimes we throw them down crackers or candy to them and give them the empty shotgun shells that they covet highly. Like people of all races, I suppose the very young or the very old are the most interesting and we pay special attention to them. At dusk we close the front doors and remain secluded until daylight.

Granger quickly found out, however, that the temple was not to be the only purpose for which family used of the hall. Just a few days after his arrival, on October 15, he recorded:


Yesterday forenoon there was a conclave of the Tan family in the Ancestral Hall for the purpose of trying two members of the family on the reputed adoption of a boy not of the family. Accused were a man of 40 or so––the principal in the case and his uncle, an old man of 60 or 70. After an hour or so of discussion, presenting of evidence[,] etc[.,] the assembly adjourned and gathered again in the afternoon. A half-hour more of discussion and it was decided to tie the two accused up until they should confess to the adoption that it seems is against the rules of the family. So the two were tied to pillars in the court––directly below our stage and tied in an uncomfortable manner with hands behind the back and high up. After a half hour or so the old man was released temporarily and later Mr. Wong induced the elders to release the younger man also––who was groaning from the pain by this time. Then [James] Wong held a sort of court in one of the nearby houses and endeavored to induce the elders to make some investigation before proceeding with the punishment. This was finally agreed upon and a messenger was about to be dispatched for information when the accused confessed. It was then decided to punish him by a fine of money or land instead of the bamboo which he preferred, being miserly but Wong insisted that under the circumstances the money fine would hurt the most and in this the elders concurred. The amount of fine had not been determined for today when I made inquiry.

The Tan family ran an inn right next to the temple rented by Granger. As Granger got to know the family, he assigned nicknames. For example, Bucktooth T’an was a son of Innkeeper T’an. Bucktooth (distinguished from ‘Buckshot’) worked for Granger as a coolie that first season. Mrs. T’an was his mother, and Innkeeper T’an’s wife. It is not known whether Grandma T’an was on the paternal or maternal side, but she was there nevertheless. Lung Goo T’an was the member of the Tan family who controlled the bone digging. T’an the Fifth was []. [T’an Family:

Bucktooth TanCharley TanGrandma ("Wandma") TanInnkeeper Tan)Lung Goo TanTan family committeeTan the FifthTan's Son (same as Bucktooth Tan?)Tan Wu (replaces Lung Goo Tan)]

Attached to the ancestral hall was a wall-less shed occupied by ‘The Beggar Man’ and his wife and two children. (See 5 in Fig 5.) On December 3/, 1925, Granger recorded that the man had died, also noting that his widow and "two ragged children still occupy the lean-to."

Yenchingkou was not only very poor, it was highly vulnerable to intruders. Granger had already heard rumors that winter that a religious faction that had attacked it the previous year was reorganizing just over the Hupei border. Wong planned go to a market 30 li to the south soon to make inquiry about the situation. Last winter, Granger noted, the valley had been descended upon by a great group of these fanatics known as [left blank]. They took nearly [all the] livestock belonging to the natives and passed on their way to Wanhsien for the announced purpose of killing all soldiers there. They claimed immunity from bullets and really made the soldiers think so for a time but finally the soldiers succeeded in killing one or two and upon discovering that the fanatics were really not invulnerable the slaughter commenced and Wanhsien witnessed a lively two or three days. Some 500 of the religious tribe were slaughtered. Many escaped and soldiers pursued. Some came back up this valley and a battle was fought above here a short distance. The soldiers upon their return took from the poor natives what little the fanatics had not taken before. The result is that these poor people have very little this summer. The Inn adjoining has no blankets for instance and even furniture was broken up for fuel, hardly anyone has pigs and eggs cannot be bought hereabouts. Wong had to go to market last week to stock up with things that under ordinary circumstances could be purchased here. It is said that the organizer of the present religious demonstration is one of the leaders who escaped the soldiers last winter. They should have gotten him!


The druggist Chang’s apprentice was studying English and went to Granger occasionally with his primer for pronunciation. Granger also let it be known that he would provide medical care to any villager wishing treatment. Be what he awaited most was the chance to see the bone pits. Word came on October 14th, as Granger recorded the next day.

Lung Goo Tan called yesterday and had a conference with me. We're to go up to the pits the first pleasant day and look things over. He informed us that from all the pits in this vicinity as much as 30,000 piculs a year of bones are sometimes taken and that in a poor year 10,000 piculs are taken!

[ ]. Dragon Bone Ridge.The countryside around Yenchingkou was steep and rugged. They were in the narrowest kind of a valley with the hills rising up at angles of about forty-five degrees on both sides. A few small streams came down the mountainsides into White Water Creek. When Granger walked out the front door on a clear day and looked up to his left, he could instantly observe ‘Dragon Bone Ridge’ seventeen hundred feet above him (see Fig. []). This was the home of the lung ya (fossil teeth) and lung ku (fossil bones) pits that lay scattered along the ridges and could be, again, reached only by foot.

[Fig 4. – Dragon Bone Ridge.]

Puppet show and acrobatic troupe

Pig killing

Bandits

Wong’s adoption of girl

Opium smoking

Clothes

Rice paddies

Impact of Chang and Sheng forces on village

Granger’s scientific work at Yanjinggou is described in [Conquest], as well as in [Colbert, Hoojier [and Granger]]. He also made a large collection of recent mammals and birds. Granger’s sketch of an encounter with the a battle for Wanhsien in March of 1923, is contained in “Chinese Armies on the March,” a short chapter in Explorers Club Tales. He made brief reference to inter-provincial warfare in Conquest. None tells the whole story, or that his wife Anna often was there. Nor did he mention the bandit ambush against his junk as he, Anna and his party headed down the Yangtze to Ichang and safety. This event received recent treatment in “Exchanging Favors,” The Granger Papers Project Paper No. 1 and was the topic of a presentation at the 2007 Naval History Symposium at Annapolis, MD.

She, as an adjunct member of the CAE, would later publish in articles entitled “Wintering Over a Fire Basket in Szechuan” in the American Museum’s Natural History magazine [May-June, 1924, v. XXIV, n. 3, pp. 366-380] and [ ]. (In terms of danger, incidentally, Anna’s experiences with Granger and his small band of Chinese assistants during his Yangtze basin expeditions greatly exceeded any of those encountered by any CAE party or individual CAE member in Mongolia except the motor man Mackenzie Young. Herpetologist Clifford Pope and his small band of Chinese assistants working in south China also encountered a significantly higher risk of danger than did the Mongolia ventures which he did not attend.)

[edit out: Whenever Anna was there, [ ]. As winter deepened all went to the kitchen to sit near the cook stove for a spell. Anna also had a fire basket to sit by when she was out on the open stage.]

Base Camp Yenchingkou, Szechwan Province, 1921-1926: Chinese village life through the eyes of a...

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