28-White (Papago Springs).p65 - International Wildlife Museum

Lucas et al., eds., 2008, Neogene Mammals. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin 44.
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PAPAGO SPRINGS CAVE, PRONGHORNS AND PALEONTOLOGY:
RED FIELDS AND THE BURDEN OF PROOF
RICHARD S. WHITE, JR.
International Wildlife Museum, 4800 West Gates Pass Road, Tucson, AZ 85745
Abstract—The involvement of Joseph Warren Burden and Quentin Roosevelt in the paleontology of Papago
Springs Cave, near Sonoita in Santa Cruz County, Arizona is established on the basis of archival records and
interviews with surviving family members. Burden was killed in France during World War II, and Roosevelt died in
China shortly after the war. The events surrounding the discovery, exploration and publication of the fauna are
presented. The derivation of the trivial name onusrosagris is revealed.
INTRODUCTION
Science is often portrayed, especially by scientists, as a dry search
for the truth, based solely on the evidence and consequently devoid of
human interest. Nothing could be further from the truth, as science is a
human endeavor, engaged in by human beings, with all their strengths and
weaknesses. Every generation of scientists, and paleontologists are no
exception, has a mythology of stories about the preceding generation or
two; these become less and less well known (and more fantastic) as time
goes on, as the current generation becomes the older generation to a new
one. Among these stories are the origin of the scientific names appended
to newly described genera and species. Stories change, evolve and lose
detail over time. After another generation, only still, small whispers of
most of the stories remain, and yet, it is those very stories which teach us
that the icons of our science, now on figurative or literal pedestals, were,
after all, just human beings like us. We also lose sight of the fact that what
we do as scientists is set in the framework of the society of which we are
a part, and events in the larger world affect what we do both directly and
indirectly.
On November 17, 1934, the American Museum of Natural History published Number 754 in its series Novitates, entitled “A new
species of antilocaprid, Tetrameryx onusrosagris, from a Pleistocene
cave deposit in southern Arizona.” The authors were Quentin Roosevelt
and J. W. Burden. While the Roosevelt family name, and perhaps that of
Quentin himself, is widely recognizable today, the name of Joseph Warren Burden is not. Neither of the two had previously published on a
paleontological topic, and neither ever did so afterwards.
In connection with my research on antilocaprines, I became interested in determining who Roosevelt and Burden were, and what the
story of their involvement with paleontology might be. This interest
arose over the origin of the trivial name proposed by Roosevelt and
Burden for their new pronghorn, onusrosagris. When I read in Martha
Frick Symington Sanger’s biography of her great-grandfather, Henry
Clay Frick (Sanger, 1998), that Childs Frick’s daughter, Frances, had
married Isaiah Townsend Burden, that immediately raised the possibility that J. W. Burden’s involvement in paleontology might be related to
the joining of the Frick and Burden families. This proved not to be the
case, and Isaiah’s branch of the Burden family has been estranged from
Joseph’s branch since around 1940.
Quentin Roosevelt
Quentin Roosevelt was born on November 4, 1919, the youngest
of Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (1887–1944) and Eleanor Butler Alexander
Roosevelt’s (1889–1960) four children. President Theodore Roosevelt
was Quentin’s grandfather. Quentin was named after his uncle Quentin,
the youngest of President Roosevelt’s five children. While some publications and website resources list Quentin as being Quentin Roosevelt II,
he was not the son of the first Quentin, and the family themselves never
used that designation (A. Roosevelt, pers. com.), although it does appear
FIGURE 1. Joseph Burden (left) and Quentin Roosevelt at Groton School,
1935. Courtesy of the Groton School.
on the memorial stone for Quentin in the cemetery at Oyster Bay, Long
Island, New York where Quentin grew up. Quentin attended the Groton
School, in Groton, Massachusetts, graduating in 1937 (Fig. 1 and 5).
In the summer after he graduated, Quentin’s mother Eleanor took
him on a journey to China, where they “traveled over 3000 miles by
plane….had several narrow escapes from death by air, by water, by
shellfire and by bombs…became refugees, and…ended up with a severe
earthquake in Manila.” (Roosevelt 1940:197) In spite of these trials and
tribulations, they arrived in Seattle aboard the S. S. President Jefferson
on August 22, 1937.
After that summer, Quentin entered Harvard University, which
awarded him a BA degree in 1941. His senior honor’s thesis, “A preliminary study of the Nashi people: Their history, religion and art”, concerned a Chinese ethnic group which he had visited twice, once in 1939,
and again in 1940. His research for this thesis began during his second
trip to China from March 4, 1939, to June 28, 1939. He had become
interested in the Nashi people through several old manuscripts which his
father had collected in Western China. Quentin traveled to Li-kiang,
where he spent time collecting the hand-written scrolls and books upon
which he would base his thesis. Quentin published an article in the
magazine Natural History, describing his trip and the manuscripts which
he collected there. He expressed relief at the end of his trip at having
finally got himself and all the material he had collected safely aboard the
S.S. Empress of Canada (Fig. 2), on which he apparently sailed to Honolulu, transferring there to the S. S. Matsonia, which arrived in Seattle on
June 28, 1939. Ironically, the Empress of Canada was pressed into military service in November 1939, and was torpedoed and sank on the night
of March 13-14, 1943. Quentin himself would not long survive her.
According to his daughter (A. Roosevelt, personal communication), “Quentin was sort of an enthusiastic polymath, played piano and
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FIGURE 2. The Empress of Canada, unknown date.
accordion, could play anything he heard on the radio, chords and all; he
could draw both realistically and cartoonishly, [and] he was interested in
both art and ethnology.”
Quentin graduated from Harvard University in 1941, and thereafter joined the United States Army. He rose to the rank of Major, and was
wounded at the Battle of Kasserine Pass in February, 1943 (Fig. 3). He
was a recipient of the Purple Heart, Croix de Guerre and Silver Star (NY
Times, Dec. 22, 1948).
After the war, Quentin joined Pan American Airways, where he
became Vice President of the airline. He was also named director of the
China National Aviation Corporation. On December 21, 1948, the plane
in which Quentin was flying supplies from Hong Kong north into China,
in support of Chinese Nationalist troops, crashed outside Hong Kong,
with all passengers lost (NY Times Dec. 22, 1948). Surviving Quentin
were his wife, Frances, and three young daughters, the oldest of which
was four years old at that time. The China National Aviation Corporation maintains a website documenting the history of the company, including information on Quentin and on the crash in which he died: http:/
/www.cnac.org/index.html. Quentin is buried on the island on which he
died, Basalt Island, in Hong Kong harbor.
J. W. Burden
Joseph Warren Burden, Jr. was born April 28, 1918, in Mt. Kisco,
New York. His father, Joseph Warren Burden Sr., (1884–1977) was an
investment banker in New York City. His mother, Margery Kathleen
Maude Burden (1889–1979, Fig. 4 right), was a British actress, the
daughter of two British theatrical notables, actor Cyril Francis Maude
(1862–1951, Fig. 4 left) and actress Winifred Emery Maude (1861-1924,
Fig. 4 center).
Joseph’s grandfather, also Joseph Warren Burden, was the son of
Peter A. Burden and the grandson of Henry Burden, who had founded an
iron-making empire in Troy, New York. Henry was an inventor as well as
an astute businessman, and patented machines for making nails and spikes,
as well as horseshoes.
Marie Skinner, in an interview recorded by Robert Evander (personal communication), recalled both Joseph and Quentin. Marie thought
that Joseph was the son of a trustee of the American Museum, W.
Douglas Burden; however, Douglas and Joseph were more distantly
related. Douglas was the explorer whose exploits in visiting Komodo
Island were the basis for the 1933 movie, King Kong (Burden, 1927).
Joseph’s family spent four summers on Long Island at Lloyd’s
Neck, where they rented the historic Manor House (Fig. 6) as their
summer home. The Manor House was later to become noted as the
Lindberg residence. It was there that Joseph met Quentin Roosevelt, and
the two immediately became fast friends. I have been unable to ascertain
precisely which years the Burdens spent at Manor House, but they were
certainly there in the summer of 1934, and gone by 1939, when the
FIGURE 3. Quentin Roosevelt, right with his father, Teddy Roosevelt, Jr.
shortly after the Allied invasion of France and shortly before Teddy’s death
from a heart attack.
FIGURE 4. Left, Cyril Francis Maude. Center, Winifred Emery Maude.
Right, Margery Kathleen Maude Burden. Photographs courtesy of Pamela
Burden Milholland.
Lindberg family began spending their summers at Manor House.
Joseph, like Quentin, attended the Groton School in Groton,
Massachusetts, beginning in 1933 and graduating in 1937 (Fig. 1 and 5).
The Groton School is a private, Episcopal preparatory school founded
in 1884 and located in Groton, Massachusetts. Many of its graduates
have gone on to become notable statesmen, writers and financiers; examples include Dean Acheson, writer Louis Auchincloss (a relative of
Joseph Burden by marriage) W. Averell Harriman, and anthropologist
Ward Goodenough.
According to Joseph’s sister, Pamela Burden Milholland (pers.
com. 2007), Joseph was independent and somewhat of a maverick. Rather
than do as was expected of him by attending Harvard University, from
which his father had graduated in 1906, Joseph chose instead to attend
Oxford University in England (Fig. 8). Joseph was no stranger to England; his mother, of English birth, had taken the boy and his sisters with
her a number of times on visits to her homeland. Passenger lists filed in
the Port of New York show Joseph returning from visits to England in
April, 1921 (age 3); September, 1925 (age 7); September, 1927 (Age 9);
possibly in September, 1932 (age 14, returning from Antwerp; he sailed
by himself while the rest of the family followed a week later) and finally
in September, 1935 (age 17, apparently having made the trip unaccompanied by parents or siblings).
Joseph entered Oxford on October 12, 1937. He was in residence
at Oxford for seven terms between 1937 and 1939. In his application
documents, Joseph stated that he wished to attend Oxford in his uncle’s
footsteps. His uncle, John Maude, had been at Oxford from 1922 until
1926. Joseph stated that he wished to become an Anglican clergyman.
However, most of his studies were in what was called PPE, or Politics,
Philosophy and Economics. Oxford instituted a program of “war de-
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FIGURE 6. Manor House in 2007. Photograph by author.
FIGURE 5. Yearbook entries for Quentin Roosevelt (top) and Joseph Burden
(bottom), The Groton School Yearbook, 1937. Courtesy of the Groton
School.
grees” to deal with the problem of students called up to serve before they
had finished their studies. To qualify, a student had to have spent a
certain number of terms at Oxford and successfully taken the Pass Moderations Examinations. That, combined with the number of years of
military service, enabled a student to apply for a war degree. This Joseph
did in 1943 (certificate number 296), with his BA degree awarded in
absentia on May 6, 1943. According to Joseph’s sister, Pamela Burden
Milholland (personal communication, 2007) Joseph had, just prior to his
death, determined that he wanted to be a journalist. A surviving fragment
of his writing, an essay on the death of one of his war comrades, suggests
that he would have been an effective writer.
With the outbreak of hostilities between Germany and England in
1939, Joseph attempted to join the British Army, but experienced some
difficulties in doing so due to his being an American citizen. He returned
to Oxford for the September, 1939 semester, but then received an invitation to join a volunteer American ambulance crew working with the
French Army. Eventually, he renounced his American citizenship to enlist in the Seaforth Highlanders.
After serving with the Highlanders for a year as a private, Joseph
won a commission first as a 2nd. Lieutenant (London Gazette Supplement, January 14, 1941) and later as a Captain in the Scots Guards (Fig.
7). He served in the 3rd Battalion, a mechanized regiment. Joseph was
killed in action in Normandy on July 21, 1944. He is buried in the War
Cemetery at Banneville-la-Campagne, which is located between the villages of Caen and Pont l’Eveque, Normandy, France. Joseph’s sister,
Winifred Emery Burden, married Richard G. Collins, a Lt. Col. in the
British Army, and is living in the London area at the time of this writing
(2008).
PAPAGO SPRINGS CAVE
In the summer of 1934, Quentin Roosevelt and Joseph Burden
decided that they would travel to the American West. Burden’s sister,
FIGURE 7. Joseph Burden in his Scots Guards uniform. Photograph courtesy
of Pamela Burden Milholland.
Pamela, believes that neither had any family ties in southern Arizona; I
have been unable to discover any links with the area among members of
either family. It appears that they simply set out for the west, most
likely by train. Other Eastern tenderfeet pursued similar paths; geographer Ronald L. Ives describes taking the train from Philadelphia in 1928
having just graduated from high school. He eventually reached Wellton,
Arizona, where he left the train carrying only some dry food and a twoquart canteen, intending to walk to the desolate Pinacate shield volcano
in Mexico (Ives 1989). Fortunately, Roosevelt and Burden’s journey
ended better than did that of Ives; he ran out of water ten miles short of
his destination and had to turn back (on foot).
Cave Explorations - 1934
Roosevelt and Burden made it to southern Arizona, where they
stayed at a guest ranch called La Hacienda de Los Encinos in Sonoita. The
general area of the ranch is still extant, and residents remember the operation, but most of the buildings are now gone. Those few that remain have
been converted into individual residences. Photographs taken by Albert
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FIGURE 9. This may be the house in which Joseph Burden and Quentin
Roosevelt stayed at Hacienda Las Encinas. It is also where Morris Skinner
and his family stayed during the excavations at Papago Springs Cave.
Photograph by Albert Potter, courtesy of Lee Potter.
FIGURE 8. Joseph Burden studying at Oxford. Photograph courtesy of
Pamela Burden Milholland.
Potter during the 1937-38 and 1940 excavations by the American Museum include a photograph of the house in which Morris Skinner and his
family stayed (Fig. 9) during their 1937-1938 Papago Springs Cave work;
with a note that it may be the same house in which Roosevelt and Burden
stayed. Hacienda los Encinos was operated during the 1930s and 1940s
by Mr. and Mrs. E. Neil Carr as a guest ranch. They advertized both
locally and in brochures produced by the Southern Pacific Railroad,
which would have been available in New York. One of their newspaper
advertisements even states “There are also several interesting caves to
explore which can be reached on horseback” (Tucson Daily Citizen,
February 26, 1942). Room rates were about $50.00 a week and included
the use of a horse and saddle.
Quentin Roosevelt described the discovery of the cave (Fig. 10,
11) and its fossils in a letter to Childs Frick at the American Museum of
Natural History:
“On the second Wednesday [August 8, ed. note] of
August, 1934, Joseph W. Burden and I set off to explore a
cave in southern Arizona. This cave had a reputation for
caving in, so we were on our guard as we crawled through
the narrow tunnels or investigate[d] the smaller nooks and
crannies. On the way out, we noticed a small bone projecting from the ceiling. Thinking it might be interesting; we
broke it off and brought it back with us. Upon arrival we
had another look at the fragment, and it appeared not at all
familiar…….”
“So, again, on Thursday the 23rd of August we set out
again for the cave, in search of more remains. We were
richly rewarded, however, for our labors. We returned afterwards with two skulls with upper teeth fairly intact,
one lower jaw intact with fragments of others, three separate antlers (The antlers on the first skull were intact), and
numerous ribs and leg bones, a shoulder-blade, and a complete Pelvic Girdle. Most of these bones were in fairly
good condition so we packed them immediately.
“In the same cave, in different rocks, we found some
shells of various types imbedded in the crystallized lime-
FIGURE 10. The area around Papago Springs Cave. Photo taken by Albert
Potter, 1937-38. Courtesy of Lee Potter.
stone.
On leaving the cave, we had barely touched the surface
and we think there are many more bones there, we know of
two skulls, and we suspect the presence of more. Although
all the bones we have found so far are antelope remains,
there may be others, as well.” (Quentin Roosevelt, summary prepared for Childs Frick in Frick Archives, AMNH,
dated August, 1934).”
Burden described the same events somewhat differently:
“Quentin Roosevelt and I were exploring a cave near
Sonoita Arizona, known locally as the “Papago Spring Cave”
when I sighted some fragments of limb-bone protruding
from the roof of the tunnel we were in. Later, before leaving
the cave, Quentin discovered a great number of large limbbones, vertebrae etc. scattered in the matrix of the wall at
the mouth of the cave.
“A few weeks later, being very much interested in our
find, we returned to the cave with candles and hammers.
We first started digging for the bones at the entrance of the
tunnel but these proved to be too firmly embedded so after
getting a jawbone and a few other limb-bones we started
digging where we had seen the first bones down in the
tunnel. There we uncovered two skulls in fairly good condition, several vertebrae, a pelvic girdle and many miscellaneous bones.
“Papago Spring Cave” is situated in the Canello foothills near Sonoita. Its two known entrances are found on
the side of an extremely rocky hill. The interior of the cave
consists of a large cavern from thirty to fifty feet high into
which open the two entrances and the mouth of a long
tunnel. It was at the mouth of this tunnel that the second
group of bones was found. The cavern and tunnel walls are
made of a grayish limestone except where the bones were
found. They were found in a hardened mixture of rubble
containing much limestone. This appeared to have been the
remainder of earth that had once filled the tunnel the rest
having probably been washed away. In places along the
walls we found fossil shells and also I picked up a fragment
of pottery on the floor. This floor consisted mainly of a
soft rich earth of great depth.” (Joseph W. Burden, Jr.,
summary prepared for Childs Frick in Frick Archives,
AMNH, dated Aug. 1934).”
Bringing the Find to the Attention of Paleontologists
After the boys first visit to the cave, they sent the bone fragment
they had broken from the ceiling of the cave to Henry Fairfield Osborn at
the American Museum of Natural History, who, as Quentin wrote, “we
knew to be well versed in paleontology”. Quentin wrote directly to
Osborn, who signed his letter back to Quentin “Sincerely, your friend”.
Apparently Quentin had visited Osborn and the Paleontology lab at the
American Museum two years previously [1932] and had met Osborn
then. In a week the boys received a reply from Osborn, stating that he
was on the eve of his departure for Europe, and that he was turning the
specimen over to his assistant, Dr. Walter Granger, to be identified.
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Granger subsequently informed the boys that the bone was a piece of a
metapodial of an animal very similar to the American pronghorn. Granger
told them that it might be a species different from the modern form, but
that more material, especially skulls or teeth, would be needed. The
interest expressed by Granger is what led the boys to undertake a second
visit to the cave two weeks later.
Publication
Once the material had been recovered and had been sent to the
American Museum, it was cleaned and repaired by Albert Thompson of
the museum’s vertebrate paleontology laboratory. At some point the
material came to the attention of Childs Frick at the American Museum,
likely because he was then preparing his monograph “Horned Ruminants of North America” for publication, and was reviewing the
antilocaprines. Both Quentin and Joseph prepared single-page statements of their finding of the cave and their first two trips in August 1934.
Frick edited those accounts, added a table of measurements and a drawing and initiated publishing the resulting short paper in the American
Museum’s research series, Novitates. The paper, entitled “A new species of antilocaprine, Tetrameryx onusrosagris, from a Pleistocene cave
in Southern Arizona,” was issued on November 17, 1934, just three
months after the boys discovered the fossils. The paper is four pages
long, and by today’s standards quite sketchy as a description of a new
species. There is no indication in that paper of the derivation of the
unusual trivial name onusrosagris. Archival materials in the Department
of Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum have shed some
light on the gestation of both the paper and the name.
Chester A. Reeds, a geologist at the American Museum, was the
editor of the Novitates. Reed read the submitted manuscript and felt that
FIGURE 11. The interior of Papago Springs Cave, about 1987. Jim Mead stands at the top of Skinner’s Entrance A. Photo courtesy of Nick Czaplewski.
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FIGURE 13. Postcranial bones of Stockoceros recovered by Roosevelt and
Burden from Papago Springs Cave in 1934 and 1936. The original bone
found by Joseph W. Burden is on the bottom row, third from the left.
Photograph by author.
FIGURE 12. Sketch restoration of Stockoceros onusrosagris made by Joseph
Burden, April, 1936. Reproduced courtesy of the Frick Archives, American
Museum of Natural History.
“it was incomplete, and consequently, referred the matter to Mr. Walter
Granger for his recommendations” [letter, Reeds to Frick, October 8,
1934]. Granger’s comments are included here in their entirety:
“Dear Dr. Reeds: In the short Novitates article by
Quentin Roosevelt and Joseph Burden there should be a
comparison with the genotype species, T. shuleri and with
a specimen from a cave in southern New Mexico, figured
by Edgar B. Howard of the University of Pennsylvania.
There should also be bibliographic citations of the papers
by Lull, Stock and Howard. The origin of the most unpronounceable specific name I have ever seen should also be
given – no one could possibly guess it. The species is a
good one and will stand. It is very close to the one figured
by Howard, but Howard did not give a name to his, fortunately. Very truly yours, Walter Granger.”
Reed sent a note to Childs Frick that same day asking Frick to
“have Mr. Granger’s recommendations entered in the manuscript…”
On October 10th, 1934 Frick wrote to Henry Fairfield Osborn,
Director of the Museum and Chairman of the Department of Vertebrate
Paleontology as follows:
“My dear Professor Osborn: I desire to call your attention to the enclosed letters from Dr. Reeds and Dr. Granger
regarding the manuscript on the part of Quentin Roosevelt
and J. W. Burden, describing the new antelope which they
discovered this summer in Arizona. As the two boys were
very enthusiastic over their unusual success in the field, I
suggested that they should publish a very brief notice and
description in Novitates, and offered to stand by them in
this, the preparation of the figures, etc. As I am in the
process of completing a volume on the Late Tertiary Pecora,
I assumed that I was a judge as to what was and what was
not material to such a Novitates notice. You may therefore
appreciate my surprise over the enclosed letters from these
two members of the Museum Staff. On receipt of the same
yesterday afternoon, I immediately ‘phoned Dr. Reeds,
only to learn that he had left the Museum in the morning
for the field and would be absent for the balance of the
week. I presume that Dr. Reeds is following up his work
FIGURE 14. Skulls and jaws of Stockoceros found by Joseph W. Burden and
Quentin Roosevelt in Papago Springs Cave in 1934. Skull on the upper left
is the type specimen (AMNH 22488). Photograph by author.
with the Varve clays, which I have been supporting for
several years past.”
“Now in regard to Dr. G’s criticism –
First: Tetrameryx conklini [sic] Stock is cited and comparisons in the manuscript are limited to this which the
boys’ form most resembles, and to Recent Antilocapra.
(Quentin actually studied the specimen side by side as well
with the rather different T. shuleri, and new forms in my
own series.)
Second: The matter of Mr. Edgar B. Howard’s specimen, which the new form does rather closely resemble, - a
year past in my office Mr. Howard told me of his astonishment that I was unaware that he had sent this specimen to
the Museum. It was at that time located in Mr. Brown’s
possession and it is unmentioned in my own manuscript
and avoided in this notice of the boys for the very good
reason that Mr. Brown took the trouble to inform me that
he had reserved the specimen for description.
Third: T. onusrosagris was original with the boys and
seemed to give them real pleasure – they of course having in
mind a Latinization of the joint family names.
The last two seasons my own parties afield and those
of Professor Barbour have enjoyed unusual good fortune
with the horned Pecora. I feel I am somewhat familiar with
all the new as well as the older data in regard to these deer
and antelope forms, and as the particular notice on the
boys’ part is being made a charge to my Department, I feel
that this matter might be left entirely in my own hands.
Furthermore, in view of the time and thought I am putting
into my work, I really cannot brook such interference as
this by the members of our Museum staff. Very sincerely
yours, (Childs Frick)”. [C. Frick to H. F. Osborn, 10 October 1934, Frick Archives, Department of Paleontology,
AMNH].”
We do not know what Osborn’s reaction to this letter was. Certainly, he was capable of being every bit as imperious as Frick could be;
but no reply from him to Frick is contained in the archives. Here we can
see something of the tensions which existed from time to time between
Childs Frick and other members of the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology. Laporte (2000) has documented difficulties between, for example,
George Gaylord Simpson and Childs Frick, and Galusha (1975) has
mentioned the fierce loyalties demanded of and given by Frick employees to their boss. Complicating this particular situation is the fact that
Walter Granger was the first to identify the material found by the boys as
being antilocaprid, and it is unclear how Frick became involved with
writing the material up for publication. Whatever the reasons, Frick
prevailed, and the Novitates was published without the revisions suggested by Granger and requested by Reeds.
The explanation for the derivation of the name onusrosagris is
somewhat peculiar, as it is simply a transliteration from the Latin of the
two author’s last names, onus (work or burden) and rosagris (red field;
Roosevelt is Dutch for “red field”). It is considered extremely bad form
for the author of a new taxon to name it after himself; few examples exist
in biology, and no others of which I am aware in vertebrate paleontology.
It may well have been that Frick himself had a hand in the construction of
the name, which would have been, had he been the author of the paper,
perfectly acceptable. Frick may have found himself sufficiently stung by
Granger’s criticisms of the paper he had largely ghost-written that he did
not wish to acknowledge his part in the origin of the name, or it may be
that the boys actually did coin the name themselves – their education at
Groton School almost certainly would have included at least some Latin,
and likely classical Greek as well. In any case, the name is ironic, given
the amount of work (onus) required by the present writer to uncover the
history of its origin, and particularly the identity of Joseph Burden, and
the fact that both authors lost their lives on the red fields (rosagris) of
war.
While stories abound of autocratic scientists taking advantage of
the labors of those working for them, sometimes with little or no credit,
it is clear that Frick took a genuine interest in Quentin and Joseph. While
the boys did make the discovery of the fossils in Papago Springs Cave,
the scientific content of the paper, however brief, was entirely Fricks’,
and his willingness to have the boys receive credit for it provides an
interesting counterbalance to his more familiar, sometimes harsher, side.
It is likely that Frick knew well the families of both boys, given that all
three families, Frick, Roosevelt and Burden, moved in the same social
circles. Frick certainly knew of the Burden family not only through
Joseph’s distant relative William Douglass Burden who was a Trustee of
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the American Museum, but also though family business ties; the Burden
family was a pioneer in the iron industry in Troy, New York, and Henry
Clay Frick may well have supplied coke for their furnaces. Finally,
Childs Frick’s daughter, Frances Dixon Frick, married I. Townsend Burden, Joseph’s second cousin once removed.
Cave Explorations - 1936
Based on the positive response of Frick and the staff at the American Museum to their finds, Quentin and Joseph returned to southern
Arizona during their spring break in 1936. This time they carried digging
and caving equipment supplied to them by Dr. Walter Granger at the
American Museum. Many more fossils were recovered during this trip,
including two nice skulls of their new pronghorn. Joseph prepared a
detailed map which he sent to the American Museum on April 29, 1936.
On the reverse of the map is a restoration of Stockoceros, the first ever
made, albeit in a rather unlikely pose (Fig. 11).
This new material, plus a review of the previously collected specimens, was the basis for another Novitates paper, this one written by
Edwin H. Colbert and Robert G. Chaffee entitled “A study of Tetrameryx
and associated fossils from Papago Springs Cave, Sonoita, Arizona”. The
paper presents the map drawn by Joseph, and quotes his description of
the various rooms and chambers. It seems probable that the four photographs, two of the area surrounding the cave and two of the interior, were
taken by Roosevelt and Burden on this trip, as there is no indication that
either Colbert or Chaffee had visited the cave themselves. The photographs are uncredited, however.
In this publication, extensive comparisons of the fossils were
made with both extant pronghorn and with the relevant fossil forms, thus
addressing some of Granger’s concerns with the initial description. The
derivation of the name was not explained, however. The boys received
casts of the restored skull they had recovered. Quentin wrote to Granger
thanking him for the casts, while Joseph wrote to Frick some time in
1936 from Groton School that he and Quentin had received the casts, and
copies of Novitates – Frick apparently sent them the whole run of
Novitates available up to that date. I have been unable to ascertain if the
families of either Roosevelt or Burden retained the publications or the
casts. Those family members I have been able to contact do not remember seeing either, and they are not at the Groton School.
Correspondence in the archives of the AMNH includes a letter
from Eleanor Butler Roosevelt, Quentin’s mother, which reads as follows:
“Dear Mr. Frick, I cannot tell you how very much I
appreciate your kindness to Quentin. It has made all the
difference in the world to him. We have all been so excited
about the fossils the boys found, and it is so nice of you to
take such a great interest in them. Also, it was so good of
you to take Quentin out to Long Island on your boat and to
send me such a beautiful lobster. He goes to Groton tomorrow full of [enthusiasm?] for paleontology, which I am sure
will last. It will give him a real interest in that kind of thing.
Yours Sincerely, Eleanor Roosevelt. Sept. 16th”.
Frick and the Roosevelt family seem to have had contact prior to
Quentin and Joseph discovering the fossils in Papago Springs Cave, and
much of the correspondence concerning the find was initially directed at
Quentin. Finally, Joseph wrote to Walter Granger:
“I wish you would let me know whenever anything
new turns up re our fossils. Up to now Q. has been receiving all the communications concerning them and has not
passed them on to me. I am just as interested in the fossils
as Quentin, if not more so (having been the original discoverer of them, (Strange as it may seem, after listening to Q.
talk about them as if he had found them all by himself!)”
372
(Joseph Warren Burden to Walter Granger, undated, but
March or April 1936).
From this point on, the correspondence seems to be only with
Joseph, who provided the photographs, map drawings and detailed description of the cave and its location to either Granger or Colbert.
MORRIS SKINNER’S EXCAVATIONS
AT PAPAGO SPRINGS CAVE
The collection of fossil bones that Burden and Roosevelt made at
Papago Springs Cave in 1934 and 1936 definitely aroused the interest of
Childs Frick. Morris Skinner (Fig. 15 left) was sent to Arizona during the
winter of 1937-1938 together with Albert Potter (Fig. 15 center) and
Howard Scott Gentry (Fig. 15 right) to conduct additional excavations.
Skinner and Gentry returned to the cave in 1940 and made further excavations. Skinner published the results of this work in a Bulletin of the
American Museum of Natural History in 1942 (Skinner, 1942), but once
again without addressing the origin or meaning of the trivial name
onusrosagris.
CZAPLEWSKI ET AL. EXCAVATIONS, 1987 - 1996
Interest in the cave and its fauna continues today. Nicholas J.
Czaplewski and his colleagues, including William Peachey, Jim Mead,
Teh-Lung Ku and Chris Bell, began renewed investigations in Papago
Springs Cave in 1987 (Fig. 11). These investigations were designed to
address four questions: what additional species, particularly of small
vertebrates, might be collected from deposits remaining in the cave; what
dates could be assigned to the fauna; what was the environment like at
the time the cave was occupied by the animals whose fossils had been
recovered, and finally, what was the detailed history of the development
of the cave in the limestone bedrock. Their investigations added 24 new
species to the faunal list and provided dates for the occupation of the
cave at 26,700 to 246,000 years before the present (Czaplewski et al.,
1989, 1999a, b).
While Papago Springs Cave is an extremely well understood Pleistocene site today, it is worth remembering that all this is because Joseph
Burden, a curious young man from New York, broke off a fragment of
bone protruding from the deposit in a cave he was exploring with a friend
and sent it off to the American Museum of Natural History to be identi-
fied. While Joseph and Quentin both suffered early deaths in war, perhaps this short contribution will restore to them the recognition they are
due for their efforts, and will set it in the wider context of the era in which
they lived, as well as provide an explanation of the most unpronounceable specific name Walter Granger had ever seen.
Finally, I am here proposing that Burden’s Pronghorn be used as
the common name for Stockoceros onusrosagris (rather than Quentin’s
Pronghorn, as in Kurten and Anderson, 1980). This recognizes the fact
that Joseph Burden collected the first specimen, provided the maps and
the site photographs and the detailed description of the cave itself, subsequently published by Colbert and Chaffee (1939).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am deeply indebted to Mrs. Pamela Burden Milholland, sister of
Joseph Warren Burden, Jr. Mrs. Milholland generously shared with me
her memories of her brother “Jojo”, as well as her personal archive of
letters, photographs and other family memorabilia, much of which she
recently presented to the Rare Book Room of the Library of Pennsylvania State University. At the American Museum of Natural History, I was
aided by Susan K. Bell and Christopher Norris. Bob Evander, also at the
AMNH, shared with me information on the Frick Lab personnel which
he has gathered over the years, as well as his enthusiasm for researching
and recording the human side of our science. Lee Potter provided copies
of the photographs his father, Albert Potter, had taken while working
with Morris Skinner at Papago Springs Cave. Members of the Burden
family, including Frances Frick Burden, I. Townsend Burden, III and
Childs Burden, answered questions about their family. Martha Frick
Symington Sanger answered several questions while I was first attempting to identify just where Joseph Burden fit into the Frick family, and
encouraged my research. Anna Roosevelt provided information about
her father, Quentin Roosevelt. Cathy Torrey Washburn facilitated obtaining scans of pages from the Groton School Yearbook for 1937, which
were provided by the library at the Groton School. Gary Morgan, Bob
Evander, Spencer Lucas and Greg McDonald reviewed the manuscript,
and I thank them for their comments, which greatly improved the final
product. Finally, I especially thank my wife, Carolyn Torrey White, for
her encouragement and toleration of my fascination with a family not our
own, and for her careful editing of the text.
FIGURE 15. Morris Skinner, left, Albert Potter, center, and Howard Gentry, right, in Papago Springs Cave in winter 1937-38. Skinner and Gentry are
descending the ladder into Entrance B, while Potter sits in the large chamber of the cave. Photographs courtesy of Lee Potter.
373
FIGURE 16. Mounted composite skeleton of Stockoceros onusrosagris
from Papago Springs Cave (DMNH 1647). Photograph by author.
FIGURE 17. Full body restoration of Stockoceros onusrosagris. Sculpted by
William P. Otto about 1940, painted 2008 by Dixon Studios, Tucson,
Arizona under the author’s direction.
REFERENCES
Published references
Burden, W.D., 1927, Dragon lizards of Komodo: an expedition to the lost
world of the Dutch East Indies: G.P. Putnam’s, New York, 221 p.
Colbert, E.H. and Chaffee, R.G., 1939, A study of Tetrameryx and associated
fossils from Papago Springs Cave, Sonoita, Arizona: American Museum
Novitates, no. 1034, 21 p.
Czaplewski, N.J., Mead, J.I., Ku, T.-L. and Agenbroad, L.D., 1989, Radiometric age assignment for Papago Springs Cave deposits, southeastern
Arizona: Southwest Naturalist, v. 34, p. 278-281.
Czaplewski, N.J., Peachey, W.D., Mead, J.I., Ku, T.L. and Bell, C.J., 1999,
Papago Springs Cave revisited, part I: geologic setting, cave deposits and
radiometric dates: Occasional Papers of the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, no. 3, 25 p.
Czaplewski, N.J., Mead, J. I., Bell, C. J., Peachey, W.D. and Ku, T.-L., 1999,
Papago Springs Cave revisited, Part II: vertebrate paleofauna: Occasional Papers of the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, no.5, 41 p.
Galusha, T., 1975, Childs Frick and the Frick Collection of Fossil Mammals:
Curator, v. 18, p. 5-15.
Groton School, 1935, The Groton School Yearbook 1935, Groton Massachusetts, 96 p.
Groton School, 1937, The Groton School Yearbook 1937, Groton Massachusetts.
Ives, R.L., 1989, Land of lava, ash and sand: The Pinacate Region of
northwestern Mexico: Arizona Historical Society, Tucson, 237 p.
Kurten, B. and Anderson, E., 1980, Pleistocene mammals of North America:
Columbia University Press, New York, 442 p.
Laporte, L.F., 2000, George Gaylord Simpson: paleontologist and evolutionist: Columbia University Press, New York, 314 p.
Reynolds, C., 1911, Burden; in Hudson-Mohawk genealogical and family
memoirs, v. II, p. 777-779.
Roosevelt, Q., 1940, In the land of the devil priests: Natural History, v. 44,
p. 196-209.
Roosevelt, Q. and Burden, J.W., 1934, A new species of antilocaprine,
Tetrameryx onusrosagris, from a Pleistocene cave deposit in southern
Arizona: American Museum Novitates, no. 754, 4 p.
Sanger, M.F.S., 1998, Henry Clay Frick: an intimate portrait: Abbeville
Press Publishers, New York, 599 p.
Skinner, M.F., 1942, The fauna of Papago Springs Cave, Arizona, and a
study of Stockoceros; with three new Antilocaprines from Nebraska and
Arizona: Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, v. 80, p.
143-220.
Newspaper articles
New York Times, Dec. 22, 1948 (obituary for Quentin Roosevelt).
New York Times, May 29, 1903 (obituary for Joseph Warren Burden).
New York Times, 2 August 1944 (obituary for Joseph Warren Burden, Jr.).
New York Times, July 24, 1917 (marriage announcement for Joseph Warren Burden and Margery Kathleen Maude).
London Gazette, Supplement, 14 January 1941, pages 233-234 (list of
commissions, Joseph Warren to 2nd. Lt. Scots Guards).
Tucson Daily Citizen, February 26, 1942 (advertisement for Hacienda Los
Encinos).
Interviews
Marie Skinner, typescript of interview by Robert Evander, July 7-10, 1995.
Pamela Burden Milholland, typescript of telephone interview with Richard
White, February 16, 2007.
Pamela Burden Milholland, typescript of interview with Richard White,
April 24, 2007.
Frick Archives, AMNH
Letter, Quentin Roosevelt to Henry Fairfield Osborn, undated, but some
time in July, 1934, on letterhead of Hacienda Los Encinos.
Letter, Henry Fairfield Osborn to Quentin Roosevelt, August 2, 1934.
Letter, Walter Granger to Quentin Roosevelt, August 9, 1934
Typescript report written by Quentin Roosevelt, August 1934.
Typescript report written by Joseph W. Burden, August 1934 on letterhead
marked “Manor House”.
Handwritten letter, Quentin Roosevelt to Childs Frick, undated, probably
September 1934, on Groton School letterhead.
374
Handwritten letter, Joseph W. Burden to Childs Frick, undated, probably
September, 1934 on Groton School letterhead.
Letter, Joseph W. Burden to Walter Granger, undated but probably early
1936 (prior to Feb. 18th) on Groton School letterhead.
Letter, Walter Granger to Joseph W. Burden, February 18, 1936.
Letter, Joseph W. Burden to Walter Granger, March 8, 1936 on “Tetrameryx
onusrosagris Expedition” letterhead.
Handwritten letter, Joseph W. Burden to Walter Granger, March 28th
(1936?) on “Tetrameryx onusrosagris Expedition” letterhead.
Handwritten letter, Joseph W. Burden to Walter Granger, April 29, 1936 on
Groton School letterhead.
Letter, Walter Granger to Joseph W. Burden, June 1, 1936.
Handwritten letter, Joseph W. Burden to Walter Granger, between June 1
and July 7, 1936 on letterhead from “The Rise”, Mt. Kisco, N.Y.
Handwritten letter, Quentin Roosevelt to Walter Granger, undated, probably early July, 1936
Letter, Walter Granger to Joseph W. Burden, July 7, 1936.
Letter, Quentin Roosevelt to Walter Granger, November 28, 1936 on Groton
School letterhead.
Letter, Walter Granger to Quentin Roosevelt, February 19, 1937.
Letter, Walter Granger to Joseph W. Burden, January 4, 1938.
Handwritten letter, Joseph W. Burden to Walter Granger, January 21, 1938
on Christ Church, Oxford letterhead.
Letter, Edwin H. Colbert to Joseph W. Burden, February 3, 1938.