Bet you'd never in a million years believe a newspaper story like this that appeared in the Spokane Daily Chronicle for July 6, 1926. I've transcribed the entire bit for your enjoyment:RUNIC WRITINGS ON ROCK AT FIVE MILE TELLS OF BATTLE WITH
INDIANS THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO
Spokane Daily Chronicle, 5 July 1926, page 1 and 2.
The discovery of a Viking grave or burial mount and the most
remarkable Runic character record ever uncovered on the North American
continent, telling of the visits of Norse Viking expeditions to this hemisphere
many hundreds of years ago, has been make almost near the city limits of
Spokane.
On a great boulder of lava rock just north of the city
limits, below the cliffs that found Five Mile Prairie, and beside a flowing
spring of cold water, Professor Oluf Opsjon of Dishman, an internationally
known authority on Runic writings, has found the story told in indelible paint
of the visit to that place in the year 1010 A.D. of a band of Norsemen and a
terrific battle which took place there with the Indians.
Professor Opsjon, who, during the last few years has
interpreted many of the Runic characters appearing on scattered “painted rocks”
in the various parts of the North American continent announced today after a
careful investigation of the new Norronna rock that never before has there told
the actual details of a battle or great conflict as it was fought in those days
hundreds of years before Columbus sailed the seas.
The paintings on the rock were called to the attention of
Professor Upsjon by Margarete Amundsen Reynolds, N 3410 Milton street, who for
years has been interested in Runic writings and the stories of the Vikings. The
paintings had been seen by others before but had been considered only the
marking of Indians, until Mrs. Reynolds found in them the characters typical of
Runics as used by the early Norse.
Her interpretation was quickly verified by Professor Opsjon
and by careful study the face of the big projecting rock he was able to
translate the story of the expedition and locate where the victims of the
battle with the Indians were buried.
“in all the Runic inscriptions I have been able to
translate, as they are found on rocks from Labrador and the New England states,
through Canada and the United States to Alaska and Puget Sound, some of them
dating back in a period before the Christian era, I have never before found a
record so filled with thrilling description of action as this one almost within
the city limits of Spokane,” said Professor Opsjon today.
“The record left tells that the men of the party put the
seven women and the baby on top of the boulder, where they could not be reached
by the Indians, and the men stood about the base fighting the Indians.
“Twelve of the Norsemen were killed and the others escaped,
after the women were taken prisoners and carried away by the Indians while the
woman with the baby in her arms was thrown from the top of the boulder and
killed.
“Later six of the survivors of the expedition returned to
the spring and the scene of the battle. There they dug a grave near the rock
and buried their dead, who had been stripped of everything they possessed by
the Indians.
“I am developing further negatives showing the face of the
rock and with a powerful magnifying glass will be able to make out further
characters which will tell more of the story, I am certain.
For a thousand years at least and perhaps for two or three
thousands, a well-defined and heavily traveled trail ran from the west to the
east, skirting the base of the cliffs that form Five Mile prairie. At a point
beside a huge boulder, standing 20 to 25 feet above the ground and perhaps 150
feet in circumference, a cold spring bubbled out of the ground. The Indians
knew of this spring for it was the only water for miles.
The story as I read it from the Runic records left on this
boulder and translated literally, reads:
“In the year 1010, A.D. or 916 years ago, a band of Norse
Vikings, consisting of 24 men and seven women, one of the latter with a baby in
arms, was following this old trail, traveling from the west toward the east.
Exhausted and thirsty, the band came to the spring beside the trail and camped.
The spring was not a large one and the water was drained from it.
“A party of Indians came along and they too were tired and
thirsty. The found the spring empty and they immediately attacked the Norse
party in an effort to drive it away.
As to the burial mound, it is plainly visible, but it would
have nothing within it as the dead were stripped so no effort will be made to
disturb it.
“The story here told is pained on small square surfaces of
the cliff, owning to the broken up condition of the rock, and which
necessitated the use of small characters. This makes it more difficult to
translate the entire story but I am certain that I will be able to eventually
to decipher characters which are now only partially revealed and which may be
the records of a still earlier expedition of Norse there.”
Professor Opsjon makes a special request that any who may
visit the paintings refrain from molesting the surface of the rocks in any way
as scratching or chipping off of fragments would be certain to destroy the
greatest Norse record so far discovered in this country.
“This record still further substantiates my previous claims
that the Norse had been in America in numbers long before Columbus,” said
Professor Opsjon, who first advanced his proofs of this through the Chronicle
some two years before.
The small character drawings shown are copies of Runics
taken from the rock and their meanings as translated by Professor Opsjon are,
literally, “one man speaks,” and “colling (sic) now,” which fit into the story
of the battle.
******
Richard Sola, Spokane historian and teller of this tale,
said that Opsjon was an ordinary yokel
from Dishman in the Spokane Valley and not any sort of professor.
IS THE “TRUTH” IN THE NEWSPAPERS DIFFERENT TODAY FROM
THEN????
