Dogs aid search for rebels’ unmarked graves in Santa Rosa

Several nosy newcomers proved invaluable Tuesday to an old, off-and-on search for the burial place of two Bear Flag Revolt rebels captured and slain nearly 169 years ago by defenders of a Mexican California.

Five dogs trained to locate historic and even prehistoric human remains assisted locals keen to pinpoint the graves and perhaps move and provide a proper burial to whatever is left of the bodies of Thomas Cowie and George Fowler.

At one point Kayle, an eager and agile border collie, sat suddenly while she sniffed about a landscaped knoll behind a home off Santa Rosa’s Chanate Road. That was a signal.

“She’s in scent,” said Adela Morris of Woodside, a dog handler with the Institute for Canine Forensics. “She’s gauging the scent.”

Fellow border collies Jasper, Rhea and Piper, and a Labrador named Bailey, also signaled to their handlers upon detecting scents near rock that has rested on the knoll for longer than anyone knows.

When the forensics dogs had finished surveying the backyard and the immediate area, long believed to be the vicinity of the Cowie and Fowler graves, John Grebenkemper reviewed the results of the morning’s search.

“All the dogs have had scent in this general area, near the rock,” said Grebenkemper, also of Woodside.

A retired Stanford-trained computer designer, he now takes Kayle wherever the Institute for Canine Forensics is needed to search for long-dead remains. He and other members of the Northern California organization recently were at a native village in Alaska, searching for native ancestral burial grounds.

Given that all five dogs focused largely on the area of the rock behind the Chanate Hill home, Grebenkemper said, “It certainly seems like something is there.”

Though the dogs signaled the presence of human remains, he cautioned it isn’t yet possible to say if they are the remains of Bear Flag rebels Cowie and Fowler.

Though much work remains to be done, the dogs’ positive signals were encouraging to Ray Owen and Bill Northcroft, the two Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery volunteers who initiated this latest search for the graves, and Jeremy Nichols, president of the Sonoma County Historical Society.

“It sounds like the professionals have told us this area definitely needs more exploration,” Nichols said.

Volunteers with the Historical Society and the Rural Cemetery aren’t going to haul in a backhoe and start digging. They are taking a disciplined approach, which pleases the landowner, a man eager to cooperate with the search for the graves but protective of his property.

Additional survey work is needed, members of the team said. Grebenkemper and other members of his team said the dogs might be able to more precisely locate remains if they come back when the ground is dry and some of the ivy and other vegetation around the rock has been trimmed back.

There was agreement also that a local archaeologist should be contacted about drilling core samples that might pick up evidence of the remains.

“We’re going to need some money” for the next phase of the search, Nichols said. He suggested that because the short-lived Bear Flag Revolt of 1846 was such an important event to Sonoma and to California, interested people with the city and the state might want to become involved in the search.

If remains are located and confirmed to be those of Cowie and Fowler, a decision will follow on whether to remove them, perhaps for reburial in Sonoma, which maintains a Bear Flag memorial on the town plaza, or at the Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery.

Reburial would honor two men who died horribly just three days after a band of American rebels seized Mexican Gen. Mariano Vallejo in Sonoma and declared California an independent republic on June 14, 1846.

Fowler and Cowie were on a mission to fetch gunpowder from Sotoyome Rancho, now Healdsburg, when they were captured, tortured and killed by defenders of Mexican rule. Fellow American rebels found their bodies and buried them. Knowledge of the exact location faded over time, but stories told of the pair being interred near a sofa-shaped rock.

Several times over the past century or so, individuals or groups interested in answering the historical question or giving Cowie and Fowler a respectful burial have sought to locate precisely where they were laid to rest.

Time will tell if Tuesday’s search moved the effort any closer to its conclusion.

Chris Smith can be reached at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.