NARRATOR: West Linn, Oregon.
1902.
Walking home after a day's work, pioneer Ellis Hughes
spots an enormous and unusually shaped
boulder hidden in the woods.
Curious, he pulls out his hammer and strikes the rock.
He jumps, startled, as it rings loudly, like a bell.
Over the next several days, Hughes digs tirelessly
to uncover a historic treasure, the largest
meteorite ever found in North America,
the Willamette Meteorite.
JONATHAN YOUNG: The Willamette Meteor is enormous.
The actual shape of the meteor has changed over time.
It now looks something like a piece of modern art.
It is fascinating and enormous.
The thing's the size of a car.
MAN: If we look at the makeup of the Willamette Meteorite,
it's got iridium, germanium, gallium, and nickel.
It weighs about 15 tons.
It's a very large object.
MAN: The nickel actually helps it from not corroding.
And it, of course, shows evidence of having
gone through the atmosphere.
You know, it's pitted.
And what's interesting, it landed intact.
It didn't break into a billion pieces.
So it's a quite remarkable meteorite.
The Willamette Meteorite is an example not only of
a strange meteorite arriving intact, but also
that it had a profound effect on the local people.
It became kind of a shrine to them, a message from the gods.
NARRATOR: Long before Ellis Hughes discovered the meteorite
in 1902, a Native American tribe called the Clackamas, who've
inhabited Western Oregon for centuries,
were aware of this extraterrestrial object.
They also believed it had special powers.
ARIEL BAR TZADOK: The Clackamas tribe,
they had a long, long history of interaction with this rock.
They would look at this rock as a gift, a conduit which united
heaven, earth, and with water.
Within the stone itself there are holes in there from erosion
and the like, which gathered pools of water.
Now, this water was used for healing purposes or blessing.
In other words, there was something
in the water which was gathered from this meteor
that had energetic power.
JONATHAN YOUNG: They would dip their arrowheads
and their spirit tips into the water,
thinking that this ritual would sharpen the blades
and help them in their hunt.
WILLIAM HENRY: The Clackamas named the meteorite Tomanowos,
and believed that it was, in fact,
a messenger of their sky god.
This is hugely significant, because it tells us
that, in fact, that rock is not just a rock,
it's an actual link to an extraterrestrial being.
We're talking about a 15-ton meteorite that crash landed,
but yet there's no evidence of an impact.
I think we have to go back to the original Clackamas
connection that says that perhaps there's
extraterrestrial intervention involved in the positioning
of this meteorite.
JASON MARTELL: They firmly believed it was brought
here by someone intentionally.
They actually thought that it came from the gods,
not by chance that it fell from the sky.