Chapter XII: Antiquities of the Northwest (2)

On the bottom "the majority of the buildings were square, but many round, and one sort of ruin always showed two square buildings with very deep cellars under them and a round tower between them, seemingly for watch and defence. In several cases a large part of this tower was still standing." One of these typical structures is shown in the following cut. It is twelve feet in diameter, twenty feet high, with walls sixteen inches thick. The window facing northward is eighteen by twenty-four inches. The two apartments adjoining the tower, the remains of which are shown in the cut, are about fifteen feet square. They seem to have been originally underground structures, or at least partially so.

At the outlet of the cañon the river turns westward, flowing for a time nearly parallel with the San Juan, which it joins very nearly at the corner of the four territories. Many groups of walls and heaps were visible in the distance down the valley, but the explorers left the river at this point and bore away to the right along the foot of the mesa until they reached Aztec Spring, very near the boundary line. "Immediately adjoining the spring, on the right, as we face it from below, is the ruin of a great massive structure of some kind, about one hundred feet square in exterior dimensions; a portion only of the wall upon the northern face remaining in its original position. The débris of the ruin now forms a great mound of crumbling rock, from twelve to twenty feet in height, overgrown with artimisia, but showing clearly, however, its rectangular structure, adjusted approximately to the four points of the compass. Inside this square was a circle, about sixty feet in diameter, deeply depressed in the centre, and walled. The space between the square and the circle appeared, upon a hasty examination, to have been filled in solidly with a sort of rubble-masonry. Cross-walls were noticed in two places; but whether they were to strengthen the walls or had divided apartments could only be conjectured. That portion of the outer wall remaining standing was some forty feet in length and fifteen in height. The stones were dressed to a uniform size and finish. Upon the same level as this ruin, and extending back, I should think, half a mile, were grouped line after line of foundations and mounds, the great mass of which was of stone, but not one remaining upon another. All the subdivisions were plainly marked, so that one might, with a little care, count every room or building in the settlement. Below the above group, some two hundred yards distant, and communicating by indistinct lines of débris, was another great wall, inclosing a space of about two hundred feet square. Only a small portion was well enough preserved to enable us to judge, with any accuracy, as to its character and dimensions; the greater portion consisting of large ridges flattened down so much as to measure some thirty or more feet across the base, and five or six feet in height. This better preserved portion was some fifty feet in length, seven or eight feet in height, and twenty feet thick, the two exterior surfaces of well-dressed and evenly-laid courses, and the centre packed in solidly with rubble-masonry, looking entirely different from those rooms which had been filled with débris, though it is difficult to assign any reason for its being so massively constructed. It was only a portion of a system extending half a mile out into the plains, of much less importance, however, and now only indistinguishable mounds. The town built about this spring was nearly a square mile in extent, the larger and more enduring buildings in the centre, while all about were scattered and grouped the remnants of smaller structures, comprising the suburbs."

[Sidenote: CAÑON OF THE McELMO.]

Four miles from the spring is the McElmo, a small stream, dry during a greater part of the year. At the point where the party struck this stream, portions of walls, and heaps of débris in rectangular order were scattered in every direction; among which two round towers were noticed, one of them with double walls, like that on the Mancos, but larger, being fifty feet in diameter. Following down the McElmo cañon aboriginal vestiges continue abundant, including cliff-dwellings like those that have been described, but only forty or fifty feet above the valley, and also the square tower shown in first cut. It stands on a square detached block of sandstone forty feet in height. The walls of this building were still fifteen feet high in some places, and there were also traces of walls about the base of the rock. Another double-walled round tower fifty feet in diameter found near the one last named is shown in the second cut.

[Sidenote: RUINS ON THE McELMO.]

Still further down the cañon, across the boundary line into Utah, ruins continue abundant. A red sandstone butte standing in the middle of the valley, one hundred feet high and three hundred long, has traces of masonry on its summit, apparently intended to form a level platform, and on one side, at mid-height, the structures shown in the cut. The upper wall is eighteen feet long and twelve feet high, and the blocks composing it are described as more regularly cut than any before seen. The only access to the summit of the butte was by climbing through the window of the building. Other remains, including many circular depressions of considerable depth, and a square tower with one round corner, are scattered about near the base of this butte, or _cristone_. The next cut shows one of the cave-dwellings near by, formed by walling up the front of a recess in the cliff.

[Sidenote: ABORIGINAL TRADITION]

The tradition relating to the whole, and particularly to this locality, obtained by Capt. Moss from one of the old men among the Moquis, is rendered by Mr Ingersoll as follows:--"Formerly the aborigines inhabited all this country we had been over as far west as the head waters of the San Juan, as far north as the Rio Dolores, west some distance into Utah, and south and south-west throughout Arizona, and on down into Mexico. They had lived there from time immemorial--since the earth was a small island, which augmented as its inhabitants multiplied. They cultivated the valley, fashioned whatever utensils and tools they needed, very neatly and handsomely out of clay and wood and stone, not knowing any of the useful metals, built their homes and kept their flocks and herds in the fertile river bottoms, and worshiped the sun. They were an eminently peaceful and prosperous people, living by agriculture rather than by the chase. About a thousand years ago, however, they were visited by savage strangers from the North, whom they treated hospitably. Soon these visits became more frequent and annoying. Then their troublesome neighbors--ancestors of the present Utes--began to forage upon them, and at last to massacre them and devastate their farms; so, to save their lives at least, they built houses high upon the cliffs, where they could store food and hide away till the raiders left. But one Summer the invaders did not go back to their mountains as the people expected, but brought their families with them and settled down. So driven from their homes and lands, starving in their little niches on the high cliffs, they could only steal away during the night, and wander across the cheerless uplands. To one who has traveled these steppes, such a flight seems terrible, and the mind hesitates to picture the suffering of the sad fugitives.

"At the christone they halted and probably found friends, for the rocks and caves are full of the nests of these human wrens and swallows. Here they collected, erected stone fortifications and watch-towers, dug reservoirs in the rocks to hold a supply of water, which in all cases is precarious in this latitude, and once more stood at bay. Their foes came, and for one long month fought and were beaten back, and returned day after day to the attack as merciless and inevitable as the tide. Meanwhile the families of the defenders were evacuating and moving south, and bravely did their protectors shield them till they were all safely a hundred miles away. The besiegers were beaten back and went away. But the narrative tells us that the hollows of the rocks were filled to the brim with the mingled blood of conquerors and conquered, and red veins of it ran down into the cañon. It was such a victory as they could not afford to gain again, and they were glad when the long fight was over to follow their wives and little ones to the South. There in the deserts of Arizona, on well-nigh unapproachable isolated bluffs, they built new towns, and their few descendants--the Moquis--live in them to this day, preserving more carefully and purely the history and veneration of their forefathers, than their skill or wisdom." One watch-tower in this region was built on a block of sandstone that had rolled down and lodged on the very brink of a precipice overlooking the whole valley.

[Sidenote: HOVENWEEP RUINS.]

From the McElmo Mr Jackson and his party struck off westward to a small stream called the Hovenweep, eight or ten miles distant. Here they found a ruined town, of which a general view is given in the cut. Mr Jackson's description is as follows: "The stream referred to sweeps the foot of a rocky sandstone ledge, some forty or fifty feet in height, upon which is built the highest and better-preserved portions of the settlement. Its semicircular sweep conforms to the ledge; each little house of the outer circle being built close upon its edge. Below the level of these upper houses, some ten or twelve feet, and within the semicircular sweep, were seven distinctly-marked depressions, each separated from the other by rocky débris, the lower or first series probably of a small community-house. Upon either flank, and founded upon rocks, were buildings similar in size and in other respects to the large ones on the line above. As paced off, the upper or convex surface measured one hundred yards in length. Each little apartment was small and narrow, averaging six feet in width and eight feet in length, the walls being eighteen inches in thickness. The stones of which the entire group was built were dressed to nearly uniform size and laid in mortar. A peculiar feature here was in the round corners, one at least appearing upon nearly every little house. They were turned with considerable care and skill; being two curves, all the corners were solidly bound together and resisted the destroying influences the longest." The following cut presents a ground plan of this Hovenweep Pueblo town, and terminates the account of one of the most interesting antiquarian explorations of modern times.

I append a few brief quotations from the diary of Padres Dominguez and Escalante, who penetrated probably as far as Utah Lake in early times, referring to three places where ruins were seen, two of which cannot readily be located. On the Dolores River "on the southern bank of the river, on a height, there was anciently a small settlement of the same plan as those of the Indians of New Mexico, as is shown by the ruins which we examined." A ruin is also located on this river at the southern bend, on the U. S. map of 1868. On the Rio de San Cosme, "we saw near by a ruin of a very ancient town, in which were fragments of metates, and pottery. The form of the town was circular as shown by the ruins now almost entirely leveled to the ground." In the cañon of Santa Delfina "towards the south, there is quite a high cliff, on which we saw rudely painted three shields, and a spear-head. Lower down on the north side we saw another painting which represented in a confused manner two men fighting, for which reason we named it the Cañon Pintado."[XII-44]

* * * * *

In Idaho and Montana I have no record of ancient remains, save a cliff at Pend d'Oreille Lake, on which are painted in bright colors, images of men, beasts, and pictures of unknown import. The natives are said to regard the painted rock with feelings of great superstition and dread, regarding the figures as the work of a race that preceded their own in the country.[XII-45]

* * * * *

In Oregon aboriginal remains, so far as reported, are hardly more abundant. The artist of the U. S. Exploring Expedition sketched three specimens of cliff-inscriptions on the Columbia River, which are shown in the cut. Mr Pickering thinks that the figures present some analogies to the sculptures reported by Humboldt on the Orinoco.[XII-46] Mr Abbot noted "a few rude pictures of men and animals scratched on the rocks" of Mptolyas cañon.[XII-47] Lord speaks of little piles of stones about natural pillars of conglomerate, on Wychus Creek, but these were doubtless the work of modern Snake Indians, who left the heaps in honor of the spirits represented by the pillars.[XII-48] A gigantic human jaw is reported to have been dug up near Jacksonville in 1862;[XII-49] and finally Lewis and Clarke found a village of the Echeloots built "near a mound about thirty feet above the common level, which has some remains of houses on it, and bears every appearance of being artificial."[XII-50]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: ANTIQUITIES OF WASHINGTON.]

In Washington, besides some shell ornaments and arrow-heads of flint and other hard stone dug by Mr Lord from a gravel bank near the old Fort Walla Walla, and some rude figures mostly representing men carved and afterwards painted on a perpendicular rock between the Yakima and Pisquouse, pointed out by a native to Mr Gibbs,[XII-51] there seem to be remains of antiquity in only two localities. The first are the mounds on Bute Prairie, south of Olympia. They were first found, or mentioned, by Wilkes in the U. S. Exploring Expedition, in 1841, who describes them as thousands in number arranged in fives like the 'five spots' on a playing card, formed by scraping together the surface earth, about thirty feet in diameter and six or seven feet high. Three of them were opened, but proved to contain nothing but a pavement of round stones in the centre and at the bottom, resting on the subsoil of red gravel. The natives said that the medicine men in later times were wont to gather herbs from their surface, as being more potent to work their cures than those growing elsewhere. Since Wilkes' visit the newspapers have reported the discovery of a large mound at the south end of the prairie, twenty-five miles from Olympia, which is three hundred feet high and nine hundred feet in diameter at the base. These later reports state also that all the small mounds opened in recent times have been found to contain remains of pottery and "other curious relics, evidently the work of human hands."[XII-52]

The second locality where remains are found is on the lower Yakima River, where Mr Stephens saw an earth-work consisting of two concentric circles of earth about three feet high with a ditch between them. The outer circle is eighty yards in diameter, and within the inner one are about twenty cellars, or excavations, thirty feet across and three feet deep, like the cellars of modern native houses scattered over the country without, however, any enclosing circles. These works are located on a terrace about fifteen feet high, bounded on either side by a gulley.[XII-53]

* * * * *

In British Columbia, some sculptured stones are reported to have been found at Nootka Sound, in which a fancied resemblance to the Aztec Calendar-Stone was noticed; also during the voyage of the 'Sutil y Mexicana,' a wooden plank was found on the coast bearing painted figures, which I have copied in the cut, although I do not know that the plank has any claims to be considered a relic of antiquity.[XII-54]

[Sidenote: DEANS' EXPLORATIONS.]

Other British Columbian antiquities consist of shell mounds, burial mounds, and earth-works, chiefly confined to Vancouver Island, and known to me through the investigations and writings of Mr James Deans. Mr Deans has lived long in the country, is perfectly familiar with it and its natives, and has given particular attention to the subject of antiquities. He makes no great pretensions as a writer, but has made notes of his discoveries from time to time, and has furnished his manuscripts for my use under the title of _Ancient Remains in Vancouver Island and British Columbia_. Like other explorers, he has not been able to resist the temptation to theorize without sufficient data on questions of ethnology and the origin of the American aborigines, but his speculations do not diminish the value of his explorations, and are far from being as absurd as those of many authors who are much better known.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: VANCOUVER ISLAND.]

Burial mounds on Vancouver Island are of two classes, according as they are constructed chiefly of sand and gravel or of stones. One of the first class opened by Mr Deans in 1871, will illustrate the construction of all. It was located on the second terrace from the sea, the terraces having nearly perpendicular banks of fifty and sixty feet respectively. By a carefully cut drift through the centre, it was ascertained to have been made in the following manner. First, a circle sixteen feet in diameter was marked out, and the top soil cleared off within the circle; then a basin-shaped hole, six feet in diameter, smaller at the bottom than at the top, was dug in the centre, in which the skull, face down, and the larger unburned bones were placed and covered with six inches of earth. On the layer of earth rested a large flat stone, on which were heaped up loose stones, the heap extending about a foot beyond the circumference of the central hole. Outside of this heap, on the surface, a space two feet wide extending round the whole circumference was sprinkled with ashes, and contained a few bones also. Outside of this space again, large stones two or three feet long were set up in the ground like pillars, five feet apart, round the circumference; and finally the earth dug from the central hole, or receptacle for the bones, was thrown into the outer circle, and gravel and sand added to the whole until the mound was five feet high, having a rounded form. Four smaller mounds, six and ten feet in diameter, were opened in the same group, showing the same mode of construction, but somewhat less order.

The second class, or stone mounds, which are much more numerous than those of earth, differ but little from the others in their construction, except that the final additions to the mound were of stones instead of earth, and the stones about the circumference were flat and set up close together. A piece of quartz sometimes accompanies the bones, but no other relics are found. When the skeleton is deposited face down, as is usually the case, the skull is placed toward the south, or when in a sitting position, it faces the south, seeming in some cases to have been burned where it sat. In a few instances the skeleton, when it was but little burned, was lying on the left side. The human bones invariably crumbled at a touch, and the author states that this method of burial is altogether unknown to the present inhabitants, who say their ancestors found them as they are.

The mounds are often overgrown with large pine, arbutus, or oak trees; in one case an oak had forced its way up through the stones in its growth, reached its full size, decayed, and the stones had fallen back over the stump. They are often in groups, and in such cases the central one is always most carefully constructed, and a remarkable circumstance is that sometimes the surrounding heaps contain only children's bones. Of course this suggests a sacrifice of children or slaves at a chief's funeral, although there may be some other explanation. Some stones weighing a ton are found over the human remains. Traces of cedar bark or boards are found in some of the cairns, in which the bones were apparently enclosed; and in a few others a small empty chamber was formed over the flat covering stone.

Near Comox, one hundred and thirty miles north-west of Victoria, a group of mounds were examined in 1872-3, and found to be built of sea sand and black mold, mixed with some shells. They were from five to fifty yards in circumference. In one by the side of a very large skull was deposited a piece of coal; and in another with a very peculiar flattened skull was a child's tooth. Both these skulls are said to have been covered with baked clay, and are now in the collection of the Society of Natural History in Montreal. One mound in this vicinity is fifty feet high and of oval shape. In its centre only a few feet below the surface were found burnt skeletons of children not over twelve years old, which seemed to have been enclosed in a box of cedar--of which only a brown dust remains--and covered with two feet of stones and one foot of shells. There is a spring of fine water some fifty yards from this mound, of which, from superstitious motives no Indian will drink. One rectangular cairn, ten by twelve feet, was found, but even in this the central receptacle was circular. The body in this mound showed no signs of burning, the head pointed northward, and a pencil-shaped stone sharp at both ends was deposited with the human remains.

* * * * *

Shell mounds are described as very abundant throughout Vancouver Island, and also on the mainland, and all are composed of species of shells still common in the coast waters. One at Comox covers three acres, and is from two to fourteen feet deep. The relics discovered in mounds of this class include stone hammers; arrow-points of flint, slate, and of a hard green stone; spear-heads, knives, needles, and awls, of stone and bone, one of the knives being sixteen inches long and of whale-bone; bone wedges, sometimes grooved; and finally stone mortars, comparatively few in number, since acorns and seeds were not apparently a favorite article of food. Human skeletons also occur in the shell mounds. At Comox a skeleton is said to have been found with a bone knife broken off in one of the bones. A shell bracelet was taken from a mound at Esquimalt; and from another was dug a stone dish or paint-pot, carved to represent a man holding a mountain sheep. The man was the handle on one side, the sheep's head on the other, and the cup was hollowed out in the sheep's back. Mr Deans believes he can distinguish two distinct types of skulls in Vancouver Island--the 'long-headed' in the older cairns, and the 'broad-headed' in the shell mounds and modern graves: and this distinction is independent of artificial flattening, which it seems was practiced in a majority of cases on skulls of both types.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: EARTH-WORKS.]

In addition to the mounds, Mr Deans states that earth-works very similar to those found in the eastern states are found at many localities in British Columbia. Indeed, he has sent me several plans, cut from Squier's work on the antiquities of New York, which by a simple change in the names of creeks and in the scale would represent equally well the north-western works. At Beacon Hill, near Victoria, a point one hundred feet high extends three hundred feet into the sea; an embankment with a ditch still six feet deep, stretches across on the land side and protects the approach; there are low mounds on the enclosed area, the remnants of ancient dwellings, and down the steep banks are heaps of shells, with ashes, bones of sea-fowl, deer, elk, and bears, among which are some spear and arrow points, needles, etc. On the summit of Beacon Hill, near by, are burial cairns of the usual type.

Another earth-work was examined by Mr Deans at Baines Sound and Deep Bay. This was an oval embankment surrounded at the base by a ditch, close to the water on the bay side, but now seventy yards from high-water mark on the side next the sound, although originally at the water edge. From the bottom of the ditch to the top of the embankment or mound is forty feet, and at the summit a parapet bank now four feet high encloses an area of over an acre. On the sound side is an opening from which a road runs down the slope of the mound and across the ditch by a kind of earthen bridge. Excavation showed a depth of nine feet of shells, ashes, and black loam. Many burial mounds are scattered about which have not been opened.

I am inclined to regard Mr Deans' reports as trustworthy, although of course additional authorities are required before the accuracy of his observations respecting the burial mounds, and the existence of earthworks bearing a strong resemblance, as he claims, to those of the eastern states can be fully accepted. Respecting the mounds I quote in a note from Mr Forbes, the only other authority I have been able to find on the subject.[XII-55]

In Alaska I find no record of any antiquities whatever, although many curious specimens of aboriginal art, made by the natives still inhabiting the country since the coming of Europeans, have been brought away by travelers. Cook saw in the country several artificial stone hillocks, which seemed to him of great antiquity, but he also noted that each native added a stone to burial heaps on passing; and Schewyrin and Durnew found on one of the Aleutian Islands three round copper plates bearing letters and leaf-work, said to have been thrown up by the sea; but I suppose there is no evidence that they were of aboriginal origin.[XII-56]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: CONCLUSION.]

Thus have I gone over the whole extent of the Pacific States from the southern isthmus to Bering Strait, carefully examining, so far as written records could enable me to do so, every foot of this broad territory, in search for the handiwork of its aboriginal inhabitants. Practically I have given in the preceding pages all that has been written on the subject. Before a perfect account of all that the Native Races have left can be written, before material relics can reveal all they have to tell about the peoples whose work they are, a long and patient work of exploration and study must be performed--a work hardly commenced yet even in the thickly populated centres of old world learning, and still less advanced naturally in the broad new fields and forests of the Far West. In this volume the general reader may find an accurate and comprehensive if not a very fascinating picture of all that aboriginal art has produced; the student of ethnological topics may found his theories on all that is known respecting any particular monument here spread before him, rather than on a partial knowledge derived by long study from the accounts in works to which he has access, contradicted very likely in other works not consulted,--and many a writer has subjected himself to ridicule by resting an important part of his favorite theory on a discovery by Smith, which has been proved an error or a hoax by Jones and Brown; the antiquarian student may save himself some years of hard labor in searching between five hundred and a thousand volumes for information to which he is here guided directly, even if he be unwilling to take his information at second hand; and finally, the explorer who proposes to examine a certain section of the country, may acquaint himself by a few hours' reading with all that previous explorers have done or failed to do, and by having his attention specially called to their work will be able to correct their errors and supply what they have neglected.

If the work in this volume shall prove to have been sufficiently well done to serve, in the manner indicated above, as a safe foundation for systematic antiquarian research in the future, the author's aim will be realized and his labor amply repaid.

FOOTNOTES:

[XII-1] 'Since the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, down to the present moment, relics of a lost race have been exhumed from beneath the surface of terra firma in various parts of the continent. While every section of the United States has produced more or less of these ancient remnants, California has, perhaps, yielded more in proportion to the extent of territory, than any other part of the Union.' _Carpenter_, in _Hesperian_, vol. v., p. 357.

[XII-2] _Brasseur de Bourbourg_, _Hist. Nat. Civ._, tom. i., p. 179; _San Francisco Evening Bulletin_, Feb. 11, 1862; _Cal. Farmer_, Dec. 14, 1860.

[XII-3] _Blake_, in _Pac. R. R. Rept._, vol. v., p. 117.

[XII-4] _San Francisco Evening Bulletin_, Feb. 11, 1862.

[XII-5] _Whipple, Ewbank, and Turner_, in _Pac. R. R. Rept._, vol. iii., p. 42.

[XII-6] _Blake_, in _Pac. R. R. Rept._, vol. v., pp. 56-7; _Cal. Farmer_, March 28, 1862, Dec. 21, 1860. Also pottery, painted and carved cliff-inscriptions, and lines of large stones on the hill-tops. _Alta California_, July, 1860.

[XII-7] _San Francisco Evening Bulletin_, Feb. 11, 1862. 'On the South Tule river, twelve miles from the valley, is what is called the Painted Rock--a smooth flat rock horizontally supported by perpendicular walls on either side about seven feet from the ground, with a surface of 200 square feet smooth and level on the walled sides on which is painted in no very artistic style, representations of animals, reptiles, and birds, and rude paintings of men, women, and children. The painting has without doubt been done by the present race of Indians. None of the Indians now living, however, have any knowledge or tradition by whom or when it was done. This rock and the remains of their habitations in many localities on the different streams, are the only indications of their long occupancy of this valley.' _Maltby_ (Indian Agent at Tule River), letter of Aug. 10, 1872, MS. Painted figures in a large cave near the hot springs of Tularcitos hills, east of Monterey; also on headwaters of the San Juan or Estrella creek. _Cal. Farmer_, April 5, 1860.

[XII-8] _Schumacher_, _Some Articles found in Ancient Graves of California_, MSS., presented by the author.

[XII-9] _Taylor's Indianology_, in _Cal. Farmer_, Jan. 17, 1862, March 9, 1860.

[XII-10] _San Francisco Evening Bulletin_, Jan. 22, 1864; _Cal. Farmer_, May 23, 1862, March 6, 1863; _Carvalho's Incid. of Trav._, p. 249; _Saxon's Golden Gate_, p. 126; _Wimmel_, _Californien_, p. 13.

[XII-11] _San Francisco Evening Bulletin_, Feb. 11, 1862; _Cal. Farmer_, March 28, 1862, March 6, 1863.

[XII-12] _Lord's Nat._, vol. i., p. 209. 'A quantity of round stones, evidently from the brook, was found in a passage with a number of skeletons; the destruction of life having been caused undoubtedly by the sudden caving in of the earth, burying the unskilled savages in the midst of their labors.' _Pioneer_, vol. ii., p. 221.

[XII-13] _Taylor_, in _Cal. Farmer_, April 20, 1860; _Wimmel_, _Californien_, pp. 27-8.

[XII-14] 'In 1857, Dr. C. F. Winslow sent to the Boston Natural History Society, the fragment of a human cranium found in the "pay-dirt" in connection with the bones of the mastodon and elephant, one hundred and eighty feet below the surface of Table Mountain, California. Dr. Winslow has described to me all the particulars in reference to this "find," and there is no doubt in his mind, that the remains of man and the great quadrupeds were deposited contemporaneously.' _Foster's Pre-Hist. Races_, pp. 52-4.

[XII-15] Elephant's tusk five or six feet long, found in 1860, ten feet below the surface, and fifteen inches above the ledge in auriferous sand; also, five years before, many human skeletons, one of which was twice the usual size, with stone mortars and pestles. _Sonora Democrat_, Dec. 1860; _Cal. Farmer_, Dec. 21, 1860; _San Francisco Evening Bulletin_, Jan. 22, 1864.

[XII-16] Other reported relics in Tuolumne county are as follows:--A tooth of an animal of the elephant specie, twelve feet below surface, under an oak three feet in diameter, at Twist's Ranch, near Mormon Creek, found in 1851. _Hutchings' Cal. Mag._, vol. ii., p. 248, with cut. 'A tolerably well executed representation of a deer's foot, about six inches long, cut out of slate, and a tube about an inch in diameter, and five inches in length, made of the same material, and a small, flat, rounded piece of some very hard flinty rock, with a square hole in the center. They are all highly polished, and perfectly black with age. What gives a peculiar interest to these relics is the fact that they were found thirty feet below the surface, and over the spot where they were found a huge pine, the growth of centuries, has reared its lofty head.' These relics were found at Don Pedro's Bar in 1861. _Cal. Farmer_, June 14, 1861, from _Columbia Times_, May, 1861. 'An Indian arrow-head, made of stone, as at the present day, was lately picked up from the solid cement at Buckeye Hill, at a depth of 80 feet from the surface, and about one foot from the bed-rock.' _Taylor_, in _Cal. Farmer_, Nov. 9, 1860; _Hist. Mag._, vol. v., p. 52; _San Francisco Evening Bulletin_, Oct. 6, 1864.

[XII-17] 'An immense number of skulls were found by Captain Moraga in the vicinity of a creek, which, from that circumstance, was called Calaveras, or the river of skulls. The story was, that the tribes from the Sierras came down to the valley to fish for Salmon. To this the Valley Indians objected, and, as the conflict was irrepressible, a bloody battle was fought, and three thousand dead bodies were left to whiten the banks with their bones. The county in which the river rises assumed its name.' _Tuthill's Hist. Cal._, p. 303.

[XII-18] 1, Black lava, 40 feet; 2, gravel, 3 feet; 3, light lava, 30 feet; 4, gravel, 5 feet; 5, light lava, 15 feet; 6, gravel, 25 feet; 7, dark brown lava, 9 feet; 8, (in which the skull was found) gravel, 5 feet; 9, red lava, 4 feet; 10, red gravel, 17 feet. _Cal. Acad. Nat. Sciences_, vol. iii., pp. 277-8. 'This skull, admitting its authenticity, carries back the advent of man to the Pliocene Epoch, and is therefore older than the stone implements of the drift-gravel of Abbeville and Amiens, or the relics furnished by the cave-dirt of Belgium and France.' _Foster's Pre-Hist. Races_, pp. 52-4.

[XII-19] 'It was late in the month of August (the 19th), 1849, that the gold diggers at one of the mountain diggings called Murphy's, were surprised, in examining a high barren district of mountain, to find the abandoned site of an antique mine. "It is evidently," says a writer, "the work of ancient times." The shaft discovered is two hundred and ten feet deep. Its mouth is situated on a high mountain. It was several days before preparations could be completed to descend and explore it. The bones of a human skeleton were found at the bottom. There were also found an altar for worship and other evidences of ancient labor.... No evidences have been discovered to denote the era of this ancient work. There has been nothing to determine whether it is to be regarded as the remains of the explorations of the first Spanish adventurers, or of a still earlier period. The occurrence of the remains of an altar, looks like the period of Indian worship.' _Schoolcraft's Arch._, vol. i., p. 105.

[XII-20] Skulls obtained from a cave in Calaveras County, by Prof. Whitney, and sent to the Smithsonian Institute. They showed no differences from the present Indians, who probably used the cave as a burial place. _Smithsonian Rept._, 1867, p. 406. Petrified mammoth thigh-bone, three and a half feet long, two and a quarter feet in circumference, weighing fifty-four pounds, found at a depth of thirty-five feet, at Murphy's Flat. _Cal. Farmer_, May 23, 1862, from _San Andrés Independent_. An arrastra or mill, such as is now used in grinding quartz, with a quantity of crushed stone five feet below surface near Porterfield. _Id._, Nov. 30, 1860, May 16, 1862. At Calaveritas large mortars two or three feet in diameter, with pestles, in the ancient bed of the river; at Vallecito human skulls in post-diluvial strata over fifty feet deep; at Mokelumne Hill obsidian spear-heads; at Murphy's mammoth bones forty feet deep. _Pioneer_, vol. iii., p. 41; _San Francisco Herald_, Nov. 24, from _Calaveras Chronicle_.

[XII-21] _San Francisco Evening Bulletin_, Jan. 22, 1864; _Wimmel_, _Californien_, p. 13.

[XII-22] 'An ancient skillet, made of lava, hard as iron, circular, with a spout and three legs, was washed out of a deep claim at Forest Hill, a few days since. It will be sent to the State Fair, as a specimen of crockery used in the mines several thousand years ago.' _Grass Valley National_, Sept. 1861, in _San Francisco Evening Bulletin_, Jan. 22, 1864. Same implement apparently found at Coloma in 1851, 15 feet below the surface, under an oak-tree not less than 1000 years old. _Carpenter_, in _Hesperian_, vol. v., p. 358.

[XII-23] 'J. E. Squire, informs me that a strange inscription is found on the rocks a short distance below Meadow Lake. The rocks appear to have been covered with a black coating, and the hieroglyphics or characters cut through the layer and into the rock. This inscription was, probably, not made by the present tribe inhabiting the lower part of Nevada County. It may have been done by Indians from the other side of the mountains, who came to the lake region near the summit to fish; or it may have still a stranger origin.' _Directory Nevada_, 1857. A human fore-arm bone with crystallized marrow, imbedded in a petrified cedar 63 feet deep, at Red Dog. _Grass Valley National_, in _San Francisco Evening Bulletin_, Jan. 22, 1864.

[XII-24] Two hand mills (mortars) taken from the bank of the Yuba River at a depth of 16 feet. 'They are all made from a peculiar kind of stone, which has the appearance of a combination of granite and burr-stone.' The pestles are usually of gneiss. _Taylor_, in _Cal. Farmer_, Dec. 14, 1860, May 9, 1862. At McGilvary's, Trinity Co., was discovered in 1856, 10 feet below the surface, 'an Indian skull encased in a sea shell, five by eight inches, inside of which were worked figures and representations, both singular and beautiful, inlaid with a material imperishable, resembling gold, which would not, in nice, ingenious workmanship, disgrace the sculptor's art of the present day.' _San Francisco Evening Bulletin_, Jan. 22, 1864, from _Trinity Democrat_, 1856. Slate tubes dug up near Oroville. _Taylor_, in _Cal. Farmer_, Nov. 2, 1860. A collar-bone taken from the gravel of the 'great blue lead' not less than 1000 feet below the forest-covered surface, in 1857. _Hutchings' Cal. Mag._, vol. ii., p. 417. Mammoth bones at Columbia, Stanislaus Co., 35 feet deep; and a hyena's tooth at Volcano, Amador Co., at a depth of 60 feet. _Pioneer_, vol. iii., p. 41. Some 30 different instances of the discovery of fossil remains by miners have been noted in the California papers since 1851. _Cal. Farmer_, May 23, 1862; also four well-known cases of giant human remains. _Id._, March 20, 1863. An immense block of porphyry whose sides and top are carved with rude mystic figures, in the Truckee Valley. 'I noticed one cluster of figures in a circle, having in its centre a rude representation of the sun, surrounded by about a dozen other figures, one of which exhibited a quite truthful representation of a crab, another like an anchor with a large ring, and still another representing an arrow passing through a ring.' _Marysville Democrat_, April, 1861, in _Cal. Farmer_, June 14, 1861.

[XII-25] _Foster's Pre-Hist. Races_, pp. 54-6.

[XII-26] In _Cal. Farmer_, March 6, 1863.

[XII-27] _Capron's Hist. Cal._, p. 75.

[XII-28] _Martinez Contra Costa Gazette._

[XII-29] _Smithsonian Rept._, 1869, p. 36.

[XII-30] _Foster's Pre-Hist. Races_, pp. 163-4.

[XII-31] _San Francisco Evening Bulletin_, Oct. 19, 1869.

[XII-32] _Rae's Westward by Rail_, pp. 162-4.

[XII-33] _Salt Lake Telegraph_, quoted in _San Francisco Evening Bulletin_, Oct. 9, 1868.

[XII-34] _Remy and Brenchley's Journey_, vol. ii., pp. 364-5.

[XII-35] _Carvalho's Incid. of Trav._, pp. 206-7.

[XII-36] _Foster's Pre-Hist. Races_, p. 152.

[XII-37] _Schoolcraft's Arch._, vol. iii., p. 493.

[XII-38] _Smithsonian Rept._, 1867, p. 403.

[XII-39] _Farnham's Life in Cal._, pp. 316-17.

[XII-40] _Foster's Pre-Hist. Races_, p. 152.

[XII-41] _Taylor_, in _Cal. Farmer_, June 22, 1860.

[XII-42] _Bulletin of the U. S. Geol. and Geog. Survey of the Territories_, 2d series, No. 1., Washington, 1875.

[XII-43] Ingersoll gives these dimensions as 33 and 22 feet respectively, and speaks of three equi-distant doorways, apparently alluding to the same structure.

[XII-44] _Doc. Hist. Mex._, série ii., tom. i., pp. 391-2, 434-5, 444-5.

[XII-45] _Stevens_, in _Pac. R. R. Rept._, vol. xii., p. 150; _Id._, in _Ind. Aff. Rept._, 1854, p. 222.

[XII-46] _Pickering's Races_, in _U. S. Ex. Ex._, vol. ix., pp. 41-2.

[XII-47] _Abbot_, in _Pac. R. R. Rept._, vol. vi., p. 94.

[XII-48] _Lord's Nat._, vol. i., p. 296.

[XII-49] _Taylor_, in _Cal. Farmer_, March 20, 1863; _San Francisco Evening Bulletin_, Jan. 22, 1864.

[XII-50] _Lewis and Clarke's Trav._, p. 369.

[XII-51] _Lord's Nat._, vol. ii., pp. 102-3, 260; _Gibbs_, in _Pac. R. R. Rept._, vol. i., p. 411.

[XII-52] _U. S. Ex. Ex._, vol. iv., pp. 334, 441-2; _Foster's Pre-Hist. Races_, pp. 151-2; _Portland Herald_, Sept. 27, 1872; _San Francisco Morning Call_, Sept. 28, 1872.

[XII-53] _Stevens_, in _Ind. Aff. Rept._, 1854, pp. 232-3; _Id._, in _Schoolcraft's Arch._, vol. vi., pp. 612-13; _Gibbs_, in _Pac. R. R. Rept._, vol. i., pp. 408-9; _Taylor_, in _Cal. Farmer_, May 8, 1863.

[XII-54] _Buschmann_, _Spr. N. Mex. u. der Westseite des b. Nordamer._, p. 333; _Sutil y Mexicana_, _Viage_, p. 73.

[XII-55] 'In such localities, the general feature of the landscape is very similar to many parts of Devonshire, more especially to that on the eastern escarpment of Dartmoor, and the resemblance is rendered the more striking by the numerous stone circles, which lie scattered around.... These stone circles point to a period in ethnological history, which has no longer a place in the memory of man. Scattered in irregular groups of from three or four, to fifty or more, these stone circles are found, crowning the rounded promontories over all the South Eastern end of the Island. Their dimensions vary in diameter from three to eighteen feet; of some, only a simple ring of stones marking the outline now remains. In other instances the circle is not only complete in outline, but is filled in, built up as it were, to a height of three to four feet, with masses of rock and loose stones, collected from amongst the numerous erratic boulders, which cover the surface of the country, and from the gravel of the boulder drift which fills up many of the hollows. These structures are of considerable antiquity, and whatever they may have been intended for, have been long disused, for, through the centre of many, the pine, the oak, and the arbutus have shot up and attained considerable dimensions--a full growth. The Indians when questioned, can give no further account of the matter, than that, "it belonged to the old people," and an examination, by taking some of the largest circles to pieces, and digging beneath, throws no light on the subject. The only explanation to be found, is in the hypothesis, that these were the dwellings of former tribes, who have either entirely disappeared, or whose descendants have changed their mode of living, and this supposition is strengthened by the fact that a certain tribe on the Fraser River, did, till very recently live, in circular beehive shaped houses, built of loose stones, having an aperture in the arched roof for entrance and exit, and that in some localities in upper California the same remains are found, and the same origin assigned to them.' _Forbes' Vanc. Isl._, p. 3.

[XII-56] _Cook's Voy. to Pac._, vol. ii., p. 521; _Neue Nachrichten_, p. 33.