486 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to have ceased among them, and the use of machine-made beads to 

 have become universal. The wampum belts continued for a cen- 

 tury longer to be made from these beads by the Indian women, 

 but the difference between the belts of the two periods is apparent 

 at a glance. The hand-made beads in the earlier belts are of va- 

 rious sizes, some being twice as large as others, while the machine- 

 made beads, of which the more recent belts are composed, are all 

 of uniform size. Such belts can still be procured from the civil- 

 ized and mostly half-breed Iroquois of the province of Quebec, 

 with any devices that may be desired. They differ from the 

 genuine Indian belts precisely as a counterfeit denarius differs 

 from a genuine Roman coin. 



SOME PRIMITIVE CALIFORNIANS. 



By MAEY SHELDON BARNES. 



IN the Santa Clara Valley, near the southern end of San Fran- 

 cisco Bay, some five miles south of Stanford University, 

 there stands a fine old deserted abode, formerly a well-known 

 station on the road from the Santa Clara Mission to San Fran- 

 cisco. Its owner, Don Secundini Robles, was of the pure old Cas- 

 tilian stock, and he and his wife. Donna Maria, were lord and 

 lady for all the region round, and their house the center for all 

 the gay rodeos and fandangos of the valley. Now the house is a 

 ruin, Don Secundini dead, and Donna Maria, in poverty and alone, 

 lives in the village of Mountain View. But their name passes on 

 to fame among the Stanford students in connection with the 

 Robles Rancheria, a large, low-lying mound of earth some quarter 

 of a mile away from the old house, with that mysterious reputa- 

 tion attaching to it that always hovers around an Indian mound. 

 It has indeed an artificial look, rising in the midst of the other- 

 wise level valley ; and the boys of the vicinity assured us that 

 there were plenty of skeletons in it. The man who owned it said 

 that when he first began to plow in that field he turned up human 

 bones, and added, " You may guess I was scared." Indian mortars 

 and pestles from this same heap were found in the possession of 

 various neighbors, and the site altogether seemed promising for 

 exploration. So, with the permission of the owner, and with such 

 direction as could be given by a historian with an amateur interest 

 in archseology, some Stanford students began to explore the site. 



The survey of one of our civil engineers gave us the plot of 

 the mound shown in Fig. 1 : a length of four hundred and seventy 

 feet, a width of three hundred and twenty feet, an area of some 

 two acres, and a height of about ten feet in the highest parts. Its 



