492 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



A passage from Frank Marryatt is interesting in this connection. 

 He says of the Santa Cruz Indians : 



" Of an evening they made a great disturbance by indulging 

 in what they intended for a dance ; this consisted in crowding 

 together in uncouth attitudes, and stamping on the ground to the 

 accompaniment of primitive whistles, of which each man held 

 one in his mouth, while the women howled and shrieked in 

 chorus." * 



With the same skeleton in whose possession were found these 

 primitive pipes of Pan, the saw-toothed bone shown at c, Fig. 5, 

 was found. It suggests a saw, but may have been a tally bone, 

 on which count could be kept of years or moons ; this use is per- 

 haps indicated by the fact that the notches are only part way 

 along the edge of the bone, and that notched shell, which they 

 also knew how to make, would have been more effective as a saw. 

 A sort of romantic atmosphere seems to surround this especial 

 skeleton, who may have been some sort of primitive historian and 

 musician, furnishing music and keeping the records of the tribe, 

 singing the story of each year as each notch recalled it. 



The articles in shell taken from this mound are all of two 

 sorts shell ornaments or shell money ; both are shown at d, cV , 

 and e, in Fig. 5. The shell ornaments are made from the brilliant 

 abalone shell, which is still used to adorn the dooryards of good 

 Californians. The ornaments are either round or oblong disks, 

 pierced at one side for stringing, and all notched very exactly and 

 evenly around the edge perhaps, as Mr. Hughes suggested, in 

 imitation of the heart shell, of which we found one specimen, 

 shown in d' , Fig. 5, next to one of the disk ornaments. The money 

 is like the shell money found all over California, and consists of 

 perforated squares of shell or of small whole shells pierced from 

 end to end, shown at e. In this case property and ornament seem 

 to have had a close connection, as perhaps they always have. 

 Aside from the skeletons and the artificial objects found in the 

 Robles Rancheria, we came across many food remains which 

 also tell their story. Bones of deer, elk, raccoon, bones of salmon, 

 and several sorts of waterfowl, countless crabs' claws, mussel, 

 oyster, periwinkle shells in abundance, grouped specially with 

 little beds of ashes, told of good hunting and fireside feasts to 

 follow, in which meat was not lacking to go with the rude bread 

 made from the acorns and seeds ground in the mortars. 



Before concluding our work on the Robles Rancheria, we paid 

 a visit to Donna Maria Secundini Robles, and asked her what she 

 knew of this old heap. She is nearly eighty, but remembers well, 



* Frank Marryatt. Mountains and Mole-hills, or Recollections of a Burnt Diary, chap, v, 

 p. 83. New York, 1855. 



