SCHUMACHER ANCIENT GRAVES IN CALIFORNIA. 341 



Here were brouglit to light about one hundred and fifty skeletons and 

 various kiuds of implements. The graves were constructed in the fol- 

 lowing manner: A large hole was made in the sandy soil to a depth of 

 about five feet ; then a fire was kept in it until a hard brick-like crust was 

 burned to a depth of four or five inches into the surrounding earth. 

 The whole excavation was then partitioned off into smaller spaces by 

 sandstone slabs, about one and a half inches thick, one foot broad, and 

 three feet long ; in which smaller partitions the skeletons were found. 

 One of these slabs genertjlly lay horizontally over the head of the corpse, 

 as a kind of protecting roof for. the skull, just as I found them at Chetko 

 Eiver, although in the latter place the graves were lined with split 

 redwood boards instead of stones. Such careful burial is not, however, 

 always met with, and must evidently be taken as a sign of the rank 

 or the wealth of the deceased ; the more so, as in such graves I usu- 

 ally found many utensils, which is not the case with the more care- 

 lessly formed tombs, which were covered with a T)iece of rough stone or 

 half a mortar. The slabs above mentioned were generally painted, and 

 a piece which I carried off with me was divided lengthwise by a single 

 straight, dark line, from which radiated, on either side, at an angle of 

 about 60°, thirty-two other parallel red lines, sixteen on each side, like 

 the bones of a fish from the vertebrae. In most cases the inner side of 

 the slab was painted red. Unluckily the specimen I took with me be- 

 came wet, by rain, before I was able to convey it to a place of safety, 

 and the previously- well-preserved design was blurred. 



In these graves the skeletons lay on their backs, with the knees drawn 

 up, and the arms, in most cases, stretched out. No definite direction 

 was observed in the position of the bodies, which frequently lay in 

 great disorder, the saving of room having been apparently the prime 

 consideration. Some skeletons, for example, lay opposite to each other, 

 foot to foot, while adjoining ones, again, were placed crosswise. The 

 skeletons of females have, instead of the protecting head-slab, a stone 

 mortar or a stone pot placed on its edge, so as to admit the skull, which 

 latter, if too narrow in the neck to admit the skull, is simply buried 

 underneath it. Cups and ornaments, both in the case of men and wo- 

 men, lie principally about the head, while shell-beads are found in the 

 mouth, the eye-sockets, and in the cavity of the skull, which latter is 

 almost always filled with sand, pressed in through the foramen magnum. 

 The skeletons were, in some cases, packed in quite closely, one over 

 another, so that the uppermost were only about three feet below the 

 surface of the ground. The indications of poverty are very evident in 

 regard to these, in the scarcity of ornaments, except, perhaps, when 

 they are females, as they are in the majority of cases. I cannot accept 

 the hypothesis that these were the slaves of some rich man and buried 

 with their master ; for the lower skeletons were generally found to have 

 been disturbed in a very singular manner, such as could only have been 

 occasioned by a re-opening of the grave after the decomposition of the 



