250 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



tions on the Ruined Aboriginal Villages on the Pacific Coast of North Amer- 

 ica"* — which fully answers that purjDose, and is here reproduced in an una- 

 bridged, though somewhat free, translation : — 



" The shell-heaps on this coast mark the sites of former villages of the 

 aborigines. In some cases, however, the accumulations of shells were caused 

 by occasional visits to places where edible mollusks are found in large quantities. 

 In such temporary camping-grounds, which, as a rule, are unfavorably situated 

 for permanent settlements, the mollusks were extracted from the shells, in order 

 to be transported with greater facility to the distant village. By this process, 

 and by the innumerable meals taken, for centuries, on the spot during such 

 visits, shell-beds, often of vast extent, were formed. We notice in these tem- 

 porary camping-places no indications of the former existence of huts ; there are 

 no flint flakes — nothing that betokens the manufacture of weapons and domestic 

 utensils ; and graves, likewise, are wanting. All we find are small heaps of 

 cobble-stones, about the size of a hand, and bearing distinct marks of the action 

 of fire ; and, accompanying these, charcoal and ashes — additional proofs that 

 they represent old fire-places. The shells in these temporary camping-grounds 

 are always those of mollusks occurring in the neighborhood. We see, for in- 

 stance, upon the downs which extend for a distance of twelve miles betw^een 

 Point San Luis and Point Sal (Southern California) several of such shell-beds 

 composed almost exclusively of a species of Lucina, while they contain but a 

 small number of the Venus mercenaria, and other edible kinds ; bones of small 

 land-animals and fishes are proportionally very rare. At Point Sal, on the other 

 hand, where we observed the remains of a permanent settlement, there are found 

 not only the shells of all mollusks which prosper on the rocks of the neighbor- 

 ing sea, Mytilus californianus predominant among them, but also those of such 

 as occur on the sand-banks near the temporary camping-grounds, together with 

 an abundance of the bones of various land and sea-animals. It would be diffi- 

 cult to determine whether such places were considered as neutral, or whether the 

 mollusks there caught reached the inhabitants of the interior in the way of 

 exchange for other products ; but there can be no doubt that they obtained them, 

 for we discovered their remains farther north on the Santa Maria River .f 



" The view, sometimes expressed, that the shell-heaps were built up by the 

 aborigines for burial-purposes, and were gradually increased by mortuary feasts, 

 etc., is wrong. On the contrary, it is proved beyond doubt that they indicate the 

 places of ancient settlements, and are the kitchen-refuse heaped up during long 

 periods, and, further, that they inclose graves only in cases when the ground is 



* Schumacher : Beobachtungen in don verfallenen DOrfern der Ureinwohner an der pacifischen Kuste in 

 Nordamerika ; Mittheilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien ; Vol. VI, 1876, p. 287-293. 

 t Northern houndarj- of Santa Barbara County. 



