AURIFEROUS GRAVEL MAN IN CALIFORNIA. 44V) 



and, traversing the great o-org-e of tlie Staiiislau.s, spent several days in 

 the vicinitv of Murphys, Altaville, and Angels Camp. These places 

 were all centers of great activity in the early days of gold mining, as 

 amply attested Iw vast excavations covering many scjiiare miles of 

 territory, and I was told by those who had seen it that the Indians 

 flocked in from the surrounding mountains to such an extent that it 

 was not unusual to see the lodges of a thousand Diggers gathered 

 about a single camp; and the hills and valleys still bear ample evidence 

 of their presence. Numberless pits and ti-enches were then gaping to 

 receive the scattered utensils of these people, whose village sites, one 

 after another, were undermined and destroyed, and collectors reaped a 

 goodly harvest of supposed ancient relics from the mines. The Snell 

 collection, referred to by Whitney and culled from by Voy, was 

 gathered from this locality and consisted of the usual stone imple- 

 ments and utensils of the Indian tribes, as well as of several forms 

 not in common use to-day and thought by some to especially repre- 

 sent the ancient time. A remnant of this collection is now owned by 

 Mr. J. W. Pownall, of Columbia, and will probabl}- pass eventually 

 into the keeping of the University of California. Through the gener- 

 osity of Mr. Pownall three specimens were obtained for the National 

 Museum. 



As indicated in the preceding paragraph, a thorough knowledge of 

 the aboriginal occupancy is of vital importance in this discussion, but 

 Whitney knew little of the native culture, as his remarks amply show, 

 and he could not have separated objects that had fallen in or had been 

 introduced by other means into the mines from like objects originally 

 belonging in the gravel, if such there were. Neither Whitney nor 

 Voy, so far as I can learn, had any idea of the need and vital impor- 

 tance of such discrimination. Their lists of finds from the mines are 

 hardly more than lists of Indian implements. 



Luplementii from deep tnnneU. — But what is to ])e said of the finds 

 reported from the deep shafts and tunnels that penetrate obliquely or 

 horizontally beneath the lava-capped sunmiits of Table Mountain^ 

 (See fig. 2.) Relics of the swarming Diggers could not fall in hori- 

 zontally, and if these relics do not belong with the fossil animals and 

 plants in the gravels of the ancient river channels, we are left to deter- 

 mine how they could have been introduced, or how deception was so 

 successfully and generally practiced. 



The fact that the implements recovered from the deep horizontal 

 diggings are, so far as I have encountered them, all identical in typ(> 

 with the prevailing recent forms emphasizes the need of intpiiring 

 with the utmost care as to whether or not these implements could have 

 been introduced while the mines were in operation. As al ready shown, 

 the mountain Indians were in those days very numerous about the 

 mining camps. Thi^ m(>n were employed to a consideraldc extent in 

 SM 09 •>!» 



