﻿128 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. "/"J 



RESEARCHES ON THE BURTON MOUND AND ON THE 



KIOWA INDIANS 



The beginning of the year found Mr. John P. Harrington, ethnolo- 

 gist, engaged in the excavation of the principal village of the Santa 

 Barbara Indians, known to them as Sytijtun, to the early Spaniards 

 as El Puerto de Santa Barbara, and in more modern times as the 

 Burton Mound. The great mound which marks the site is situated on 

 the Santa Barbara waterfront, a block west of the principal wharf, 

 on property now belonging to Mr. Ole Hanson and to Mr. Charles 

 Frederick Eaton. The old village site has always been the most 

 prominent feature of the Santa Barbara beach, and is most famous in 

 Santa Barbara Indian and Spanish history, but had never been 

 excavated to any extent previous to the present work. 



The great village of Syujtun was mentioned four times in the 

 Cabrillo account of 1542. Father Crespi writing in 1769 mentions its 

 population as comprising 500 souls. With the establishment of the 

 Santa Barbara Mission in 1782 the inhabitants were removed to the 

 adobe cuarteles provided for them at the mission. The mound became 

 the " beach ranch " of the Franciscans, later the site of the ranch 

 house of Joseph Chapman, and more recently the property of Lewis 

 T. Burton. In 1901 Mr. Milo M. Potter built a large hotel on the 

 mound. In 1921 the hotel, which had been purchased by the Am- 

 bassador Hotel Corporation, burnt, thus releasing the site again 

 for scientific study. Through the kind offices of Mr. George G. Heye, 

 director of the Museum of the American Indian, money was raised 

 for excavation of the mound by joint arrangement with the Bureau 

 of American Ethnology. 



The results of the excavation of the Indian town of Santa Barbara 

 proved rich and interesting beyond expectation. The collection, which 

 comprises more than seven thousand specimens, includes many large 

 and showy pieces, such as steatite ollas, mortars and metates. Some 

 of the graves were lined with slabs trimmed from the bones of whales. 

 Quantities of the mother-of-pearl pendants and ornaments of the 

 Indians were obtained, as well as shell beads of many types. The 

 bodies were mostly in crouched position with the head to the north. 

 In addition to the cemetery, many old wigwam sites were explored 

 and the outline of the whole settlement slowly and laboriously traced. 

 In the reef rock or coquina layer of the lower levels of the mound 

 were found embedded two skeletons which have been reported upon 

 by Dr. Bruno Oetteking, Physical Anthropologist of the Museum of 



