DIVISION ONK — PRE-PASADENIAN. 3 1 



with the scene laid in California, and it is properly a California novel. It is 

 a poem in prose, and is of universal interest, as it deals with the true and 

 simple feelings of humanity. Every incident in this book is founded on 

 fact. From the ejectment at Temecula to the killing of the husband and 

 acquittal of his murderer, the basis of every statement is susceptible of 

 proof." 



WHY NO INDIAN GRAVES AT PASADENA ? 



In a letter to me July ii, 1894, Prof. C. F. Holder raised this question, and 

 I quote his remarks : 



' ' One question has interested me greatly — where did the San Gabriel 

 Indians bury their dead ? I have never found a skeleton, nor heard of one 

 being found. Graves are common at Catalina and Santa Barbara ; but a 

 Pasadena place of Indian burial has not been found." 



The answer is that cremation was practised by our Indians. Taylor's 

 Indianology, cited in the California J^armer of June 8, i860, sa^^s : " From 

 north to south in the present California up to the Columbia river, they burnt 

 the dead in some tribes and in others buried them." 



In Schoolcraft's Archaeology, Vol. 3, page 112, Gibbs reports from the 

 Pacific coast Indians : ' ' The body is consumed upon a scaffold built over a 

 hole, into which the ashes are thrown and covered." 



Father Geronimo Boscana, who served as a missionary among the 

 Indians of Southern California nearly 30 years, and died at San Gabriel 

 July 5, 1831, left a MSS. account of these Indians in Spanish, which was 

 translated by Alfred Robinson, a Boston man, who was in California as a 

 trade manager and traveler from February, 1829, until 1845 ; and it was 

 published by Wiley & Putnam, New York, in 1846, as an appendix to Rob- 

 inson's own work, entitled " lyife in California." On the matter in question 

 Father Boscana, at page 239, says : " The bodies of their dead were imme- 

 diately burnt." Again, page 268: "The parents of the deceased were 

 permitted afterwards to take possession of the body and perform the accus- 

 tomed ceremony of burning it." And yet again, page 314, he says : "Pre- 

 parations were made for his sepulture or the burning of his body ; * '^ * 

 they bore the corpse to the place of sacrifice, where it was laid upon the 

 faggots. Then the friends of the deceased retired, and the "burner" set 

 fire to the pile, and remained near the spot until all was consumed to 

 ashes." 



Hugo Reid gives a somewhat diiferent account. He says : 



"When a person died all the kin collected to lament his or her loss. 

 * * * Xhis was continued until the body showed signs of decay, when 

 it was wrapped up in its covering with the hands across the breast and tied 

 from head to foot. A grave having been dug in their burial place, the body 

 was interred according to the means of the family, etc. If deceased was the 

 head of a family or a favorite son, ^/le hut was set fire to, in which he died, 

 and all of his goods and chattels burned with it." 



