32 HISTORY OP PASADKNA. 



Father Boscana was a pioneer missionary among these Indians, while 

 Reid wrote from hearsay long after they had become partly Christianized. 



Governor Fages [1771] and various other writers, give varying accounts 

 of burial practice. But taking all the testimony in the case, and the cir- 

 cumstantial evidence besides, I am safe in stating that our Pasadena abo- 

 rigines burned their dead ; and so that is why no graves or skeletons have 

 ever been found, nor any general place of sepulture. The fact is, when the 

 ' 'hut' ' was burned the body was burned with it. And in other cases the body 

 was laid on a hurdle of sticks and brush over a hole in the ground, as Gibbs 

 reports, and as the body and brushwood consumed together they dropped 

 into the hole, and things belonging to the deceased were then thrown in 

 also, and the cavity filled up. This was the grave, and this is how it 

 happens that a metate or some other stone relic is occasionally found " three 

 or four feet down," as Prof. Holder says in his letter given in another chap- 

 ter, while ordinarily these things are covered so shallow with vegetable 

 mould, or drifted sand and dust, that they are turned up by the farmer's 

 plow, which usually cuts only from six to ten inches deep. 



"Old Francesca," who was born at lyos Nietos in 1794, and is still living 

 as a resident of Pasadena, told me on September 23rd, 1894, that she had 

 always understood that "the Indians here burned their dead, before they 

 becajne Christians ; " but she had never seen it done herself. 



Senora Lopez also related an incident of an Indian coming to life again 

 in the San Gabriel church while they were preparing to bury him, some 

 time during Father Sanchez's administration. He was an old man, a wood- 

 chopper ; his body had been prepared for burial and left in the church over 

 night. The next day at the hour set for the funeral his relatives and the 

 people and priest went in to complete the burial service and lay him away 

 in the graveyard north of the church. But now to their astonishment and 

 fright he raised up, and said faintly in the Indian language, " Mamma, I 

 want some water." He recovered and lived several years afterward. 

 Senora lyopez and old Francesca, then young women together at San 

 Gabriel, once asked him what he saw while he Was dead, and he replied, 

 " Lights, lights — up high — and a pretty road ! — high, too high ! — I was 

 so tired — I couldn't go up, — so I had to come back ! — so tired ! ' ' 



