254 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



I am under obligations to Major J. W. Powell for the following notice of 

 shell-heaps in the vicinity of San Francisco, which were examined by him : 



" The shores of San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bays, in California, 

 were formerly occupied by a tribe or a number of tribes of Indians, who, to a 

 large extent, subsisted upon shell-fish, which abound in the adjacent waters. 

 The shore-line following all of their indentations must be several hundred miles 

 in length. In the neighboring hills are many beautiful springs, and wherever 

 such a spring or any small pond of fresh water is found, a mammoth shell-heap, 

 or sometimes a group of them, can now be seen, so that altogether many thou- 

 sands of them still exist, and are now held to be valuable sources of fertilizing- 

 material. One of the mounds examined by myself not the largest that I have 

 seen by any means was three hundred yards in length and eighty yards in 

 width, and a shaft sunk through the shells to the virgin earth below was sixty- 

 two feet in depth. In the heap were found, besides the shells, many bones of 

 mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes, showing that the people had a great variety 

 of animal food. Among the many implements found were stone mortars and 

 pestles, doubtless used, as the Indians of that country now use them, chiefly for 

 grinding acorns, and perhaps also other seeds to some extent. The adjacent hills 

 are covered with the oaks of the Pacific Coast, which furnish a great abundance 

 qf acorns." 



Mr. Dall informs me that the most common mollusks in those waters are 

 Schizothcerus Nuttallii, Conr., Tapes staminea, Conr., Macoma nasuta, Conr., and 

 Saxidomus aratus, Gould. As less frequent he mentioned Chiton tunicatus, Wood, 

 Chiton lineatus, Wood, Purpura saxicola, Val., Cryptochiton Stelleri, Midd., and 

 Platyodon cancellatus, Conr. All the species here named, he thinks, were eaten 

 by the aborigines. 



Shell-heaps near Cape Mendocino, Humboldt County, California, were 

 explored, in the interest of the National Museum, by Mr. John J. McLean, of 

 the United States Signal Office, and until lately stationed at Cape Mendocino. 

 He communicated, in October, 1883, the following description of these deposits : 



"About a mile south of a small creek which empties into the Pacific, and 

 from which the Cape Mendocino light-house can be plainly seen, there are a large 

 number of aboriginal shell-heaps. Their site covers an area extending about 

 one-quarter of a mile north and south between sand-dunes parallel to the ocean 

 beach, and about fifty yards in average width. Forty-two distinct heaps, great 

 and small, are scattered about within this limited space. There is no regularity 

 in their distribution, as they were formed as it happened to suit the convenience 

 of the shell-fish eating Indians. 



" Nine of these heaps have been built up in a conical form by successive 



