HARRINGTON ] HISTORY OF BURTON MOUND 63 
INTERVIEW WITH JAMES M. CARTER 
Mr. James M. Carter, who at present resides at Hawthorne, Calif., 
was in charge of the grading and construction work of the Potter 
Hotel during the entire period of its building. The work on the 
hotel was started on the 19th of January, 1901. 
When the excavations were made for the foundations of the hotel 
on the inland slope of the mound few, if any, Indian relics were 
found, but during the small amount of grading that was done at the 
crest of the mound, at the spot immediately toward the beach from 
the main entrance of the hotel, and especially toward Chapala Street 
from the main entrance, quantities of bones and relics were found. 
Little by little the skulls, bowls, beads, arrowheads, and other curiosi- 
ties which had come to light in the above-mentioned spot, or at 
other places on the grounds, were gathered under the direction of 
Mr. Potter and Mr. Carter and were put in a room at the western 
end of the old Burton adobe house. After a few months there was 
quite a museum in that room. Mr. Carter had a lot of 1-by-12-inch 
boards put in around the walls for shelves, and the skulls and bowls 
made a gruesome appearance. 
It was about May or June of that same year that Mr. Potter came 
to Mr. Carter one Saturday morning and called him aside from his 
work. Mr. Potter told Mr. Carter somewhat as follows: 
“A great many of our guests will be actors, and especially theatri- 
cal people have a superstitition about ghosts and spirits from the 
dead. It would be very unfortunate if they got the report going that 
this place here was a potter’s field, that this hotel is a potter’s field, 
and to me it seems the thing to do for us to bury everything of every 
kind before the reporters get hold of it and give us an advertising 
that will do no good.” 
Mr. Potter suggested that Mr. Carter come the following morning, 
which was Sunday, and bring with him four or five of the workmen, 
including one man with a team. Mr. Carter acted accordingly, and 
came with the workmen Sunday morning. Mr. Carter officiated. 
The others were Kittie Goux, a big Spanish Californian, of Santa 
Barbara, who is still living, an Irishman named Dewlaney, an Eng- 
lishman named John Bebb, and with the three nations, Indian, Ivish, 
and English, represented and an American officiating, the relics, con- 
sisting mostly of mortars and pestles and human bones, were hauled 
to the east annex, and were deposited in a trench which had been 
freshly dug that Sunday morning as a grave for the materials that 
were to be reburied. They filled this pit with bones and all kinds 
of things, most of them in broken condition, up to about 2 feet from 
the surface of the ground, and they had to tramp the stuff down in 
order to get them all in the allotted space. 
