66 EXPLORATION OF BURTON MOUND [ETH. ANN, 44 
was; in the year 1883, or 95 years since his visit, it is yet unexplored, and is 
eovered with luxuriant vegetation and embowered with vines and fruit trees. 
“MacGregor in his three volumes, Progress in America, published in 1847, 
speaks of this mound. It is certainly an interesting spot and well worth the 
consideration of the directors of the various universities throughout the world 
who might seek to obtain the buried relics of a past race.” 
EXCAVATION OF THE BURTON MOUND 
Previous Excavatinc AND Rextic Huntine By Oruers 
The present work was the first to be done in a systematic way on 
the site of Syujttn. Considerable promiscuous digging and pot 
hunting had been done at the site at one time or another by various 
individuals. 
The prejudice against digging up graves was so strong in Indian 
and early Mission times that the bodies and accompaniments of the 
dead remained inviolate. Moreover, practically all of the owners of 
the property have forbidden excavations. 
A. F. Hinchman amassed a considerable number of relics that had 
been found on the place and it is supposed that part of these found 
their way to the Smithsonian Institution. (See p. 58.) 
Count Leon de Sissac, heading a French archeological expedition 
to the coast of California in 1878, is said by Mr. B. F. Birabent, of 
Santa Barbara, and others to have done some digging at the mound. 
Rey. Stephen Bowers did a little digging at the foot of Chapala 
Street in the early eighties, according to Mrs. R. Kimberly and 
others. 
Gill Kimberly, in company with the Streeter boys, the two sons 
of W. Streeter, a neighbor, used to play at the mound when they were 
boys in the eighties and dug bones by the present central walk, where 
we carried on our chief excavations. On one occasion, Mr. Kimberly 
relates, they dug up four skeletons in sitting position at a place 30 
or 40 feet toward Chapala Street from the Burton well. 
Chico Leyva, who made the rich finds at the Mispti site in 1908, 
is said by several informants to have dug at the central walk locality 
quite extensively, probably during the ownership of the property by 
the Seaside Hotel Association. Most of the previous digging at this 
spot we attribute to him. He took only the larger artifacts, throwing 
the bones and many of the less conspicuous objects back into the holes. 
The agents of the Seaside Hotel Association, following the wishes 
of Captain Greenwell, told the tenants not to dig for relics and to 
allow no one else to do so, but there was considerable pot hunting, 
nevertheless. 
At one of the Fourth of July picnics and barbecues held at the 
mound in the nineties the writer recalls seeing a man whose 
