HUMAN REMAINS IN THE GRAVEL: CALAVERAS COUNTY. 267 
I hereby certify that I have, this day, visited the above claim, and was shown about where the above 
relic was found ; and I believe the above statement to be about correct. 
[Signed ] C. D. Voy. 
(Here follows an affidavit to the above facts, sworn to by Mr. Pierce before James Letford, No- 
tary Public of Tuolumne County, which it is not necessary to repeat in full. It is dated Decem- 
ber 29, 1870.) 
CALAVERAS COUNTY. 
We come now to a county where occurrences of human renlains do not seem to have been as 
frequent as they were in the adjacent Tuolumne ; but where one specimen has been obtained which 
has excited more interest than all the others put together, and which is popularly believed to be 
the only instance of the kind which has been met with in California. A perusal of the previous 
and of the following pages will, however, it is thought, satisfy the reader that the belief of the 
existence of man in that region previous to the cessation of volcanic activity there does not, by any 
means, backed up by one item of evidence alone. The peculiar interest of the so-called “ Calaveras 
skull” depends, in good part, on the fact that it is, thus far, the only relic of the skeleton of pre- 
historic man in California, which has come into the hands of scientific authorities in such a condi- 
tion of completeness as to give some basis for ethnological conclusions, or, at least, for craniological 
measurements. Public attention has been so much attracted to the Calaveras skull,* and so much 
has been said and written about it, that it will be well for the writer to state what he knows with 
some detail in regard to this find, in order that those who are interested in the subject may have 
all the facts which are at hand on which to base their opinions. 
The manner in which the skull in question came into the writer’s possession is as follows: June 
18, 1866, Dr. William Jones, of Murphy’s, Calaveras County, a physician of extensive practice 
in that part of the mining region, and who had been long known to the writer, and for whose 
veracity and scientific tastes he can personally vouch, wrote to the office of the Geological Survey, 
at San Francisco, stating that he had in his possession “a human skull of Indian type, in a good 
state of preservation, with the exception of the parietal and occipital portions, — the frontal, facial, 
and temporal being complete, — which was recently found by Messrs. Mattison & Co., in their 
claim on Bald Mountain, near Altaville and Angel’s, one hundred and thirty feet from the surface, 
and beneath the lava, in the cement, and in close proximity to a completely petrified oak.” 
The State Geologist being absent from the city at that time, Mr. Gabb, the Paleontologist of 
the Survey, answered Dr. Jones’s letter, and requested that the skull might be sent to the office of 
the Survey for examination, which request was immediately complied with, and the skull for- 
warded on the 29th of June.+ 
On his return to San Francisco, a few days later, the writer examined the skull, and at once 
proceeded to visit the locality. He saw Mr. Mattison, the principal owner of the claim from 
which the relic was taken, and heard from his lips the same statement which Dr. Jones had com- 
municated in his letter, with several additional items of information, some of which are of impor- 
tance as bearing on the question of the authenticity of the supposed find. And here it may be 
remarked, that nothing is known unfavorable to the credibility of any of the witnesses to the facts 
in this case; and, were it a question of only ordinary importance and interest, the statements made 
by them would have been received as being, without doubt, the exact truth. The extreme care, 
however, with which all the facts, in a case like this, should be weighed, must be my excuse 
* Calaveras means skulls, and was the Mexican-Spanish name of the river which gave its name to the 
county, Rio de las Calaveras. Skulls and bones of dead animals are common enough in the Western 
country, in the vicinity of small streams. A larger collection than usual of such remains at some point 
on this particular stream may have been the origin of the name. 
+ This skull was temporarily intrusted to the writer ; and, after the discontinuance of the Survey, given 
to him by Dr. Jones. 
