xx MAN AND THE GLACIAL PERIOD. 



at the story ; whereupon the owner of the object enjoined 

 secrecy, pleading : ' Don't give me away ; I've fooled a lot 

 of fellows already, and I'd like to fool some more.' " * 

 This well- known geologist, on being challenged by Profess- 

 or Claypole f to give " a full, exact, and certified statement 

 of the conversation " above referred to, proved to be Major 

 Powell, who responded with the following statement : " In 

 the fall of 1889 the writer visited Boise City, in Idaho 

 [twenty miles from Nampa]. While stopping at a hotel, 

 some gentlemen called on him to show him a figurine 

 which they said they had found in sinking an artesian 

 well in the neighbourhood, at a depth, if I remember 

 rightly, of more than three hundred feet. . . . When this 

 story was told the writer, he simply jested with those who 

 claimed to have found it. He had known the Indians 

 that live in the neighbourhood, had seen their children play 

 with just such figurines, and had no doubt that the little 

 image had lately belonged to some Indian child, and said 

 the same. While stopping at the hotel different persons 

 spoke about it, and it was always passed off as a jest ; and 

 various comments were made about it by various people, 

 some of them claiming that it had given them much 

 sport, and that a good many tenderfeet had looked at it, 

 and believed it to be genuine ; and they seemed rather 

 pleased that I had detected the hoax." J 



Thus it appears that Major Powell has made no such 

 statement, at least in public, as Mr. McGee attributes to 

 him. It should be said, also, that Major Powell's memory 

 is very much at fault when he affirms that there is a close 

 resemblance between this figurine and some of the chil- 

 dren's playthings among the Pocatello Indians. On the 



* American Anthropologist, vol. vi, p. 94 : repeated by Mr. Mc- 

 Gee in the Literary Northwest, vol. ii. p. 276. 



f The Popular Science Monthly, vol. xlii, p. 773. 

 \ Ibid., vol. xliii, pp. 322, 323. 



