Relic from San Joaquin Valley.
MISCELLANEOUS MINE RELICS.
The cut shows a stone relic discovered in digging a well in the San Joaquin Valley, imbedded in the gravel thirty feet below the surface. "The material is sienite and the instrument is ground and polished so as to display in marked contrast the pure white of the feldspar and the dark-green or black of the hornblende. It is in the form of a double-cone, one end terminating in a point, while the other end is blunted, where it is pierced with a hole which instead of being a uniform gauge, is rimmed out, the rimming having been started from the opposite sides. In examining this beautiful relic, one is led almost instinctively to believe that it was used as a plummet for the purpose of determining the perpendicular to the horizon. So highly-wrought a stone would hardly have been used as a sinker for a fishing-net: it may have been suspended from the neck as a personal ornament. When we consider its symmetry of form, the contrast of colors brought out by the process of grinding and polishing, and the delicate drilling of the hole through a material so liable to fracture, we are free to say it affords an exhibition of the lapidary's skill superior to anything yet furnished by the Stone Age of either continent," at least such is Mr Foster's conclusion. Prof. Whitney states that he has two or three similar implements, and that they are generally regarded as sinkers for use in fishing.[XII-25] Mr Taylor tells us that he saw in 1852, on a high mesa, probably a league in circumference, on or near the Merced River, thousands of small mounds, five or six feet high, and apparently of earth only.[XII-26] Capron says that on the plains of San Joaquin "are found immense mounds of earth, which present evidences of their great antiquity. It is supposed that they were thrown up, by the Indians, for observatories, from which to survey the floods, or as places of resort for safety when the plains became suddenly inundated, and the ranging hunters were caught far in the interior."[XII-27] In the banks of a creek near Martinez, resting on yellow clay, under five feet of surface soil, a mortar and pestle were recently found by some boys, according to a local newspaper. The mortar was about sixty inches in circumference, and weighed nearly two hundred pounds. "It has the form of a slightly flattened well-rounded duck egg; and has evidently been artificially shaped in exterior form, as well as in the bowl, and looks as fresh as if it had but yesterday been turned off from the Indian sculptor's hands, while the polish of the pestle is smooth and lustrous, as if it had been in daily use for the hundred or two years, at least, that it must have been lying under the inverted mortar, as shown by the level of five-feet accumulations of the valley-surface stratum of soil above the yellow clay upon which it was found, together with the partially-decomposed remains of a human frame."[XII-28]
SHELL MOUNDS.
SAN FRANCISCO RELICS.
Relics from a Shell-Mound—San Francisco.
Only one class of Californian antiquities remains to be mentioned—the shell mounds. They are probably very numerous, and a thorough examination of their contents could hardly fail to be here as it has proved in Europe, a source of very important results in connection with ethnological studies. Little or nothing has been done in the way of such an examination, although a few mounds have been opened in excavating for roads or foundations of buildings. These few have yielded numerous stone, bone, and shell implements and ornaments, together with human remains, as is reported, but the relics have been for the most part lost or scattered, and submitted to no scientific examination and comparison. Dr Yates sent to the Smithsonian Institute, in 1869, a collection of relics taken from mounds in Alameda County. It is not expressly stated that these were shell mounds, although I have heard of the existence of several in that county. This collection included, "stone pestles, perforators or awls, sinkers, a phallus, spindles, a soapstone ladle, stone mortar and pestle, pipe bowls, shell and perforated stone ornaments, an ancient awl and serrated implements of bone."[XII-29] A very large shell mound is reported near San Pablo, in Contra Costa County. It is said to be almost a mile long and a half a mile wide, and its surface is covered with shrubbery. The shells composing this mound are those of the oyster, clam, and mussel, all having been exposed to the action of fire, and nearly all broken. Fragments of pottery made of red clay are found on the surface and near the top.[XII-30] Many smaller shell mounds are reported in the vicinity of San Mateo, and one has been opened in making a road at Saucelito during the present year, furnishing many stone relics, of which I have no particular description. Quite a number of mounds are known to exist on the peninsula of San Francisco, several being in the vicinity of the silk factory on the San Bruno road. One of them covered an area of two acres, was at least twenty-five feet deep, and from it were taken arrow-heads, hammers, and many other relics. One of these shell mounds, near the old Bay View race track is being opened by Chinamen engaged in preparation for some building, as I write this chapter. Mr James Deans, of whose explorations I shall have more to say when treating of the antiquities of British Columbia, has brought me a large number of stone and bone relics taken from this deposit, the different classes of which are illustrated in the accompanying cut. Fig. 1 is an awl of deer-bone, and fig. 2 is another implement of the same material, curiously grooved at the end. These bone implements occur by thousands, being from three to eight inches in length. Fig. 3, 4, are perhaps stone sinkers, or as is thought by some, weights used in weaving, symmetrically formed, the former from diorite, the latter from sandstone, and not polished. Fig. 3 is four inches long, and an inch and a half in its greatest diameter. Hundreds of these pear-shaped weights are found in the mounds, but the end is usually broken off, as is the case with fig. 4. Fig. 5 is an implement carved from a black clayey slate, and has a brightly polished surface. It is four inches long, one inch in diameter at the larger end, and three quarters of an inch at the smaller. It is hollow, but the bore diminishes in size regularly from each end, until at a point about an inch and a half from the smaller end it is only a quarter of an inch in diameter. I have no idea what purpose this implement was used for, unless it served as a handle for a small knife or awl, or possibly as a pipe.