Toward the end of the 18th century there are applicable descriptions of Indians immediately to the north by the Dominican priest, Father Luis Sales (1794).
The ethnographic information contained in the documents bears out the fact that the cave artifacts belong in the cultural tradition of the Borjeño who inhabited the region at the time of European contact and conquest.
THE SITE
Bahía de Los Angeles is a semicircular bay, about four miles in diameter, on the gulf coast of Baja California at 28° 55' N. and 113° 30' W. ([map 1]). On the northwest it is open to the waters of the Gulf of California and to the Canal de las Ballenas, which runs between the peninsula and Isla Ángel de la Guarda, some twelve miles distant. (This island and the smaller Isla Smith obstruct a view of the outer gulf, and from the shore Bahía de Los Angeles appears to be completely landlocked.) Within a few hundred feet of the shore, sandy beaches give way to the talus slopes of the mesas and peaks which edge the bay. An arroyo enters the bay from the west.
The cave excavated by Dr. Palmer is situated on a granitic hill to the west of the bay, at an elevation of 30 ft. above sea level. Just below the mouth of the narrow fissure is a spring which supplies water to the little mining community. The cave itself measures 9 ft. in depth; it is 6 ft. wide and 5 ft. high at the mouth. Before Dr. Palmer’s excavations, miners of the Gulf Gold Mining Company had removed some stones—referred to in the Report as a “wall”—from the front of the fissure, thus exposing a few bones, which lay sun-bleached on the talus slope (Annual Report, 1888, p. 127).
THE BURIALS
The small cave at Bahía de Los Angeles contained at least seven burials: six adults and “fragments of one or more infants” (Annual Report, 1888, p. 128). These burials were extended with an east-west orientation corresponding to the axis of the fissure; the foot bones were to the west, at the mouth of the cave, and the crania were in the tapered interior. The published report does not indicate whether placement was prone or supine.
According to the Report the burials had been placed on a layer of sewn rush matting (139533[1]; see “[Matting]”), of which three bundles were collected.