About the year 1875, the curator of the National Museum obtained information of a deposit of ancient relics at the above locality, and in 1876 a collector was sent out to make an investigation. The result, so far as collections go, was most satisfactory, and the account furnished gives an insight into the customs of this ancient people not yet obtained from any other source. On the Santa Clara River, a tributary of the Rio Virgen, about three miles from the Mormon town of Saint George, a low mound, which I suppose to have been a sort of village-site tumulus, was found. The outline was irregular, but had originally been approximately circular. It was less than ten feet in height, and covered about half an acre. One side had been undermined and carried away by the stream. The work of exhumation was most successfully accomplished by means of water. A small stream was made to play upon the soft alluvium, of which the mound was chiefly composed. The sensations of the collector, as skeleton after skeleton and vase after vase appeared, must have been highly pleasurable.
It is thought that the inhabitants of this place, like many other primitive peoples, buried their dead beneath their dwellings, which were then burned down or otherwise destroyed. As time passed on and the dead were forgotten, other dwellings were built upon the old sites, until quite a mound was formed in which all the less perishable remains were preserved in successive layers.
Following the customs of most primitive peoples, the belongings of the deceased were buried with them. Earthen vessels were found in profusion. With a single body, there were sometimes as many as eight vases, the children having been in this respect more highly favored than the adults. There seems to have been no system in the arrangement either of the bodies or of the accompanying relics.
The majority of the vases were either plain or decorated in color, but many of the larger specimens were of the coiled variety. About sixty vessels were recovered. Those of the former classes will be described under their proper headings.
Fig. 241.—Vessel from the tumulus, at Saint George.—1/3
The shapes of the corrugated vases are of the simplest kind. The prevailing form corresponds very closely with the Cliff House specimen illustrated in Fig. 239. One unusually large example was brought back in fragments, but has since been successfully restored. It stands nearly seventeen inches high and is sixteen inches in diameter. The plain part of the rim is one and one-half inches wide, and the lip is well rounded and strongly recurved. The lines are quite graceful, the neck expanding below into a globular body which is just a little pointed at the base. The color is dark, from use over the fire. The fillets of clay were narrow and very neatly crimped. Roughly estimated, there were at least three hundred feet of the coil used. The vessel has a capacity of about ten gallons.
Fig. 242.—Vase from the tumulus at Saint George.—1/2.
Vases of this particular outline may be found, varying in size from these grand proportions to small cups an inch or two in height. Of a somewhat different type is the vessel shown in Fig. 241. The outline is symmetrical. The neck is comparatively high and wide and swells out gently to the widest part of the body, the base being almost hemispherical. A band about the neck is coiled and roughly indented, while the body is quite smooth. The plain band about the mouth is broad and sharply recurved. The coils are wide and deeply indented. They have been smoothed down somewhat while the clay was still soft. The vase shown in Fig. 242 is characterized by its upright rim, elongated neck, round body, and plain broad coils. The fillets are set one upon another, apparently without the usual imbrication. This latter feature occurs in a number of cases in the vessels of this locality.