Trees of considerable size had been felled upon the site of this old aboriginal cemetery 30 years before the discovery mentioned by Mr. Remsburg, a fact which goes to bear out his statement that the skeletons were those of natives who had lived centuries ago.
Another important archaeological investigation was made by Prof. J. A. Udden of Bethany College in the early '80s, when he examined the mounds south of the Smoky Hill river and found bones of animals, stone implements, sandstone or “hand grindstones,” the entire collection numbering some 500 interesting relics. Prof. Udden made a partial report to the Academy of Science in 1886, and subsequently a more complete report was published in the Kansas Historical Collections. The finding of a piece of chain mail (See Coronado) he says “makes it certain that the village was occupied by Indians at least as late as after the discovery of America by Europeans.”
Perhaps the most interesting archaeological relic ever found in Kansas is the ruins of a pueblo known as El Quartelejo. Dunbar says that about 1702 “the occupants of the pueblo of Picuries, in northern New Mexico, forsook their village and, resorting to the northeastern plain, established the post later known as El Quartelejo, distant northeast 350 miles from Santa Fe, in the present Scott county, Kan. The explanation of this sudden movement was probably the result of some fanciful or mysterious impulse, from which they were in due time readily dissuaded by the governor of the province, Don Francisco Cuerbo y Valdes, and soon after resumed their forsaken home.”
Bancroft, in his history of Arizona and New Mexico (p. 228), says: “Capt. Uribarri marched this year (1706) out into the Cibola plains; and at Jicarilla, 37 leagues northeast of Taos, was kindly received by the Apaches, who conducted him to Cuartelejo, of which he took possession, naming the province San Luis and the Indian rancheria Santo Domingo.”
The ruins of the old pueblo are in the northern part of the country and were first noticed about 1884. The dimensions are 32 by 50 feet, and the remains of the foundation walls indicate that it was divided into seven rooms, varying in size from 10 by 14 feet to 16 by 18 feet. Prof. S. W. Williston visited these ruins in 1898 and the following January gave a description of them before the Kansas Historical Society, his paper on that occasion appearing in the vol. VI of the Kansas Historical Collections. Handel T. Martin, of the paleontological department of the University of Kansas, who examined the pueblo in connection with Prof. Williston, has published the results of his investigations in an illustrated article in the Kansas University Science Bulletin for Oct., 1909. After remarking that much of the stone has been taken away by the people living in the vicinity, Mr. Handel asks the rather pertinent question: “Would it not be well for the state to preserve at this late day our only known pueblo from further destruction?”
Argentine, the second largest town of Wyandotte county, is located in the extreme southeastern portion on the south bank of the Kansas
