A passage from Frank Marryatt is interesting in this connection. He says of the Santa Cruz Indians:
"Of an evening they made a great disturbance by indulging in what they intended for a dance; this consisted in crowding together in uncouth attitudes, and stamping on the ground to the accompaniment of primitive whistles, of which each man held one in his mouth, while the women howled and shrieked in chorus."[1]
With the same skeleton in whose possession were found these primitive pipes of Pan, the saw-toothed bone shown at c, Fig. 5, was found. It suggests a saw, but may have been a tally bone, on which count could be kept of years or moons; this use is perhaps indicated by the fact that the notches are only part way along the edge of the bone, and that notched shell, which they also knew how to make, would have been more effective as a saw. A sort of romantic atmosphere seems to surround this especial skeleton, who may have been some sort of primitive historian and musician, furnishing music and keeping the records of the tribe, singing the story of each year as each notch recalled it.
The articles in shell taken from this mound are all of two sorts—shell ornaments or shell money; both are shown at d, d’ , and e, in Fig. 5. The shell ornaments are made from the brilliant abalone shell, which is still used to adorn the dooryards of good Californians. The ornaments are either round or oblong disks, pierced at one side for stringing, and all notched very exactly and evenly around the edge—perhaps, as Mr. Hughes suggested, in imitation of the heart shell, of which we found one specimen, shown in d’ , Fig. 5, next to one of the disk ornaments. The money is like the shell money found all over California, and consists of perforated squares of shell or of small whole shells pierced from end to end, shown at e. In this case property and ornament seem to have had a close connection, as perhaps they always have. Aside from the skeletons and the artificial objects found in the Robles Rancheria, we came across many food remains which also tell their story. Bones of deer, elk, raccoon, bones of salmon, and several sorts of waterfowl, countless crabs' claws, mussel, oyster, periwinkle shells in abundance, grouped specially with little beds of ashes, told of good hunting and fireside feasts to follow, in which meat was not lacking to go with the rude bread made from the acorns and seeds ground in the mortars.
Before concluding our work on the Robles Rancheria, we paid a visit to Donna Maria Secundini Robles, and asked her what she knew of this old heap. She is nearly eighty, but remembers well,
- ↑ Frank Marryatt. Mountains and Mole-hills, or Recollections of a Burnt Diary, chap. v, p. 83. New York, 1855.
