Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/291



The bone here described was found by the writer in a burial cave in the Sierra Madre, in Chihuahua, Mexico. This large cueva de los muertos, which was made by river action in very ancient time, is situated about four miles southwestward from Guachochic, a place consisting of only a single rancho, the seat of the local gobernador of the Tarahumare Indians. It is a long day's journey by muleback to the southwest of the town of Carichic, which latter place is two days' diligencia journey west of the city of Chihuahua.

The cave is situated in the picturesque valley of the Arroyo de las Iglesias. It is a very large, widely open cavern, which, when I visited it, contained numberless human bones, both fragmentary and entire, partly covered with stones or earth, partly lying on the surface. A tradition is current that the cave was once full of mummified bodies; but the saltpeter digger came, perhaps also the hunter for buried gold, and, aided by rats and other animals, the mummies were dissociated and the bones strewn about. Then came the superstitious Indian from the neighborhood, who so dreads the harmful muertos that he cannot sleep in their neighborhood at night, hearing them singing and dancing, and he threw piles of stones on the bones until they were either broken or buried from sight. These facts have such a bearing on the specimens which I am to describe, that I was unable to obtain any other part of the skeleton to which the anomalous ulna belonged, and therefore cannot say whether the