Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/505

Rh size was notable, and at once made us suspect that this mound had not been built up purposely, but had rather accumulated through the débris and the burials of some generations of Indian life and death. All our excavations bore out this idea, thus taking the structure rather out of the category of mounds into that of middens.

The excavations made from time to time resulted in the discovery of some thirty skeletons of both sexes and of all ages,



many of them undisturbed and often accompanied by various objects of use or ornament. Each cross on Fig. 1 shows the spot from which a skeleton was taken; the arrows indicate the point of the compass toward which the face was turned. The variations in this latter respect furnish negative evidence that the inhabitants of Robles Rancheria had no fixed superstition in connection with the heavenly bodies. It will be seen that there is