Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/511

Rh and almost seems to live in, the happy days before the Gringos came. This was her story: When she came as a girl to live on the Robles Ranch, there were three Indian rancherias within a mile of her home, one marked by the mound, and two others not far from the present station of Castro; but the Indians who lived on the mound had already deserted it, for when the Mission Fathers came to Santa Clara, the allegiance of the Indians was soon divided: some welcomed the new life and the new faith, and learned to pray and to hoe corn, to string rosaries, and to weave tule sombreros; while others still chose "the winds of freedom," and thought that acorns, clams, and fetiches would do very well for them. Among those who chose to be wild heathen still were the Indians of the Robles Rancheria; so they left their immemorial village site and went off down the San Joaquin Valley to Tulare, and were never seen again.

This story is confirmed by the fact that in our excavations we found no trace of any trade with whites—no glass beads, no bit of iron; this is noteworthy, since nearly all the known sites of old rancherias in California yield European beads in greater or less plenty. We had, therefore, by great good luck, been excavating a really prehistoric rancheria untouched by any foreign influence. On showing the various objects we had found to Donna Maria, she recognized their use at a glance, with the exception of the charm stones, which puzzled her; she confirmed, however, the statements which we had heard before as to the use of the sharp-pointed bones as hair ornaments. The manners and customs of these Indians were probably much the same as of those who went on living at the two neighboring rancherias, and with the latter Donna Maria was well acquainted, for, as she said, she had "danced with them often when a girl."

Piecing together our finds and the story of Donna Maria, the life of the Robles Rancheria reconstructs itself as follows: A little Indian village lies half hidden in great oak groves near San Francisco Bay, close by a spring oozing up under shady willows; an irregular circle of huts made of poles covered with rushes and