ABOUT SHELL-MOUNDS.
There are a number of shellmounds in the suburbs of Oakland, which will some day attract a great deal of attention. The best known of these are, the one at the head of the San Antonio estuary; the one on Strawberry Creek, near Berkeley; and the one near the race-course, a half-way point on the steam-railroad between Oakland and Berkeley. The latter mound is very perfect in contour, covering probably half an acre, and is between forty and sixty feet in hight. A great many theories have been propounded as to the origin of these mounds, their antiquity, etc.
M. Pireart, a French scientist who has for several years been investigating the antiquities of this coast, and who knows more about them, probably, than any living man, recently examined the mound at Strawberry Creek. On making an excavation he found three hundred skeletons, and quite a variety of stone implements. All the shell-mounds on this coast have a like origin. M. Pireart is satisfied that they were all places of sepulchre for Indians, and that they gradually reached their present size by frequent burials. A spot having been selected for burial, and always a pleasant one, the dead Indian was laid upon the ground and covered with shells. Now the Indian is probably lazy. Shells are lighter than earth. The Indians had great quantities of shells, for along the coast they subsisted principally on shell-fish. The Indians therefore carried a quantity of shells and heaped them upon the dead body. It is probable that wolves and cayotes would not dig into these shells as they would into the soft earth.
If this process were repeated for a thousand Indians, a large mound would be the result. In all cases these shell-mounds are near the water. The one near the race-course is hardly more than a hundred yards distant. There is usually a small stream of fresh water coming down, and a grove, or some evidences that trees have been growing near the place; the stone implements and weapons which the defunct Indian had used in his life time, pestles, mortars, arrow-heads, and so on. There are also traces of fire, showing that at the time of interment some sort of sacrifice was made, or cooking performed to help the dead Indian on his way to the future hunting grounds. But contrary to the theory of many these shells were not burned, and therefore no lime was made to throw over their bodies. It might have taken five hundred years to build one of these mounds, but there is no evidence of great antiquity M. Pireart says that the race of mound-builders is not extinct. The Indians were the builders, and there is evidence that some of their work has been performed within a century. The bodies of these were not laid in any one position. They were found in all situations, with heads and feet at all points of the compass. Some had been laid face downward, some on the side or back, and some had been left in a sitting position. The most recent interments were those of course on or near the top of the mound. Many of the skulls are in a good state of preservation, but they add little to our knowledge of ethnology because they do not differ essentially from the skulls of the remnants of coast tribes now in existence. But these mounds are interesting relics and ought to be preserved. Every shell-mound is an Indian cemetery. It has greater antiquity than any other work of human hands to be found on the Pacific coast. Some of them may be a thousand years old. The are not ruins, but cemeteries which have been completed and stand as monuments of the dead. They ought not to be desecrated. A dead Indian will do us no harm. Even his bones are not needed at present beyond a occasional skull as a contribution to ethnology.
ABOUT SHELL-MOUNDS
shellmound 08 Aug 1876, Tue Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) Newspapers.com
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