Friday, April 15, 2022

INDIANS ONCE HUNTED SEAL ROCK SEA LIONS - Oakland Tribune, 06 Jul 1913

INDIANS ONCE HUNTED SEAL ROCK SEA LIONS

SAN FRANCISCO, July 5. - "Aboriginal San Francisco” is the display beginning Sunday in the "52 exhibits a year' section at the Affiliated Colleges Museum. This accession was excavated from probably the last Indian shellmound within the city limits of San Francisco. Located in the portion of the Presidio used by the Exposition, it was not discovered until last fall, just before the swamp in which it lay imbedded and nearly submerged was covered by silt pumped up by the Exposition dredgers. Two days' work by these giants forever obliterated the remains which it took a tribo of savages centuries to accumulate.

The relics, which have now been classified and for the first time put on view, reveal a type of Indian life distinct from that heretofore encountered in our shellmounds in the bay region. Instead of digging clams or catching fish, the ancient people on the Golden Gate hunted the ancestors of the sea lions that still frequent the Seal Rocks, This is proved by the quantity of bones of these large animals, which are more numerous than all the other relics on deposit.

The mound is a comparatively new and recent affair, as such monuments go, but according to the estimates of the museum's staff was already the site of a flourishing little Indian metropolis before America was discovered, dating back, it is believed, about 600 years.

INDIANS ONCE HUNTED SEAL ROCK SEA LIONS
shellmound

INDIANS ONCE HUNTED SEAL ROCK SEA LIONS shellmound 06 Jul 1913, Sun Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) Newspapers.com

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