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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 1, 1880)
January, 1880. THE WEST SHORE. It PREHISTORIC MAN. t WHK.V DID HAN MAKE HIS APPEARANCE ON THE FAcrric coast! The following article, by the Hon. B. B. Red ding (Reno Qa-ittU, Deo. 3Ut, 1879), deals with a subject which cannot fail to interest all who look beyond their own lives to the life of the human raoe all who long to pieroe the veil that ahrouda the origin of man. In no part of the world is there ao good an opportunity to gather facts as to tho extent of time that man has been an inhabitant of the earth, a on the Pacific coast. Prospectors and miners are at work in all directions. Hydrau lic miners are washing down hills; drift miners are delving at the bottom of extinct pliocene rivers; prospectors for gold, silver and cinnabar are turning up the surfaoe in all probable and improbable places, over an area of at least 16, 000 square miles; and farmers plow up the bu rial places of prehistoric man, and enrich their gardens from the shell mounds and kitchen re fuse of a people who had disappeared from tho earth countless ages before Abraham and Lot divided Palestine into sheep ranges. All of these people find frequent ovidenoes of the work of prehistoric man. Instead of being saved and placed in some public institution, where they can be preserved, studied and compared, they are either left where found, or adorn somo bar-room collection of quartz crystals, pyrites of iron and silvor ores. There is no arclueolog ical society on the Pacific coast; oven "THE SOCIETY UPON THE BTANISLAUh" Has become extinet. Tho total collections of the work of prehistoric man of tho Pacific ooast, in the California Academy of Soionecs and in the State University, will numbor but a few dozen mortars, obsidian knives, scrapors and arrow-heads, while, the Smithsonian Insti tute, the French Ethnological Institute, Har vard University and tho British Museum con tain oolleotions that may be measured by the ton. If minors and farmers on tho I'acitlc ooast who turn up mortars, spoar-heads, or othor works of man, made from stono, would send them to the Academy of Scionces, or to the University, with a short account of tho place where and the circumstances undor whioh they went found, the arohnvological student would not be compelled to visit the Smithsonian or Harvard collections to obtain tlie means m com the works of the people found here by Father Juuipero Serra, and tho race that lived on this coast before Shasta, I-asson Butte, and other now extinot volcanoes capped the 8ierra with sheets of lava, or with those of still more ancient people, who hnnted and fished among tho foothills of the Sierra whon ti.... kill, ware washed hv the waters of the Pacific ocean probably long before the Coast range of mountains maae its appuiiu the sea. WHEN HHAHTA AND OTHER VOLCANOES Were pouring out lava, filling up the ancient river ohauuola, uruniig our uu.... --. and causing a new system of drainage for the ITUwii of the Cascades in south eastern Oregon were sending out ashes rilling the lakes, and making fossil the camel-llama up ine , . ..w.toothed liner, and other animals that then roamed over that lak. country. Vesuvius, in historic time., covered Pompeii and. region about five miles with volcanic ' ashes over an area of more than 'SffiA beginning to accumulate -that nun lived in this, then lane region. astern Oregon, contemporaneous with the Ins tftatWkiE oam.lU.ma and other now extinot. In Big Bone prairie, in the Silvor l ake region, in connection with the remains of these animals. Prof. Cope's men lately found arrow-heads, and so-called spear-heads. These differ in form from any now used by California or Uregou lumaus. t hese so-called spear-heads are flakes of obsidian of various lengths, from 6 to I inches, chippod into a long, oval form, pointed at both extremities, sharpened at the edges, aud varying in thickness at tho thickest part depomleut upon the leugth - the smallest iieing a half-inch, ami tho largest an inch. Whatever tho aizo, the form and proportions are always relatively the same. They were probably not spear-heads, as, if usod for this jurpose, thcro would be no ohjcot in sharpening Mtn extremities. They were probably Knives I used for some special purpose. Tho oldest liv ing California and Oregon Indiana do not use thrill, aud do not know what they wore for. lno Mel loud Indians STILL MAKE MM KNIVES Scrapers and arrow-heads, but nothing of this form. None of this kiud have been found in tho shell mounds or burial places of I'acilio coast Indians, anil some ot the "kitchen middens of the co. i I uf California, ifiutt have broil thou sands of years in accumulating. They have never been louud in Calilorma, except, liolow the boulders in hydraulic mines, at tho bottom of oxtiuct pliooeno rivers, or below the auriferous oarth and gravel of placer mines, and, as stated lately by I Vol'. Copo in Oregon, iu connection with tho fossil bones of extinct auimals. Thcro are two of these spear heads in the Sinitlianiiian collection, ono from the hydraulic miuos of Cal avoras county, and tho other, uumliored V,.'i i'.', from Folsom, Sacramento county. This spear hoad was found, with a disk of slate, having a hole in tho center, on a ledge of grauite, at the bottom of the gold minus, '.'!) feet hohiw the present surface of tho streota of the town of Folsom. About .'10 feet below the streets of Folsom, the miners find a Is I of hard, salt water mud, filled with fossil oyster shells, and shells of the extinet crustaceaus of what Clar- onoe King calls the mioeeno an. This lodge of granite is a point from the foothills of the Niorra that pitted out into this ancient sea Who were tho pooplo that hunted and llshud aliing the foothills when the liase of the Sierra was washed by the ocean ! Was the top of Diablo then an islaud ? r was tho SACRAMENTO VALLEY AN ISLAND SEA l.iko l'uget sound or the Ulaoksea? Itisuotsin gular that more of tho spear-hoadsof these prime val neonlo are not found, or that when disuov ered they should lie found beneath the drift and boulders of our gold mines, If any were left on or noar the present surface, and had been discovered by the ancestors 01 our present In diana, they would have been split into knives aud arrow-heads, for olisidian iu any form was of th" first necessity, and the most valuable material iu uae until white men brought iron to the coast. So (ar as I oau learn, there are live of these poculiar spear-heails in piihliu institu tinns, two at the Smithsonian, two m the posses sion of l'rof. Cope, and one at Harvard. There sre probably dozens in miners uabins, or orna menting bar-rooms in the mountains, or used ss paper weights in village grocery stores In 1 all fnriiia andOrouon, wluuh, if they could lie geth ered in some publiu institution, with the (aula and history of their discovery, would go far to prove that man made Ins apiMsaranee uu earth and lived on this cosst when the mastodon, ele phant, eavn bear and abor-tontlmd tiger wan dsred among the foothills of the Sierra, or, per haps earlier still, when the earth had so far evolved from hot chaos as to develop a ulitu.te that would sire him food and provide linn with shelter. I.i' am to A Mist. Thorns J. Cooper, a miner, residing at Virginia City, Nevada, has Just sailed for England to get Ihs haniUome sani of (VOU.MIU; left him by His lint oousln, Mi Barker, late a auerohant in Calcutta, A STRANGE STORY. Not long ago a woll known oollector of curi osities in Pans, who had devoted considerable sums of money to the gathering together of bank notes ol all countries ami oi all values, became the possessor of a Bank of England five pound note, to whioh an unusually strange story was attaohed. This note was paid into a Liverpool merchant's ollloe iu the ordiuary way ol busi ness sixty-one years ago, and us recipient, me. ashler of the lino, while hoi. hoc it up to the light to test its genuineness, noticed some faint red marks upon it, which on closer examination proved to be somiellaooil words sorawisu in ilood between the printed lines and upon in,. blank margin of the note. Extraordinary pains were taken to decipher these partly obliterated characters, and eventually the followiua am- tonus was made out; "If thu note should tall iuto the bauds of John Dean, of I,nug Hill, near Carliale, ho wilt kunw hereby Unit his In ether is languishing a prisoner iu Algiers." Mr. Dean was promptly communicated wii'uby the holder if the note, and he annealed to the government of the day for assistance in Ilia endeavor to ob tain his brother a release Irom captivity, I he prisoner, who, as it subsequently appealed had traeud the almve sentence upon Hie uuie Willi a splinter of wood dipped iu his own blond, had been u slave to the Dey of Algiers for eleven years, whon his strange missive llrst attracted atteiitiou in a Livnriiool couiiting-house. His family and frieuds bad long believed him dead. Eventually, his brother, with trio aiu ui mo British authorities in the Mediterranean, sue- ceeded in rsnsniniug him from tho Pay, aud brought him homo to England, where, however, he did not long survivo Ins release, his uonstitu tiou having Ihhiii irreparably injured by expo. uie, privations, and forced labor iu the bey's galleys. l.uN nuN TeleohaI'II. Swallows ami Uees. --The following letter sppears iu the columns of a Suhleswiok lliilstein - if" I. 1 I . MM... ..I,, I I.,,, apieillllll.il jOIIMOll I no IJllVa"M swallows are enemies to bee. i. generally met by a decided negative. Hut my experience. o( the present year have convinced mo of the con trary, at all events under curiam ciruumatauoo. Iu former years I encouraged swallows to build under my roof, where they were held as seared as the stork. One day. when tho nests were full of good-sized yuiiiig ones, whose iiover-oeaa-ing huuger thu parent birds were doiug their beat to satisfy, the idea struck mo to ox- ammo the oouteuta of one ol their stomach.. It ...illumed nothing but boo. I That my frinndahiii (or ill v hum honored guests somewhat cooled sfter this is hardly to bu wondered at, a I am an enthusiastic Iwu master, till another occasion, theu last summer, I saw the swallows waging war against the bees with a fatpoity almost incredible, Iu the dull cold Weather just prevailing there were scarcely any insects I. . . . I i I . L. 1 1..- in ice air, aim i now iuo wkwh. leu . i. d about hv dozens close to tho hives, and daahod upon the tines as they returned homo. So eagnr were they in tho nursiiil, thai siouo throwing, shooting, etc., did not deter them iu the least. Suddenly, however a change oame o'er the scene, for at the llrst glimpse o( sun shine the bees iu thoir turu became the aggies, son, and attacked the swallows so savagely that the latter New away uttering erles ol pain, ami not unlrsqui ntly fell to the ground with six or eight lie os clinging fast to them, after turning endless summersaults iu the air, iu the endeavor to shake off their tormentors. Nervous Kailubc.-Whsn meu do not die of some direct accident ol disease thsy die, In nine oases out of toil, from nsrvous failure. And this is the peculiarity ol nervous failuie that it may bo fatal Irom one point ol the ner vous organism, the rest being sound. A man may, therefore, wear himself out by one men tal exercise too exclusively followed, while he may live through many eierolsee extended over fsr greater interval, of time and Involving more real lal or II they be distributed over many sorts of mental activity.
