"Will They Be Interpreted?"
Musty Study.
What Is the Story of the Ancient Mound?
Discoverer in the Topango Delves for It.
Over a Hundred Skeletons Already Found.
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| Among the Prehistoric Dead of Topango Canyon. Coolbaugh excavating and soliloquizing at the ancient mound which he discovered, and a few of the massive skulls he uncovered. |
"Jack Rabbit Lodge" is the picturesque name given by W. W. Coolbaugh to his cabin four miles up the Coast from Santa Monica. Here, on a six-acre flat—the delta of Topango Canyon—Coolbaugh Is patiently waiting to prove upon his government claim. Coolbaugh is an old prospector and miner and in searching along the Malibu Coast for a claim upon which to file as a homestead he discovered that this fertile fiat was unsurveyed government land. Forthwith he took possession, and here he is monarch of all he surveys. He enjoys all the rights of a squatter, and is patiently awaiting the coming of the government surveyors and the day for making his final proof. It was while "holding down" this claim that he discovered the ancient Indian mound, whose mysterious and musty contents are partially revealing the story of the dim past. Topango Creek flows near by, bearing its message from the upper reaches of Topango and Garapatos canyons, pouring its feeble flood into the Pacific. Coolbaugh finds "books in the running brook, sermons in stone, and good in everything,” and the long hours of the winter nights he spends in an effort to piece together the bones and stones which have been uncovered during the balmy days.
While making a clearing of the meadow, his practiced eye was attracted to the oval-shaped and evenly formed mound, whose partial contents are today being investigated by the Smithsonian Institution. No sooner had this practical old miner sunk his pick into the soil that forms the covering of the mound than his unerring conclusion was that the hillock was the work of man. The earth was of a kind unlike that of the surrounding flat, and this proved to him that it had been carried there for the purpose of covering something sacred, or valuable, it might be, reposing underneath. Cautiously and with care he continued to excavate, until his spade came upon large boulders. Excavations were made at several different points and all with the same result. He selected the westerly side of the mound for operations, and after removing the stratum of boulders, he found himself working in a soft, black, ashy soil. At a depth of a few inches below the stone covering, he came upon the tops of the massive skulls of what he at once determined were those of a tribe of Indians that had roamed the Santa Monica Mountains long ages ago.
Up to this time the mound, which is perhaps 100 feet long by forty feet in width at the broadest point, has yielded portions of more than a hundred skeletons—and the exploration has scarcely been commenced. Coolbaugh continues to marvel at the discovery, not knowing what secret the next stroke of his shovel may reveal. Up to this time he has found nothing of metallic or intrinsic worth, aside from the value which the bones, implements, weapons, utensils, tools, idols or images may prove to the scientists who are endeavoring to read the story of another age brought to the surface.
Coolbaugh has conversed with old timers, whose parents and those before them frequented these parts in the latter part of the seventeenth century, but so far he has been unable to find even faint recollection of the time when the mouth of Topango Canyon was used by the Indians as a burial ground. One of the families of Spanish descent had heard in the long ages ago of an Indian legend, which, handed down from father to son, seems to connect the incident of the wholesale burial with the first outbreak of the "Smoking Mountain," which is not far from the outpost of the Indians' happy hunting ground. According to this legend, in the days before the face of white men had been seen along the Coast of Southern California—before the natives of the mountain canyons that run into the sea had ever seen the white wings of explorers' or pirates’ ships as a speck on the broad expanse of sea—there occurred an Indian massacre, when all of the inhabitants of a Topango village were killed bv a marauding enemy that fell upon them. The bodies of the dead were piled in a heap, according to the prevailing custom, covered with stones, and a funeral pyre burned over their heads. The fire thus started, so the legend runs, leaped deep into the fissures between the rocks; it gave birth to the mountain, whose intermittent smoking continues to this day.
The massacre of an entire village in those days, for the petty crime of stealing a cow, was not unusual; but the connection between this ancient grave and the origin of the burning mountain, as carried in the legend, is a turn to the story which Coolbaugh is unwilling to accept as gospel truth.
The old delta philosopher, whose nightly companions are the bones or warriors of a once proud and defiant race, has found among other things a rude stone device which he at first believed was either a weapon or some implement of husbandry or culinary use. But this theory he has since abandoned and is satisfied In his own mind that it was undoubtedly the mace or royal scepter, which was carried by the man of large frame who as a herald always announced the approach of the chieftain of the tribe. When Sir Francis Drake visited along these shores more than 300 years ago he reported having found the chief, or king, as Drake called him, thus accompanied. The chief was invariably distinguished by wearing an ornamental chain of a boney substance "every link or particle thereof being very little and thin, most finely burnished, with a hole pierced through the middest." Small links answering this description have been discovered in the mound. There are other links that might have been used as wampum. These consist of shells strung on sinews or fiber, rubbed down to a circular shape. In the burial of the Indians of that day it was the custom to lay the weapons and effects away with the bodies of their owners. It was also their practice in preparing the bodies for burial to double the knees against the chest, and thus bind them firmly with a stout cord. The bodies uncovered at the Topango delta are for the most part in this position, although some of them have evidently fallen over. Beside them, too, are found the stone implements, the flint arrow heads and the other bone and stoned rills, needles, implements and handiworks and tools of the craft.
But the generally-accepted theory of Coolbaugh as well as of those who have viewed the ancient burial mound is that the burial antedated the coming of Drake by many years, as the stories that were told by the natives to the Padres in 1776, when Junipero Serra visited the Malibu coastline, included no recital of a general slaughter during the years immediately preceding. The memory of those then living, coupled with the tales that had been told to them by their fathers and grandsires, carried the history of the canyons back to Drake's time. The next backward step leads to Cabrillo, the Portuguese navigator, who sailed the waters of Santa Monica Bay as early as 1542, touching at the mouth of the Santa Monica barranca. He found the natives who flocked to the beach to greet him a friendly race and their relations during his brief stay were pleasant. In their recital to him of their tribal customs, they spoke of the practice of burying the dead, rather than cremating them. They also told him that it was their practice to place at the feet of the sitting dead such articles as they may have owned. Those stone tools were to indicate the occupation of the dead. In exhuming the remains found in the Topango Mound. Coolbaugh finds the stone implements and dishes thus placed. With them he finds also bone whistles, such as might have been used by these Indians who sang funeral dirges, with accompaniment whistled through a deer's leg bone.
One of the first skulls brought to the light of day was found to have a long flint arrowhead deeply imbedded in the region of the temple. Several of the other skeletons show deep fractures such as might have been inflicted by battleaxes or tomahawks, but as yet no war clubs or axes of any description have been discovered. Another of the skulls had horns, which protruded from near the front of the ear cavity and encircled the head. These horns, which were two or three inches In length, were apparently of the same bone composition as the skulls and had evidently been a part of them; but they were so slender and mellow with age that at the first handling after exposure to the air the horns became separated from the skull.
