HUMAN REMAINS IN CALIFORNIA CAVES

C. Hart Merriam

Since the discovery of the celebrated Calaveras skull, many

human skulls and skeletons have been found in caves along the west slope
of the middle Sierra. The presence of human remains in these caves has

been interpreted to mean that the Indians now living in the region practise
cave burial, or did practise it until recent times. This is an error.

The Indians of this region, the Mewuk, burned their dead, and never under

any circumstances put them in caves. These Indians believe the caves to be
inhabited by a stone giant, whom they call Chehalumche, who sallies forth
at night in search of food. He preys, by preference, on people, but when
he can not get people, takes deer or other animals. He never eats his

victims in the open but carries them into the caves and there devours them.

Members of several subtribes of the Mewuk have told me this, and have looked
with horror on the suggestion that they or their ancestors might ever have
put their dead in caves. They say: "Would you put your mother, or your

wife, or your child, or any one you love, in a cave to be eaten by a hor-
rible giant?" The idea is so abhorrent to them that the theory of cave

burial must be abandoned as preposterous. The Mewuk feel that the finding

of human bones in these caves must convince us of the truth of their belief
in the occupancy of the caves by Chehalumche, the bones being those of the
victims he has carried there.

The mythology of the Mewuk does not admit of any migration but

describes the creation of the people in the area they still inhabit. This,
in connection with the fact that these Indians speak a language wholly dif-
ferent from any known in any other part of the world, proves that the Mewuk
have occupied the lands they now occupy for a very long period -- a period
which in my judgment should be measured by thousands of years.

This argues a great antiquity for the cave remains, for they must
be those of a people who inhabited the region before the Mewuk came -- and
this takes us back a very long way into the past.

* The American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal, Vol. 31, pp. 152-153,

1909. Also published in Science , N. S., Vol . XXIX, No. 751 , pp. 805-
806, 1909.

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