Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 266, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 November 1910 — UNHEARD OF RACE. [ARTICLE]

UNHEARD OF RACE.

Horned Men Once Lived on Pacific Coast. Topango Canon Yields Remains Showing Existence of Ancient Weird Tribe—Scientists Interested in Find. San Francisco.—The horned men of Topango have been discovered—that is, they were almost horned and of a physiognomy so strange that the scientists who unearthed them are almost persuaded that the existence in the long ago of a hitherto undreamedof race of aborigines has been demonstrated. P r °f- J- R. Pendleton of the geology department of Stanford university is the explorer who has found this new field of anthropological conjecture. With a party of Stanford students he has just returned from a two months’ stay in' the mountains whose slopes rise from the ocean shore near Santa Monica, in Southern California. In Topango canon, which is In the heart of a district long known to have been the home of Indian tribes now extinct, the excavators found one mound containing the bones of 34 aborigines. Although the bones were disintegrated and broken by the centuries of erosion and geologic change that have taken place since the Indians inhabited the spot, the scientists were able to piece together something of the story of their past From flint arrowheads found imbedded in the skulls and from tire crushed skull bones that bore every evidence of having been beaten in by war clubs, Professor Pendleton says it is plain that the ancients died in battle. But of more scientific interest is the amazing countenance conjured by the skulls as found by the scientist. The brow is almost totally lacking, rising from the line of the eyebrows but three-quarters of an inch, and the top of the head being almost flat. Stranger Btill, the nose. Instead of descending in a graceful Roman or Grecian line at an angle to the forehead, projects horizontally, hornlike, and with no resemblance to the human nose. A spirit level laid from the top of the head to th 6 tip of the nose would show but a slight inclination.

These queer tribesmen had bulging heads in the rear and unusually heavy jaw bones, due probably to their diet of clams and other shell fish, the shells of which they crushed between their teeth. In the mound of bones were discovered signs that, although they subsisted mainly on sea food, they were also hunters, the bones of deer and bear being Jound fn the vicinity. Professor Pendleton declares that the tribe, the site of whose village in the mouth of the Topango canon he has unearthed, was probably descended from Asiatics who had crossed the Bering straits and drifted to the southern coast. He believes they were extremely primitive In type, the utensils found in the mound being of the crudestsort One indication that the tribes of Topango were allied with the Indians who inhabited the channel’s Islands was found in the large stones cut in the form of spinning tops, which before this have been unearthed on San Clements and Santa Catalina islands. It is believed these tops were spun and cast into the sea to charm the fish to their doom for the tribesmen’s larder.