Page 9 - elsasser_bowerscave

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INTRODUCTION

Tales of caves loaded with the treasures of.the ancient Indians
of California are so common as to make any person concerned with check-
ing their authenticity skeptical each time he hears a repetition of the
familiar story.

One of the distinctive features shared by many of these accounts
is the report that the caves are virtually inaccessible, or that they
may no longer exist. The story of Bowers Cave is unusual in that for
sixty-five years artifacts said to have been recovered from a cave in
the San Martin Mountains in northern Los Angeles County have been known
to exist, although the exact location of the cave itself remained a
mystery. A collection of specimens from the cave was purchased from
Reverend Stephen Bowers by the Peabody Museum of Harvard University
and are briefly described in the Annual Report of that institution for
1887. They were part, or all, of a collection said to have been ac-
quired in 1885, or a short time before, by Rev. Bowers. The cave was
reported as having dimensions of about 12 by 16 ·feet, and to have con-
tained nine baskets which ranged from 6 to 20 inches in diameter.
Apparently the larger baskets were used as receptacles for a number of
other specimens which, together with these baskets, are the subject of
the present report.· The cave gave no evidence of having been used for
any purpose other than as a depository for these articles. At the time
of their acquisition in 1887, it was not known what period, prehistoric
or historic, was represented by the specimens. Rev. Bowers suggested
that they may have been there for centuries.

After the specimens finally came to rest at the Peabody Museum,
several of them became relatively well-known from published descrip-
tions. In 1887, for example, three stone specimens from Bowers Cave
were figured and described by Henshaw (1887:29) in a discussion of the
aboriginal use of perforated stones in California, and Mason's (1904,
pl. 201) monumental report on basketry illustrated two coiled baskets
which were found in the cave.

Apart from these references and the tantalizing but superficial
description by Bowers (1885) in a journal which he himself edited, the
specimens received little study or attention until relatively recently.
This neglect was unfortunate for the collection, taken as a whole,
appears to be of considerable value in filling in some of the gaps of
our knowledge of the late prehistoric.or early historic Chumash culture