The Curious Californians

The early Spaniards who came to Southern California in the 16th century found the local Indians a dull lot. The native tribes raised no crops, did little hunting, lived relaxed lives on acorns and sea food, and offered only feeble resistance to Spanish soldiers and missionaries. Last week Anthropologist Phil C. Orr of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History described some huskier, earlier and odder Californians whose remains he discovered on barren Santa Rosa Island, off Santa Barbara.

For years Dr. Orr had been digging up skeletons of the Canalinos, the small, fish-eating Indians who lived on the island when the Spanish arrived. One day, while tramping the island, he stumbled on a skull half-buried in the sand. It did not take an anthropologist to tell that this skull was peculiar: it was painted or dyed a brilliant Chinese red.

Dr. Orr burrowed deep in the sand and found a whole cemetery of strange red-skulled skeletons, all in a sitting position, with knees drawn up under their chins. One group was arranged sociably around a table-like stone. By now, 75 skeletons have been dug up. Only the skulls are colored red; the rest of the bones are normal skeletons of strong, tall people (three were giants 7 1/2 ft. tall). In the earholes of a good proportion of the skulls are peculiar bony obstructions that must have caused deafness.

After more digging and burrowing in burial plots and among kitchen middens, Dr. Orr drew some conclusions about his forgotten Indians. They took steam baths, and lived mostly on red abalone, which they gathered off the rocks by diving deep. They also ate sea lions, seals and whales. At their religious ceremonies, the instrumental music was supplied by little bone whistles. When children died, Dr. Orr suspects, their bodies were buried in a special place or thrown into the sea; only two skeletons of children were found in the cemetery. Why did the Red Heads paint the skulls of their dead? Dr. Orr hasn't a clue.

Eleven miles from the Red Head cemetery, Dr. Orr found a burying place of still another unknown people whom he calls the "Black Bottoms." Instead of sitting upright with their skulls colored red, the 129 skeletons were lying on their sides, with the bones of the lower spine and pelvis colored black.

The two peoples had related cultures, Dr. Orr thinks. The Black Bottoms, who probably came later than the Red Heads, were somewhat more advanced. They made beads out of steatite, had nicely barbed spears, and ate green abalone instead of red. Both cultures, Dr. Orr believes, flourished 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. Apparently, the Black Bottom mortuary custom was to take out the viscera and fill the abdominal cavity with black clay. The color eventually spread to the bones.

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