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Show Catalina Island Yields Many Ancient Treasures Avalon, Santa Catalina Island, Cal. An attempt to follow ancient trails to the long-lost Island temple of Chinigchinich, the Sun God, has resulted re-sulted instead in the discovery of the burial place of a small Indian princess prin-cess of 3,000 years ago and evidence indicating that child sacrifices were made in wholesale fashion by tribes of the Channel islands, off the coast of California. Within n stone urn weighing V.'A pounds and fashioned skillfully as though by modern tools was found the skeleton of an Indian girl between be-tween live and seven years. Her hands apparently had clutched the rim of an urn, whose rich ornamentation ornamenta-tion of wampum bespeaks her royal lineage. In a circle with the urn ns a center cen-ter were counted by I'rof. Ralph Glid-den, Glid-den, curator of the Catalina museum of Channel island Indians, the skeletons skele-tons of 64 children buried in tiers four deep with small heads touching each other.- Keneath them was the skeleton of a seven-foot man. A spear blade stilL was fixed in the ribs. The sand within the funeral urn had the appearance of ground crystal apparently, according to the discoverer, discov-erer, a sacred sand used in the burial of Indian royalty and was far different dif-ferent from that which had sifted over the graves of the other children. These finds as well ns a wealth of obsidian knives, spear points and arrow ar-row heads and hundreds of other articles ar-ticles of wampum-inlaid stone and bone have provided material over which .Glidden has puzzled since he discovered them. One thin piece of slate he believes to be a stone map, holes having been drilled to indicate trails to the four main burying grounds on Santa Catalina Cata-lina island. "It is plausible," Glidden said, "that the strange child burial within the urn and those surrounding it were the result of a natural death of a little girl of high rank and the slaying slay-ing of 64 attendants and playmates sv-ith her. Or they all may have been kilfed in some religious ceremonial rite. "It is even possible the princess may have been given some potion and buried bur-ied alive. The way the small hands clutched the outer rim of the bowl makes this a possibility." Wampum inlaid in four broken circles on the rim of the urn with "gates" leading to the four points of the compass lead Glidden to believe the burial place may be near the site of the temple of Chinigchinich. |