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Show THE PREHISTORIC RELIC FAD. There is not a city of any size in the Union the seat of a university or the home of an archaeological archaeo-logical museum that does not occasionally send out a few professors or antiquarians to burrow into old caves, examine abandoned cliff dwellings or dig over ancient sites .of Indian villages, searching for that which cannot be found. The ' deserted caves of Colorado, southern Utah and northern Arizona, even those not yet examined, if there be any, can yield us nothing with which we' are not already familiar. Dessicated or mummified bodies of Indians, copper spears and digging implements, pottery broken or whole, platform and other shaped pipes, perforated stone ornaments, clts, gouges, rubbing and polishing and mealing stoues, bone and burnt clay articles and innumerable trinkets are found in every university in America. Among the collections and exhibits there is' a uniform sameness. The ground has been gone over, dug up and exploited, and its the old petrine cry we hear, "Master, we have labored all night and have caught nothing." There is nothing to be found that has not already al-ready been found. The university and the museum people know this, but, if they admit it, what is to become of the annual jauntings and excursions to Indian mounds, cliffs and ancient sites, now so popular pop-ular and in many instances so profitable to the hunters. Of the pre-historic man of North America Amer-ica wre know all we are ever likely to know. The early French and Spanish missionaries have bequeathed be-queathed us invaluable records on the tribes of our continent, and modern research has added very little to their legacies. |