Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [312]
Mr. J. L. Sperry, the keeper of the lone hotel in Murphy’s, recalled that one day he had seen Dr. Jones, whose office faced the hotel, come out shouting and hurl a broken skull into the street. Sperry asked Jones what the fuss was about. Jones explained that he felt he had been the victim of a practical joke by Scribner, who had sent him a supposedly ancient skull that now appeared to be a fake. But then Jones reconsidered the matter, picked up the skull, and later sent it to Whitney (Holmes 1899, p. 459).
Furthermore, in 1908, William J. Sinclair, a California archeologist, reported receiving an article by Rev. W. H. Dyer from the Tuolumne Independent of September 14, 1901. In this article (Sinclair 1908, p. 128), Dyer stated that he had been present when Mr. Scribner and two friends retold “the story of the skull, which they had planted deep in the bottom of the shaft where it astonished the miner, the curious public and the wondering scientists.” Dyer later told Sinclair he had learned from Scribner’s sister that his relatives “have long known as a joke of his, the planting of a skull in a mine” (Sinclair 1908, p. 129).
But there are many different sides to the story. Holmes reported the efforts of Dr. A. S. Hudson to solve the Calaveras mystery. In 1883, Dr. Hudson received a letter from Dr. John Walker of Sonora. In this letter, Walker related how he had tried to convince J. D. Whitney that the Calaveras skull had originally been found in an Indian grave at Salt Spring Valley and not in Mattison’s mine on Bald Mountain. Walker subscribed to the view that the whole incident was “a fabrication and a joke” (Holmes 1899, p. 460). Hudson visited Walker, but found he had little evidence to back up his claims.
Hudson then went to Angels to talk to Scribner, the alleged prankster, who, according to Holmes, “assured him that Dr. Walker was wrong, and that no deception whatever had been practiced” (Holmes 1899, p. 460). Dr. Hudson then interviewed Mattison and his wife, and they confirmed that he had brought the incrusted skull home from his mine, where he had found it at a depth of 128 feet. It had remained in the Mattison household for a year. When shown a picture of the skull from Whitney’s book, Mrs. Mattison recognized the skull as the same one she had kept for a year (Holmes 1899, p. 461). Feeling “perplexed and discouraged” by the seemingly “incomplete and incoherent” stories, Dr. Hudson returned to his office (Holmes 1899, p. 461).
Two weeks later, Scribner appeared and gave more information. Hudson wrote: “It seems, as time went on, Mrs. Mattison, an orderly housekeeper, began to take a dislike to the untidy thing—an unwashed dead head in her house—and made a complaint. It was more in the way than of use or ornament, and she decided to get rid of it. Thereupon her husband, like a proper acquiescing partner in life, carried it to Mr. Scribner’s store” (Holmes 1899, p. 461).
Scribner related to Hudson that his partner, Mr. Henry Matthews, was angry at Dr. Jones for giving him some unpleasant medicine. Therefore, as a kind of a joke, Matthews sent the skull in a sack with some lumps of rock and petrified wood to the office of Dr. Jones, who was known to be a collector of geological curiosities. Dr. Jones, apparently thinking the skull to be recent and of little value, is then said to have tossed the skull out into his back yard, where it remained for several months. Then, while visiting Dr. Jones, Mr. Mattison saw the object, and upon recognizing it stated it was the same skull he had removed from his mine. Appreciating the relic in a new light, Dr. Jones then forwarded it to Whitney. So according to Dr. Hudson, there was some joking involved, but the motive was “not to play upon the spirit of scientific inquiry” but rather an attempt by Mr. Matthews to get even with Dr. Jones (Holmes 1899, p. 463).
Additional stories open up the possibility that the skull was exchanged with another one while it was at Mr. Scribner’s store. Holmes