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The proceedings of the Boston Natural History Society (Volume VI, p. 278, October 7, 1857) contain a message that Winslow sent to Boston along with the first skull fragment. Winslow stated: “I sent by a friend, who was going to Boston this morning, a precious relic of the human race of earlier times, found recently in California, 180 feet below the surface of Table Mountain. . . . My friend Colonel Hubbs, whose gold claims in the mountains seem to have given him much knowledge of this singular locality, writes that the fragment was brought up in the pay dirt (the miner’s name for the placer gold-drift) of the Columbia Claim, and that the various strata passed through in sinking the shaft consisted of volcanic formations exclusively” ( Whitney 1880, p. 264).

Whitney, in California, then began his own investigation. He learned that Hubbs was “a well-known citizen of Vallejo, California, and a former State Superintendent of Education” (Whitney 1880, p. 264). Whitney got from Hubbs a detailed written account of the discovery, which occurred in the Valentine Shaft, south of Shaw’s Flat. Whitney (1880, p. 265) stated: “The essential facts are, that the Valentine Shaft was vertical, that it was boarded up to the top, so that nothing could have fallen in from the surface during the working under ground, which was carried on in the gravel channel exclusively, after the shaft had been sunk. There can be no doubt that the specimen came from the drift in the channel under Table Mountain, as affirmed by Mr. Hubbs.” The skull fragment was found in a horizontal mine shaft (or drift) leading from the main vertical shaft, at a depth of 180 feet from the surface (Whitney 1880, p. 265). Hubbs stated that he “saw the portion of skull immediately after its being taken out of the sluice into which it had been shoveled” (Whitney 1880, p. 265). Adhering to the bone was the characteristic gold-bearing gravel. Whitney (1880, p. 265) commented: “It is clear from Mr. Hubbs’s statements that the fragment was raised from the stratum of pay gravel, and that it was noticed when the contents of the bucket were dumped into the head of the sluice, and either picked up by Mr. Hubbs, or by some one else, who happened to be standing by, and who handed it to him on the spot.”

Independent corroborating evidence came from Mr. Albert G. Walton, one of the owners of the Valentine claim, at which the skull fragment was discovered. Mr. Walton reported that a stone mortar 15 inches in diameter was found in the Valentine mine, in gold-bearing gravels 180 feet below the surface and also below the latite cap of Tuolumne Table Mountain (Whitney 1880, p. 265).

When Sinclair (1908, p. 115) visited Table Mountain in 1902, he found that many of the drift mines south of Shaw’s Flat were connected. Thus, according to Sinclair, Whitney’s statement that the Valentine shaft was securely boarded up to the top so that nothing could fall in from the surface did not rule out the possibility that objects could have found their way into the Valentine underground tunnel from some other tunnels.

But Sinclair did not prove that there were in fact such interconnections between the tunnels at the time the discoveries were made in 1857. Perhaps the interconnections between the tunnels he observed in 1902 were made after the discoveries. Furthermore, Sinclair (1908, p. 115) admitted that during his 1902 visit he was not even able to find the old Valentine shaft. This means he had no direct evidence that the Valentine mine shafts were connected to any others. Finally, even if there were tunnels that connected with the drift tunnel running from the main Valentine shaft, this does not invalidate Hubbs’s report. Whitney (1880, p. 265) observed that all the mines near the Valentine mine were “working through vertical shafts.” One would have to imagine that somehow or other a fragment of skull was dropped into one of these vertical shafts and that it was transported some distance along a horizontal tunnel. It is hard