New Mexico L.O.W.F.I

Aug. 9, 1899: “With the trophies of his summer’s explorations spread out about him, Dr. Cole has turned his parlor into an anthropological museum. One table is covered with water jugs and incense pipes, the sofa hidden under stone axes, mortars, pestles, weaving shuttles and pottery; another table is decked with a row of grinning skulls and huge crossbones; beneath it comfortably repose all the parts of a skeleton, from the toe bones to the shoulder blades, waiting to be wired together, and strewn about are bows and arrows, baskets, jugs of twisted twigs made water-tight by pitch; modern Indian pottery, photographs by the score, and a hundred-pound stump of petrified wood. The skulls are a particularly valued possession.”

The Rev. George L. Cole of Los Angeles tells amazing stories of a weird, ancient culture that flourished in the cliffs of New Mexico. A race of people 7 feet tall (this grew to 8 feet in later stories) with curious teeth who worshiped the sun and considered the turkey to be a sacred animal. They also played flutes made of pelican bones, Cole said. (Pelicans in New Mexico, eh? I wonder how that happened)

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