Lizard People under Los Angeles?

Here's a legend I had heard of but didn't know much about until now:

City Laid Out Like LizardSo firmly does [a "geophysical mining engineer" named G. Warren Shufelt] believe that a maze of catacombs and priceless golden tablets are to be found beneath downtown Los Angeles that the engineer and his aides have already driven a shaft 250 feet into the ground, the mouth of the shaft behind on the the old Banning property on North Hill Street overlooking Sunset Boulevard, Spring Street and North Broadway.

And so convinced is the engineer of the infallibility of a radio X-ray perfected by him for detecting the presence of minerals and tunnels below the surface of the ground, an apparatus with which he says he has traced a pattern of catacombs and vaults forming the lost city, that he plans to continue sending his shaft downward until he has reached a depth of 1000 feet before discontinuing operations.Lizard People's Catacomb City Hunted

Engineer Sinks Shaft Under Fort Moore Hill to Find Maze of Tunnels and Priceless Treasures of Legendary Inhabitants"I knew I was over a pattern of tunnels," the engineer explained yesterday, "and I had mapped out the course of the tunnels, the position of large rooms scattered along the tunnel route, as well as the position of deposits of gold, but I couldn't understand the meaning of it."

Then Shufelt was taken to Little Chief Greenleaf of the medicine lodge of the Hopi Indians in Arizona, whose English name is L. Macklin. The Indian provided the engineer with a legend which, according to both men, dovetails exactly with what Shufelt says he has found.Did Strange People Liver Under Site of Los Angeles 5000 Years Ago?

Comment:  I think I read about the Lizard legend in an LA Times article dated 7/22/96 and referenced here:

Lizard People Not Yet Found Underneath Los Angeles

I think Peter Matthiessen mentioned it in his 1984 book Indian Country also. And some websites noted a Hopi legend about Star Warriors (which believers equated with UFOs, aliens, and lizard people).

Hard to imagine that this story went unreported from 1934 to the 1980s and 1990s. Whatever happened to Shufelt and his claims? Did the authorities lock him up in an asylum, or what?

FYI, I don't think the traditional Hopi had structures called "lodges," much less "medicine lodges." "Greenleaf" isn't remotely similar to a genuine Hopi name. I've never heard the Hopi use the title "Little Chief." In fact, the tribe didn't have a single chief. People lived in a dozen independent villages with a religious figure akin to a priest leading each one.

As for as I know, no independent source exists to verify "Little Chief Greenleaf" and his claims. Shufelt seems to be the only source, which suggests he invented or imagined the Lizard People legend.