100 The Ottawa Naturali-st. [August 



which filled the crania being entirely colored by it. A few im- 

 plements and weapons of the very rudest description were dis- 

 covered, to wit; 1st, a piece of gneiss about two feet long, 

 tapering, and evidently intended as a sort of war-club; it is in 

 size and shape not unlike a policeman's staff. 2nd, a stone 

 gouge, very rudely constructed of fossiliferous limestone; it is 

 about ten inches long, and contains a fossil leptina on one of its 

 edges ; it is used, I lately learned from an Indian chief, for skinning 

 the beaver. 3rd. a stone hatchet of the same material. 4th, 

 a sandstone boulder weighing about four pounds; it was found 

 lying on the sternum of a chief of gigantic stature, who was 

 buried apart from the others, and who had been walled round 

 with great care. The boulder in question is completely circular 

 and much in the shape of a large-ship biscuit before it is stamped 

 or placed in the oven, its use was, after being sewed in a skin 

 bag, to serve as a corselet and protect the wearer against the 

 arrows of an adversar}' . In every instance the teeth were perfect 

 and not one unsound one was to be detected, at the same time 

 they were all well worn down by trituration, it being a well 

 known fact that in Council the Indians are in the habit of using 

 their lower jaw like a ruminating animal, which fully accounts 

 for the pecularity. There were no arrowheads or other weapons 

 discovered." 



It will be seen, from the foregoing, that the worthy doctor 

 had unearthed a small Huron ossuary, similar in its general 

 features to the much larger one at Ossossan^, and if the doctor's 

 description is compared with reports on communal graves, in 

 western Ontario, bv such eminent archaeologists as Dr. David 

 Boyle, curator of the Provincial Musetim at Toronto, A. F. Hunter, 

 George E. Laidlaw and others, one must be convinced that the 

 Wellington Street ossuary was of Huron origin. When the 

 doctor raises the question as to whether the bodies had not all 

 been "thrown indiscriminatel}' into one pit at the same time" 

 he suggests a mode of sepulture that was actually observed by 

 Brebeuf at the Huron Feast of the Dead at Ossossane. 



Another small ossuary was uncovered some years ago, on 

 Aylmer Island, when the foundation for the new lighthouse was 

 being excavated. The writer was not present at the exhumation 

 of its contents, but the light-keeper, Mr. Frank Boucher, informed 

 him that the skeletons were all piled together, indiscriminately. 

 It is difficult to estimate the number of bodies interred in this 

 grave, but it yielded about a wagon load of bones. A number 

 of single graves have also been found at this spot, and these, 

 together with the ossuary would seem to prove that Algonkin 

 and Huron occupied this part of the Ottawa Valley.,|drrf|i^'|K^ 

 this island in common as a place of sepulture. ,^rSj^ ^ _ -C *^ vNi 



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