VI. WOOD. 



Among the materials composing I^orth American aboriginal relics we assign 

 the last place to wood, considering that the occm'rence of wooden manufact- 

 ures of early date is extremely limited. A substance so much subject to decay 

 as wood cannot be expected to resist physical influences for a considerable 

 length of time, unless peculiar circumstances retard its destruction. Thus the 

 ancient Swiss lake-villages have yielded an abundance of wooden articles, 

 owing to the preservative qualities of the peat enclosing them, which had 

 accumulated along the lake-shores. The National Museum contains but a 

 small number of wooden objects which can be included in the archjeological 

 series, and these were almost exclusively obtained from graves of the Califor- 

 nian Santa Barbara Islands.^ The articles appai'ently consist of cedar wood, 

 which has become very light, almost as light as the Avood of the utensils ex- 

 tracted from the sites of lacustrine settlements in Switzerland. Among these 

 Californian relics are rotten wooden handles, some, indeed, still holding arroAV- 

 head-shaped knife-blades of flint, cemented into the wood by means of asphal- 

 tum. They resemble the Pai-Ute knives mentioned in the beginning of this 

 account (page 2). There is further to be noticed a wooden bailing-vessel 

 with a short handle, fitting in a rectangular hole cut into the vessel (Fig. 314, 

 Santa Cruz Island). A number of well-made toy canoes, the smallest of 

 which measures seven inches in length, bears witness to the maritime propen- 



OBJECTS OF WOOD. 



sities of those islanders (Fig. 315, Santa Cruz Island) . These specimens are 

 very interesting, as they undoubtedly represent the shape of the " dug-outs " 

 used by the Southern Californians. It is known, however, that they also em- 



'The writer is at tliis moment unable to state whether these relics were found associated with manufact- 

 ures of Caucasian origin or not. 



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