ARTIFICIAL SHELL-DEPOSITS. 251 



rocky, and resisted the primitive implements of the natives. We find not only 

 the whole mass of the kjokkenmoddings intermingled with fragments of domestic 

 utensils, implements, and weapons, but also discover on the surface, as evidences 

 of permanent settlements, round depressions, generally still surrounded by a 

 circular embankment, Avhich mark the spots where the huts formerly stood. As 

 further evidences we may mention the working-places, where arrow-heads, 

 knives, etc., were made, as is shown by the presence of flakes of chalcedony, 

 jasper, flint, quartz, obsidian, and similar kinds of stone, as well as by the fre- 

 quent occurrence of broken and half-finished arrow-heads, and of rough-hewn 

 discs, about as large as a hand, in which shape those mineral-substances, which 

 do not occur on the islands, and are also mostl}- wanting along the coast, were 

 imported by way of barter. Finally, there are round stones, upon which, by 

 means of hammer-stones of harder substance, weapons and piercing-tools were 

 brought into a rudimentary shajie, to be finished afterward with a bone imple- 

 ment. 



" The traces of a village of the aborigines, especially when occurring in 

 grassy or solid ground, remind the observer of a group of enlarged mole-hills, 

 sunk in, but having a raised circumference or embankment. The digging into 

 one of these cavities reveals the subterranean part of a hut, which reached about 

 four feet below the surface. The floor is recognizable by a harder layer, in the 

 midst of which we find the fire-place and charcoal and ashes. The sides of the 

 hut sometimes can still be traced by the i^resence of si^lit boards running hori- 

 zontally, and by vertical posts. Though the under-ground part is quadrilateral 

 in most cases — about ten feet square — we find, nevertheless, that the pit as now 

 seen (rarely deeper than two or three feet, though often very steep) presents a 

 roundish cavity, owing to the circular form of the embankment and the action 

 of the elements in the process of filling a depression in loose ground. In Oregon 

 we found exceptionally several sites of huts inclosed by a quadrilateral projection 

 of earth ; such, however, doubtless date from the period of white immigration, 

 and form, as it were, the transition from Indian to trappers' huts, such as we 

 have noticed among the present Klamath Indians. As a proof thereof we find 

 in these cases the wood shaped with the axe, while in the old sites of huts it is 

 split='= and charred at the ends. The subterranean part of a hut is pretty much 

 the same along the whole coast, and is only exceptionally of a round form ; but 

 in the inner arrangement diffierences are observable. 



" In excavating, for instance, several sites of huts in the deserted chief set- 

 tlement of the Tu-tu-to-ni, on the right bank of Rogue River, about five miles 

 distant from its mouth (Oregon), we found the hearth-cavity placed on one of 

 the sides, and above it a draft-passage worked from below the embankment 



* "With wedges of elk-horn, which occur quite frequently among the debris. 



