108 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
of the accumulation. J am anxious not to exaggerate this antiquity, 
especially in the face of the conclusion arrived at by Prof, Cyrus Thomas 
after long and careful investigations in the mound and midden districts 
east of the Rockies.’ I merely desire to state the facts of the case as they 
appear to those who have visited and examined this midden ; and think 
it possible that further investigation will make it necessary to extend 
rather than to curtail the age here indicated. 
In the accompanying Plates I., IL, III. are figured a fair sample of 
the relics thus far taken from this midden. There is nothing particularly 
striking either in the utensils or weapons recovered from it. They are mostly 
simple in make and design, and such as are found among other primitive 
people elsewhere. No pottery of any kind has been found in these mid- 
dens; indeed the ceramic art appears to have been wholly unknown to 
the aborigines of British Columbia, The mortars or bowls and pestles 
figured in the plates were not, as is often supposed, for corn-grinding 
purposes. They do not seem to have possessed such; no grain of any 
kind being known, as far as the writer has been able to discover, among 
the West Coast Indians north of the Columbia. Nor have the middens thus 
far supplied the smallest evidence of horticulture of any kind. Some of 
their tools and utensils, such as the pestle, or, more properly, stone-hammer, 
figured in plate IT., and the instrument resembling a belaying-pin, figured 
in plate ITI., are beautifully made and polished. These are wrought from 
a kind of granite of a hard- and close-grained quality. Others again are 
rough and rude in their make. It appears to have been customary to 
fashion their bowls after the likeness of some animal. The fish-head pat- 
tern appears to have been the most common. That shown in plate II. is 
of an unusual type. It has a bird’s head wita a quadruped’s body, the 
back being hollowed out in basin form. There was one taken from the old 
camping-grounds at Port Hammond which had a human face carved on 
one of its sides, the top of the head rising several inches above the edge 
or rim of the receptacle, of a type that in no way resembled or suggested 
the face of an Indian, and of a character wholly different from any the 
writer has seen elsewhere in British Columbia. Large numbers of barbed- 
bone spear-points are found. The stone adzes, axes, knives and chisels 
are generally of jade ; and one or two have been found with edges as sharp 
and keen as if they were made of steel. Bone needles, with the eye some- 
times in the centre, at other times in the end, are often found. <A favourite 
weapon among these midden people seems to have been one formed from 
the young horn of the elk. These horns in their first growth are round 
and pointed, and at this stage are selected by the warriors for their poqa- 
mangans or skull-crackers. The horn was apparently inserted in a stick 
or otherwise secured toa haft. They are aptly termed skull-crackers, for 

1 Vide Twelfth Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology, 1890-91. 
