116 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
slaves, on the death of their owner or chief, is not wholly unknown 
among the tribes of British Columbia ;’ but whether we see an instance 
of this practice among these old mound-builders, or whether the fires 
were lighted in the belief that they comforted the shades of the departed 
on their journey to the nether world* we may never know.’ The next 
order of the series differed again from the last in having a large quantity 
of coarse dark sand in their central parts. It would seem that in con- 
structing these particular graves, after piling up the boulders over the 
body the builders had covered them with a deep layer of quicksand — 
which in that district underlies the clay top-soil,—and over this again had 
strewn a layer of this coarse dark sand. Where they procured this latter 
sand from I am not able to say. There is none like it in the neighbour- 
hood at present. It is much coarser and darker in colour than that now 
found in the Fraser near by. But wherever they brought it from they were 
not sparing of its use. The rancher, on whose farm these tumuli are found, 
took out from one side of one of these between twenty and thirty sacks- 
ful for building purposes ; and when I opened it up later there was still 
a great quantity left in it. This mound is one of the most interesting of 
the series inasmuch as it accidently presents us with some independent, 
positive evidence of their antiquity. On one side of its crown the stump 
of a large cedar tree is seen projecting. the whole in the last stages of 
decay. To any one who knows anything of the enduring nature of the 
cedar of British Columbia the evidence which this cedar stump offers will 
be very convincing. A cedar tree will lie on the ground for a thousand 
years it is estimated by lumbermen and others, and yet its wood will be 
firm and good and fit to make up into doors and window-sashes. There 
is now, not two hundred yards from this mound, a living fir tree growing 
astraddle over a prostrate cedar log, the age of which, from its dimen- 
sions, cannot be much less than five centuries; and yet the wood of the 
cedar under it is as solid and firm as if it had been cut down yesterday. 
It is almost impossible to say how long the cedar of this region will en- 
dure; and if a claim of one thousand or twelve hundred years be made for the 
growth and complete decay of thistree,whose roots have crumbled and moul- 
dered away among the bones hidden beneath them for many a long year, 
most British Columbians will think that a very moderate claim indeed ; and 
it is very probable that a much longer period than that has elapsed since 
the mound was constructed. This mound is also interesting from the fact 


1 Vide The Rev. Father Morice on the Dénés. — Proceedings of the Canadian 
Institute, 1892-3. 
2 Longfellow’s Legend of Hiawatha. 
3 Prof. Cyrus Thomas in his paper on the mounds in the States in the report 
previously referred to speaks of a custom which prevailed very extensively among 
the mound-builders of the northern districts of removing the flesh of the dead bodies 
before final burial and burning it over the grave when this took place. It is possible 
these fires were lighted for a similar purpose. 
