The >\ half House of the Cliilkat in 18S5, uninhabitable now l)ul with interior fittings intact and still used on 

 festival occasions. In the old days these communal houses, made of heavy timbers split from the giant spruces, 

 were fortresses of defense, with narrow doorways for entrance and the smoke hole in the roof for only light and 

 ventilation. The poorest families of the chief's following were allotted the sleeping spaces nearest the door, the 

 family of the chief himself occupying the rear of the house. The advent of the white man with his mining 

 camps and canneries has done away with the communal life, and the old houses have for the most part 

 disappeared or been modernized 



In 1882, the Chilkal were still a comparatively primitive people, practising ancestor worship, cremating the 

 dead, dominated by superstitions and by the shamans or medicine men, who mediated between them and the 

 spirits. The houses of the dead stood in the rear of the rows of dwelling houses and beside them were the crema- 

 tion grounds, strewn with_charred logs and partly burnt funeral pyres. The shamans' dead houses were apart 

 from the others, hidden in the cottonwood groves and guarded by elaborately carved spirit figures and canoes 



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