ART. 11 PREHISTORIC PIT HOUSE VILLAGE SITE KRIEGER 9 



the flood waters caused by the melting of the snow in the Cascade? 

 and in the Rocky Mountains. These deposits often cover charred 

 cooking stones, heaps of charcoal, kitchen refuse, and occasionally 

 artifacts shaped from stone, horn, and bone, together with other defi- 

 nite evidence of the location of a camp or burial ground. Temporary 

 fishing camps, where many discarded objects of domestic use and 

 weapons and implements of stone and bone were abandoned and cov- 

 ered with several thick deposits of sediment, were again in later years 

 exposed when the stream formed a new bed or when flood waters 

 eroded the banks. At Pateros, in Okanogan County at the confluence 

 of the Methow River with the Columbia, seven strata showing human 

 occupancy with intervening layers of sedimentary deposits are exposed 

 on the flanks of a small island formed on the Methow side of the chan- 

 nel. At Vantage Ferry, Kittitas County, on the west bank of the 

 Columbia River there are three such strata, and so on almost con- 

 tinuously along either bank of the river wherever local conditions as 

 to geologic formation, elevation of sedimentary river bench land above 

 danger from high water, steepness of banks, and bench location, such 

 as width, accessibility, contour, and other factors warranted. 



The cemetery at Wahluke contained both primary and secondary 

 burials, but practically no other type than that of ceremonial crema- 

 tion. Burials were placed in graves forming an irregular row along 

 the river bench south of and upstream from the pit-house ruins which 

 at one time made up a village of semisubterranean habitation struc- 

 tures. There is but one site known in the middle Columbia River 

 Valley where a pit-house village had been erected above a habitation 

 site and cemetery of an older date. This site has become known as 

 Simmons' graveyard and is located about 5 miles downstream from 

 Trinidad, and about 50 miles upstream from Wahluke, and several 

 miles north of Vantage Ferry, where are located the ruins of another 

 pit-house village and cemetery of a later date. 



Cremation burials at Wahluke are usually three or more feet below 

 the surface when undisturbed, A layer of flat stones was invariably 

 placed in an oblong or circular ring as a protective cover against 

 marauding animals and to prevent erosion of loose sand which forms 

 the bench at this place. A thin covering of soil consisting of wind- 

 blown ash, dust, and calcareous clay over compactly embedded sand 

 makes up the formation of the village site proper. 



The body to be cremated was placed on a piece of matting of Indian 

 hemp, oriented, sometimes with the head facing upstream, sometimes 

 toward the east, or seemingly haphazard, but always with face down- 

 ward or on the side. Accompanying the burial were ceremonial offer- 

 ings of personal use and ornamentation — the personal property of the 

 deceased. The pyre was built of driftwood logs. The fire must not 

 have been carefully attended, as many of the skeletons are merely 

 78960—28 2 



