138 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



At Page, Washington, on the Snake River about 20 miles from 

 Pasco, were noted definite departures from the general type of 

 archeological remains characteristic of the sites along the Columbia 

 River. No copper ornaments or other objects of metal were found ; 

 nor were any objects uncovered, other than dentalium shell, that 

 might indicate intercourse with British Columbia or with the tribes 

 of the lower Columbia. Bone knives and scrapers here displaced 

 those of chipped stone ; weaving implements and perforators were of 

 antler or bone instead of chipped or rubbed stone as on the Columbia. 

 Pairs of sandstone arrowshaft rasps ; fine-grained, grooved stone 

 polishers ; basketry fragments, showing styles of false embroidery, 

 lattice weave, and simple twining ; ovoid stone war clubs ; and burials 

 either with red paint or of the usual cremation group type — all these 

 characteristics indicate a sub-culture area transitional between the 

 Shoshoni on the east and south and the Shahaptian tribes of the 

 middle Columbia Basin. 



A unique object exhumed from the cremation burial at Page is a 

 projectile weapon resembling a lance or atlatl head. The blade point 

 is of chii)ped jasper ; the shaft is a stem of charred wood eight 

 and one-half inches long which tapers from a diameter of three- 

 fourths inch at the nocked base to less than one-half inch at the broken 

 nock end. A groove one-eighth of an inch deep and of equal width 

 extends the length of the shaft. The find of an atlatl among the 

 burial ofiferings at Page marks the first known occurrence of this 

 projectile weapon within the area of the upper plateau. The atlatl 

 dart is identical with that described and figured by Kidder and 

 Guernsey ^ from the San Juan district in northeastern Arizona. 



Native rock sculpture is of great interest although its significance 

 is often obscure. It is usually possible to correlate rock inscriptions 

 or pictographs with types of culture objects exhumed in cemeteries 

 or village sites within the area near by. In such cases the finding 

 of petroglyphs or pictographs becomes a key as to what objects of an 

 archeological nature one may expect to find in the vicinity. Realis- 

 tic animal figures carved on the basalt clifl^s at Spearfish, Washing- 

 ton, and at The Dalles, Oregon, are similar to the animal figurines 

 carved in wood and horn by the Indian tribes of the lower Columbia 

 and of Puget Sound. Rock inscriptions at Roosevelt, Washington, ex- 

 cept for one maze-like inscription covering several square feet of 

 rock surface, are nondescript and have apparently little value as an 

 archeological key; while the paintings on the clififs of the John Day 



Archeological Explorations in Northeastern Arizona," Bull. 65, Bur. Amer. 

 Ethnol., p. 182; also plate 84 (18). 



