Fy!) ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1926 
of which had been placed in the group burials as ceremonial offer- 
ings accompanying the cremation form of burial. No objects were 
found in the more deeply-placed graves where no cremation practices 
had been observed. 
The restoration of the national monument of Old Kasaan, south- 
east Alaska, has long been the ambition of the chief of the bureau, 
but conditions at this unique old Haida village were found to be very 
discouraging. Rainfall reaches a total of 235 days annually at the 
town of Ketchikan on Revillagigedo Island near by, and the process 
of rotting and disintegration is practically continuous throughout the 
year. Many of the fine old carvings on the totem poles and memorial 
columns still standing are either partially or entirely obliterated, 
and every house in the village has either fallen into decay or was 
burned in the recent fire which destroyed the major portion of the 
village. ‘The house (“big doings”) and the totem pole erected by 
the former Haida chief Skay-al were among the objects consumed in 
this fire. 
Several of the house sites at Old Kasaan, Tongass, Village Island, 
and Cape Fox village were excavated in an attempt to determine the 
relative age of the settlements of extreme southeastern Alaska. But 
few objects were obtained which might indicate a culture older than 
the Hudson Bay Co. post at Fort Simpson, British Columbia, or the 
Russian settlement at Sitka, Alaska, on the north. The few poles 
worthy of restoration at Old Kasaan were scraped and rotted wood 
was removed. The tall alder brush was cut from the immediate 
vicinity of the poles. Information relative to house, totem, and place 
names was obtained from a few survivors of the old village still 
living either at Wrangell, Ketchikan, or at the recently established 
Indian village of New Kasaan, about 40 miles from the old 
abandoned village. 
Upon returning to the United States, the task of completing the 
map of archeological sites on the upper Columbia River to the 
Canadian border was completed. Excavation was undertaken at 
eight different stations along the river between Wenatchee, Wash., 
and the mouth of the Okanagan River. 
Mr. Henry B. Collins, jr., assistant curator of ethnology of the 
National Museum, was detailed by the bureau to carry on archeo- 
logical work in southern Louisiana and Mississippi, a region in 
which scarcely any work of this nature had previously been done. 
A reconnaissance of the field was begun in April, first in southern 
Mississippi, where a number of mounds were examined, and then 
along the low-lying Gulf coast of Louisiana. Many earth mounds 
and shell heaps were found throughout this latter region, indicating 
the existence there in prehistoric times of an advanced culture of 
fairly uniform type. Particular attention was given to the 21 
