CAVE RELICS OF THE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS. 7 



with the closely-fitting door of skins, and the heat of numerous bodies in a very 

 small space, sufficed to keep them warm. We learn that the bodies, while being 

 prepared for encasement, as above described, were sometimes kept in the com 

 partment which they had occupied during life until ready for deposition else 

 where. We also know from early accounts, proved true by our own excavations, 

 that the bodies of the dead, in the compressed position before mentioned, were 

 sometimes placed in the compartment, laid on their sides, and covered with earth 

 with which the whole compartment was filled and then walled up. It is stated 

 that others in the same yourt continued to occupy their several compartments 

 after this, as usual, a proceeding very different from that of the majority of the 

 Innuit, who usually abandon at once a house in which a death has occurred. 



This is only one of several facts which show that the Aleuts did not feel that 

 repugnance to, or fear of, the dead which is generally characteristic of tribes of 

 that stock. In our excavations at the head of Uhlakhta Spit, Amaknak Id, 

 Unalashka, we found in the remains of an old yourt several skeletons so 

 interred. 



It is an interesting and pregnant fact that, as we examine the prehistoric 

 deposits in the order of their age, among the Aleutian Islands we invariably find 

 that the older they are, the more the relics and evidences of customs approxi 

 mate to the typical continental Eskimo type ; and also that in the earliest historic 

 times, customs were still in vogue among the Kaniag rnuts that had already 

 passed away among the Aleuts, (though formerly practiced, as evinced by the 

 remains in early deposits in caves and shell heaps,) and that those customs, or 

 some of them, still obtain among the northern and western Innuit, though now 

 extinct among the Kaniag muts. The gradual differentiation, from the typical 

 Eskimo to the Aleutian type, is thus clearly set forth in an unmistakable 

 manner. 



Another modification of the cave burial, appertaining more particularly to the 

 Kaniag muts, but also practiced by the Eastern Aleuts adjacent to the Kaniag 1 - 

 mut tribes, will be more properly considered with the usages of the latter people 

 further on. 



From the present priest of Unalashka, a tolerably well educated and very 

 intelligent man, himself a native Aleiit, many details in regard to localities and 

 customs were obtained in 1871. 



He informed us that in the Island of Adakh, caves and rock-shelters were in 

 use by the early natives for burial purposes, and that the reports of hunters con 

 firmed the existence at the present day of some of these remains, with masks 

 and other articles in their proximity. 



During my visit to Adakh in 1873, I was unable, for want of a guide, to con 

 firm this ; though I have no doubt of its truth. We found evidences, however, 

 of an earlier and different form of burial. 



