254 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGt [BuU. 179 



Wliile there is no description of dice, John Work, in 1825, near the 

 present city of Lewiston, Idaho, noted that : 



There are about our camp near 250 or 300 Indians. . . . they pass the greater 

 part of their time gambling, horseracing & footracing. [Work, 1825, p. 94.] 



In a burial vault on an island in the Columbia River, Lewis and 

 Clark saw an array of grave offerings : 



From the different boards and canoes which formed the vault, were suspended 

 on the inside fishing nets, baskets, wooden bowls, robes, skins, trenchers, and 

 trinkets of various kinds, . . . [Biddle, 1904, vol. 2, p. 204.] 



In passing, references to artifacts are rather common. The early 

 journals frequently speak of baskets, pipes, bows and arrows, canoes, 

 stone hatchets, and stone knives ; but no details are given. 



BURIAL 



Lewis and Clark made several references to Indian burials. In the 

 spring of 1805, they noted : 



The dead are wrapped up in robes of skins, and deposited in graves, which are 

 covered over with earth and marked or secured with little pickets or pieces of 

 wood stuck promiscuously around it. [Biddle, 1904, vol. 2, p. 178.] 



Thirty years later, in the same vicinity, Parker wrote : 



The grave was two feet deep. A mat was laid in the grave, and the body was 

 wrapped in a blanket. A horn cup and a spoon was placed in it, and a mat of 

 rushes above and then it was filled in. [Parker, 1845, p. 2S5.] 



Another kind of disposal was that of the burial shed or vault. On 

 Blalock Island, some 30 or 40 miles west of the McNary Reservoir, 

 Lewis and Clark visited one of the vaults : 



This place in which the dead are deposited is a building about sixty feet long 

 and twelve feet wide, . . . so as to form a shed. We observed a number of bodies 

 wrapped carefully in leather robes, and arranged in rows on boards . . . and 

 in the center of the building was a large pile of them heaped promiscuously on 

 each other. [Biddle, 1904, vol. 2, p. 203.] 



These vaults were seen in later years, and had been so thoroughly 

 robbed by collectors that no trace of the burials remains. 



ECONOMY 



Various journals mention the gathering of roots and berries by In- 

 dians all over the Plateau. Camas {Camassia sp.) and kouse 

 {LomoMum caus) were staples. At one time or another, all of the 

 early travelers subsisted on these tuberous rooted plants which grew 

 in marshy lowlands. There are no details available on how these 

 roots were gathered in the early historical period. Later on, it was 

 noted that digging sticks and baskets were employed. 



