56 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 192 



which, surprisingly enough, showed no evidence of having been sub- 

 jected to fire. While such stones are said to have been put on roofs 

 to hold down planks or sheets of bark, this stone does not seem to 

 have fallen through the roof or the cover of the box. Its significance 

 is unknown. The upper 6 or so inches of fill in the box consisted 

 of a mass of carbonized wood fragments, burned sand, bark, and 

 some pieces of shell. 



Near the center of the southwest wall, in front of the post, was 

 set a vertical board (B). It was 20 inches long, 20 inches wide, and 

 3 inches thick, and extended 18 inches below the floor. The 2 inches 

 that projected above the floor was battered as if the plank had served 

 as an anvil; the wood fibers were considerabl}^ "broomed." The 

 lower end was not sharpened, so it must have been inserted into a 

 small pit, not driven into the ground. Although this plank evidently 

 provided a working surface for some task involving pounding, the 

 nature of this cannot be determined. 



House 8 would appear to have served primarily as a sweat-bath 

 house, and this fimction was also suggested by the natives with 

 whom the field data were discussed. Such bathhouses were sometimes 

 used also as sleeping places. One might assume from the battered 

 board (B) and from the artifacts found on and below the floor planks 

 that the building had been used as a workshop. These objects 

 include the hammerstones, whetstone, grinding slab, paint, lamps, 

 scraps of iron, small woodworking tools, adzes, and fragments of 

 worked wood and bone. The broken war club head and splitting 

 adz, and to a lesser degree the harpoon head and barbed arrowheads, 

 suggest that the workers were men, not women. However, the box 

 in the center of the floor which contained so much moss resembles 

 very closely that described by our informants as made in the women's 

 birth house. This birth house was a permanent structure, used by 

 all the women of a large lineage house at childbirth and during 

 menstruation. It was described as containing facilities for sweat 

 bathing. The birth pit was said to have been as deep as the distance 

 from the fingertips to the elbow, and was filled with soft moss almost 

 to the top to receive the baby. The woman in labor squatted over 

 the pit, grasping a vertical pole in front of her. No remains of such 

 a pole, it should be noted, could be identified in House 8. Further- 

 more, this house is considerably larger than the birth hut, which was 

 supposed to be just big enough to accommodate the parturient, 

 the midwife, and two assistants. 



It is possible that House 8 was originally a bathhouse and workshop, 

 later converted by the women into a birth house. It could hardl}^ 

 have been entered by men after contamination by women in childbed. 

 Why the box should have contained the boulder we cannot explain. 



