168 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 192 



Even though our Yakutat informants denied that bone drinking 

 tubes were used by adolescent girls, this possibility cannot be dis- 

 missed, since such tubes were employed among many interior groups, 

 including the Copper River Atna, Southern Tutchone of the upper 

 Alsek, Tagish, and Inland THngit, with all of whom the Yakutat had 

 close affihations (McClellan, personal communication). Moreover, 

 among the Copper River Eyak the adolescent girl sucked water 

 through a swan bone, although the drinking tube may not have been 

 restricted to her use (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pp. 87, 157). 



Although the Northwest Coast Indians imposed water restrictions 

 on adolescent girls, only some of the central and southern tribes re- 

 quired use of the bone drinking tube (Drucker, 1950, Traits 1168, and 

 1172; Barnett, 1939, Trait 1554). Such tubes were used for different 

 occasions, for example, by the Haida, interior Tsimshian, Kwakiutl, 

 and Nootka for drinking water from covered buckets in canoes 

 (Drucker, 1950, Trait 466). Among the Eskimo in general the 

 drinking tube is an article of everyday use. 



Bird bone tubes have, of course, been found archeologically on the 

 Northwest Coast, in the interior, and in southwestern Alaska, and 

 presumably served many purposes which cannot now be determined. 

 A bird-bone tube was, for example, found at the historic site of 

 Daxatkanada near Angoon (de Laguna, 1960, pi. 9, y). 



AMULETS (?) 



Several pebbles or pieces of mineral, found in the fills or on the 

 floors of house pits, may have been collected by the natives out of 

 curiosity or to use as amulets. These were a pebble of crystalline or 

 opaline stone from the fill of House Pit 1 and another from House Pit 

 7; a scrap of mica and a large quartz crystal, 5.4 cm. long, from the 

 fill of House 8; a limestone nodule naturally ringed around with a 

 raised band and slightly modified by carving, from just above the 

 floor of House 8; and, lastly, a lump of iron oxide and a piece of 

 vesicular slag from the Storage House. The last was apparently a 

 lump ot mineral which had melted when the cache biu'ned. 



INCISED PEBBLES 



From Old Town III is a sandstone pebble (fig. 21, a, a'), 6.6 by 

 5.5 cm. in diameter, and 1.8 cm. thick, with a poorly executed, fine 

 incising on both surfaces. On one side (a) are two rectangular figures 

 above, and below, a transverse band made up of zigzag hnes between 

 pairs of bordering lines. Two of the triangular areas in the zigzag 

 are filled with horizontal hatching. On the other face {a') is a 

 transverse band of crosshatching between parallel Unes, and six 



