YARROW. ] BURIAL CANOES AND HOUSES. 177 
George Gibbs* gives a most interesting account of the burial cere- 
monies of the Indians of Oregon and Washington Territory, which is 
here reproduced in its entirety, although it contains examples of other 
modes of burial besides that in canoes; but to separate the narrative 
would destroy the thread of the story: 
The common mode of disposing of the dead among the fishing tribes was in canoes. 
These were generally drawn into the woods at some prominent point a short distance 
from the village, and sometimes placed between the forks of trees or raised from the 
ground on posts. Upon the Columbia River the Tsinuk had in particular two very noted 
cemeteries, a high isolated bluff about three miles below the mouth of the Cowlitz, 
called Mount Coffin, and one some distance above, called Coffin Rock. The former 
would appear not to have been very ancient. Mr. Broughton, one of Vancouver's 
lieutenants, who explored the river, makes mention only of several canoes at this 
place; and Lewis and Clarke, who noticed the mount, do not speak of them at all, 
but at the time of Captain Wiikes’s expedition it is conjectured that there were at 
least 3,000. A fire caused by the carelessness of one of his party destroyed the 
whole, to the great indignation of the Indians. 
Captain Belcher, of the British ship Sulphur, who visited the river in 1839, re- 
marks: ‘“ In the year 1836 [1826] the small-pox made great ravages, and it was fol- 
lowed a few years since by the ague. Consequently Corpse Island and Coftin Mount, 
as well as the adjacent shores, were studded not only with canoes, but at the period 
of our visit the skulls and skeletons were strewed about in all directions.” This 
method generally prevailed on the neighboring coasts, as at Shoal Water Bay, &c. 
Farther up the Columbia, as at the Cascades, a different form was adopted, which is 
thus described by Captain Clarke : 
“About half a mile below this house, in a very thick part of the woods, is an ancient 
Indian burial-place ; it consists of eight vaults, made of pine cedar boards, closely 
connected, about 8 feet square and 6 in height, the top securely covered with wide 
boards, sloping a little, so as to convey off the rain. The direction of all these is east 
and west, the door being on the eastern side, and partially stopped with wide boards, 
decorated with rude pictures of men and other animals. On entering we found in 
some of them four dead bodies, carefully wrapped in skins, tied with cords of grass 
and bark, lying on a mat in a direction east and west; the other vaults contained 
only bones, which in some of them were piled to a height of 4 feet; on the tops of the 
vaults and on poles attached to them hung brass kettles and frying-pans with holes 
in their bottoms, baskets, bowls, sea-shells, skins, pieces of cloth, hair bags of trinkets, 
and small bones, the offerings of friendship or affection, which have been saved by a 
pious veneration from the ferocity of war or the more dangerous temptation of indi- 
vidual gain. The whole of the walls as well as the door were decorated with strange 
figures cut and painted on them, and besides these were several wooden images of 
men, some of them so old and decayed as to have almost lost their shape, which were 
all placed against the sides of the vault. These images, as well as those in the houses 
we have lately seen, do not appear to be at all the objects of adoration in this place; 
they were most probably intended as resemblances of those whose decease they indi- 
cate, and when we observe them in houses they occupy the most conspicuous part, 
but are treated more like ornaments than objects of worship. Near the yaults which 
are still standing are the remains of others on the ground, completely rotted and coy- 
ered with moss; and as they are formed of the most durable pine and cedar timber, 
there is every appearance that for a very long series of years this retired spot has been 
the depository for the Indians near this place.” 
* Cont. N. A. Ethnol., 1877,i., p. 200. 
