68 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 76 



a foot of the bottom. "About " is used advisedly, because at this 

 point neither the top nor the bottom of undisturbed material could 

 be determined with certainty. The lower 2 feet of this cavity was 

 uniformly 7 inches across; above this it slighth^ expanded, funnel- 

 like, to a diameter of 8 inches at the top. The sides of this, as of 

 all of them, large or small, were as smooth and hard as if made with 

 a posthole digger or a boring tool. Strata of ashes, not changing 

 their level or ajDpearance in the least, were continuous around the 

 margin. But the holes were not always straight ; some of them 

 changed direction as if due to a crooked post or stick. Nearly all 

 of them were rounded, even hemispherical at top or bottom, or both, 

 like the bottom of a pot. They were not molds, for nothing could 

 have been taken out of them without changing or destroying its form. 

 If they had contained any solid substance like a post it must have 

 stood unchanged until the layers of ashes surrounded and covered 

 it, and then must have so completely disappeared as to leave no trace 

 of its existence. They were not formed by driving any object down, 

 because in that case the bottom would not have been so regularly 

 rounded and the ashes around the sides would have been more or 

 less displaced. They were not due to burrowing animals. In fact, if 

 there be imagined a nearly cylindrical mass of ice, straight or slightly 

 crooked, with rounded ends, placed upright and retaining its position 

 unmelted until completely buried, the appearance of these cavities 

 will best be understood. Some of them were filled to the top with 

 fine loose ashes which occasionally contained fragments of bone, shell, 

 and pottery; sometimes they were nearly empty, with traces of de- 

 cayed wood at the bottom, mingled with a little ashes and charcoal. 

 In one was found a long, perfect bone perforator, shown at a in plate 

 30 ; in another near the corner of the west wall was found the pipe 

 shown in figure 14. About 45 feet from the front near the east wall 

 were four of them of different diameters and depths but all in a 

 straight line within a space 2 feet long; these were in front of a 

 crevice under an overhanging ledge where a man could not stand 

 upright. Wigwams may have been erected in the cave, or at least 

 skins stretched to prevent drafts or to confine the heat of fires in 

 winter and perhaps to insure some degree of privacy if this were 

 desired ; but there are no present indications of such shelters unless 

 these holes were to secure them ; otherwise their purpose or object 

 is still unsolved. They would probably not contain posts for hang- 

 ing things on when the walls afforded so many small crevices and 

 holes into which poles better adapted for such purposes could be 

 thrust. 



Other holes or depressions, shallow, saucer-shaped, or dish-shaped, 

 some dug in the underlying clay, others at any level almost to the 

 top of the ashes, were fire pits or cooking places, containing charcoal 



