ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT 13 



were found to be very discouraging. Rainfall reaches a 

 total of 235 days annually at the town of Ketchikan on Revil- 

 lagigedo Island near by, and the process of rotting and dis- 

 integration is practically continuous throughout the year. 

 Many of the fine old carvings on the totem poles and memo- 

 rial columns still standing are either partially or entirely 

 obliterated, while every house in the village has either fallen 

 into decay or was burned in the recent fire which destroyed 

 the major portion of the village. The house ("big doings") 

 and the totem pole erected by the former Haida chief Skay-al 

 are among the objects consumed in this fire. 



Several of the house sites at Old Kasaan, Tongass, Village 

 Island, and Cape Fox village were excavated in an attempt 

 to determine the relative age of the settlements of extreme 

 southeastern Alaska. But few objects were obtained which 

 might indicate a culture older than the Hudson Bay Co. 

 post at Fort Simpson, British Columbia, or the Russian 

 settlement at Sitka, Alaska, on the north. The few poles 

 worthy of restoration at Old Kasaan were scraped and rotted 

 wood was removed. The tall alder brush was cut from the 

 immediate vicinity of the poles. Information relative to 

 house, totem, and place names was obtained from a few 

 survivors of the old village still living either at Wrangell, 

 Ketchikan, or the recently established Indian village of 

 New Kasaan, about 40 miles from the old abandoned village. 



Upon returning to the United States, the task of complet- 

 ing the map of archeological sites on the upper Columbia 

 River to the Canadian border was completed. Excavation 

 was undertaken at eight different stations along the river 

 between Wenatchee, Wash., and the mouth of the Okanagan 

 River. 



Mr. Henry B. Collins, jr., assistant curator of ethnology 

 of the National Museum, was detailed by the bureau to carry 

 on archeological work in southern Louisiana and Mississippi, 

 a region in which scarcely any work of this nature had pre- 

 viously been done. A reconnaissance of the field was begun 

 in April, first in southern Mississippi, where a number of 

 mounds were examined, and then along the low-lying Gulf 



