hkdli.ka] WRITER'S TKIP ON YUKON 63 



a deep, dreamless sleep, regardless of light, cats, dogs, and everything 

 and sleep until 8.30. 



Wake u]i. can not believe my watch; but it goes, and so probably 

 is right. But no one anywhere yet stirring. 



Dress, wash a bit in the muddy river; head feels as if it had been 

 knocked by something heavy. Make my " roll " of bedding and 

 then work on notes, putting down faithfully what has transpired. 

 About 9.30. at last, the storekeeper comes to say they overslept and 

 that a cup of coffee will be ready before long. 



Friday. July 2. "Ghost Creek" was named so because of many 

 burials about the creek. The flat between the hills here is about 

 three-fourths of a mile long by the water front, with rising slopes, 

 and used to extend considerably farther out, but was " cut " or 

 washed away by the river. It has been used for a village site and 

 burial ground by the old Indians of the vicinity. As the banks 

 tumble away, bone arrow points, barbed and not, stone scrapers, and 

 other objects wash out. Graves are found in the ground as well as 

 above it. Eussian influence prevalent in the objects buried with the 

 bodies, but site extends to pre-Russian time. Same type graves as 

 at Bonasila, with slight local modifications. 



At Bonasila the burials above ground were in boxes of hewn wood, 

 joined somewhat as the logs in a log house, and without any base. 

 The body inside was covered with birch bark (three or four pieces), 

 then covered with the top planks, unfastened, and these in turn 

 covered with about a foot of earth and sod. At Ghost Creek the 

 same, but there is an undressed-stake base or platform on which the 

 sides of the " coffin " rest and with somewhat less earth and sod on 

 the top of the box. But graves differ here from underground and 

 birch bark alone (no trace of wood, if any was ever there; but 

 probably none used) to such aboveground as have iron nails and 

 sawed planks. Here, as at Bonasila, a few simple articles are 

 generally found buried at the head, and for these many of the graves 

 were already despoiled and the skeletal remains scattered or reburied. 



There appears to be no line of demarcation between the under- 

 ground and aboveground graves; possibly the latter were winter 

 burials, but this must be looked into further. 



The bodies here, except the latest, are buried flexed. Exception- 

 ally, both at Bonasila and here, the planks surrounding the grave 

 were painted with some mineral pigments which resist decomposition 

 better than the wood, and decorated in a Very good native way with 

 series of animals and men. caribou, bear. etc. Too faint to photo- 

 graph, and too bulky and decayed to take away; but decoration much 

 superior to ordinary Indian pictographs, and apparently connecting 

 with the type of art of the northwest coast. It is of interest that 



