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of contagion, had burned a house in which the inhabitants liad perished, 

 with the dead in it. This is frequently done. They ahnost invariably 

 remove from any place where sickness has prevailed, genei'ally destroying 

 the house also. At Penn Cove, Mr. Whidbey, one of Vancouver's officers, 

 noticed " several sepulchers formed exactly like a sentry-box. Some of 

 them were open, and contained the skeletons of many young children tied 

 up in baskets. The smaller bones of adults were likewise noticed ; but not 

 one of the limb bones was found, which gave rise to an opinion that tliese, 

 by the living inhabitants of the neighborhood, were appropriated to useful 

 purposes, such as pointing their arrows, spears, or other weapons." It is 

 hardly necessaiy to say that such a. practice is altogether foreign to Indian 

 character. The bones of the adults had probably been removed and buried 

 elsewhere. The corpses of childi*en are variously disposed of, sometimes by 

 suspending them, at others by placing in the hollows of trees. A cemetery 

 devoted to infants is, however, an uniisual occurrence. 



In case of chiefs or men of note, much pomp was used in the accompani- 

 ments of tlie rite. The canoes were of great size and value, the war or state 

 canoes of the deceased. Frequently one was inverted over that holding the 

 body, and in one instance, near Shoalwater Bay, the corpse was deposited 

 in a small canoe, which again Avas placed in a larger one and covered with 

 a third. Among the Tsinuk and Tsihalis, the tamahno-us board of the 

 owner was placed near him. The Puget Sound Indians do not make these 

 tamahano-ils boards, but they .sometimes constructed effigies of their chiefs, 

 resembling the person as nearly as possible, dressed in liis usual costume, 

 and wearing the articles of which he was fond. One of these, representing 

 the Skagit chief Sneestum, stood very conspicuously upon a high bank on 

 the eastern side of Whidbey Island. The figures observed by Captain 

 Clarke at the Cascades were either of this description or else the carved 

 posts which had ornamented the interior of the houses of the deceased, and 

 were connected with the superstitions of the tamahno-us. The most valua- 

 ble articles of property were put into, or hung up around the grave, being 

 first carefully rendered unserviceable, and the living family were literally 

 stripped to do honor to the dead. No little self-denial must have been prac- 

 ticed in parting with articles so precious, but tliose chiefly interested fre- 



