494 REPORT — 1900. 



dwelling. In the traditional history of the Sk'qo'mic we learn of some 

 terrible sickness which killed off whole villages and caused the abandon- 

 ment of many o'kwumuqs. The presence of these human remains in the 

 midden in the park may be due to this or some similar cause. No 

 relics, as far as I could learn from the man who had charge of the road 

 makin»5 were found with the bodies ; which fact would seem to indicate 

 that they had not been buried in the usual way. I have never discovered 

 or heard of any mounds or tumuli within the territories of the 

 Sk-qo'mic such as are found on the banks of the Lower Fraser and 

 elsewhere. It is extremely doubtful if any such exist among them. Of 

 the old weapons or utensils the stone pestle-hammer is the only one now 

 found among them. I have frequently seen the older men using this 

 tool ; indeed they prefer it to our hammers. I once showed some of the 

 youn^^er men some stone arrow and spear points. They did not know 

 what they were or what they had been used for. They had a very 

 ingenious way of keeping their wedges from splitting under the repeated 

 blows of the hammer when splitting cedar boards, etc. Tliey bound the 

 head of the wedge in a most skilful manner with a ring of twisted 

 fibres or split cedai-root which answered the same purpose and almost 

 as effectively as the iron ring on our mallets and chisels. Besides 

 wooden wedges they also used horn ones. Several of their modern tools 

 are fashioned after the pattern of the ancient ones, notably the steel 

 adze they employ in canoe-making and the women's salmon knife. 

 The latter is of the half-moon shape, and generally foi^med from a piece 

 of a saw, and corresponds in everything but material to the prehistoric 

 slate knives of the middens. 



There is a point in canoe-making which the Sk'qo'mic share in common 

 with the other coast tribes of this region to which I cannot recall that 

 any pi-evious writer has drawn attention, but which very aptly illustrates 

 the skill and judgment displayed by our British Columbia Indians in 

 their adaptation of means to ends, and upon which a few remarks 

 will not be out of place here. In shaping the canoe from the solid log 

 the outlines marked out by the builder are very different from those 

 the canoe takes when finished. When looked at from the side just before 

 the steaming process preparatory to spreading the beam has been 

 effected it is seen to have distinctly convex gunwales which rise 

 <^radually in the centre six or eight inches above the line of the bow and 

 stern, while the bottom of the canoe is correspondingly concave. The 

 object of this is to insure the gunwales having the proper sweep and 

 curve from bow to stern after the spreading process has taken place, 

 and to prevent the bottom bellying out in the centre, fi-ora the same 

 cause. The greater the beam is spi-ead the higher must the gunwales 

 rise at the centre, and the greater must be the concavity of the 

 bottom. In large canoes where the beam is six or seven feet, and 

 the lof originally perhaps less than five feet through, to allow of 

 this spread of two feet or so, a very considerable convexity in the 

 wunwales and a proportionate concavity in the bottom of the vessel are 

 necessary. This spreading of the canoe is in itself a very nice task, 

 calling for much judgment and care. It is effected by partially filling 

 it with water and then dropping in heated stones till the water is at 

 boiling heat. On the outside of the canoe, and in close proximity to its 

 sides, fires are also kept up, care being exercised that the sides of the 

 canoe are not burnt in the process. The heat of the fires and ths 



