44 MUMMIES— NORTHWEST COAST. 



the mummies were removed, and all the little trinkets and ornaments scat- 

 tered around were also taken away. 



"In all there are eleven packages of bodies. Only two or three have 

 as yet been opened. The body of the chief is inclosed in a large basket- 

 like structure, about four feet in height. Outside the wrappings are finely- 

 wrought sea-grass matting, exquisitely close in texture, and skins. At 

 the bottom is a broad hoop or basket of thinly-cut wood, and adjoining the 

 center portions are pieces of body armor composed of reeds bound together. 

 The body is covered with the fine skin of the sea-otter, always a mark of 

 distinction in the interments of the Aleuts, and round the whole package 

 are stretched the meshes of a fish-net, made of the sinews of the sea lion; 

 also those of a bird-net. There are evidently some bulky articles inclosed 

 with the chief's body, and the whole package differs very much from the 

 others, which more resemble, in their brown-grass matting, consignments of 

 crude sugar from the Sandwich Islands than the remains of human beings. 

 The bodies of a pappoose and of a very little child, which probably died 

 at birth or soon after it, have sea-otter skins around them. One of the feet 

 of the latter projects, with a toe-nail visible. The remaining mummies are 

 of adults. 



"One of the packages has been opened, and it reveals a man's body in 

 tolerable preservation, but with a large portion of the face decomposed. 

 This and the other bodies were doubled up at death by severing some of 

 the muscles at the hip and knee joints' and bending the limbs downward 

 horizontally upon the trunk. Perhaps the most peculiar package, next to 

 that of the chief, is one which incloses in a single matting, with sea-lion 

 skins, the bodies of a man and woman. The collection also embraces a 

 couple of skulls, male and female, which have still the hair attached to the 

 scalp. The hair has changed its color to a brownish red. The relics 

 obtained with the bodies include a few wooden vessels scooped out smoothly; 

 a piece of dark, greenish, flat stone, harder than the emerald, which the 

 Indians use to tan skins ; a scalp-lock of jet-black hair; a small rude figure, 

 which may have been a very ugly doll or an idol ; two or three tiny carv- 

 ings in ivory of the sea-lion, very neatly executed, a comb, a necklet 



