82 CANOE BURIAL. 



there being about fifteen persons present. Three or four of them then 

 made short speeches, and we came home. 



" The reason why she was buried thus is said to be because she is a 

 prominent woman in the tribe. In about nine months it is expected that 

 there will be a 'pot-latch? or distribution of money near this place, and as 

 each tribe shall come they will send a delegation of two or three men, who 

 will carry a present and leave it at the grave ; soon after that shall be 

 done she will be buried in the ground. Shortly after her death both her 

 father and mother cut off their hair as a sign of their grief." 



George Gibbs* gives a most interesting account of the burial ceremo- 

 nies of the Indians of Oregon and Washington Territory, which is here 

 reproduced in its entirety, although it contains examples of other modes of 

 burial besides that in canoes ; but to separate the narrative would destroy 

 the thread of the story : 



" The common mode of disposing of the dead among the fishing tribes 

 was in canoes. These were generally drawn into the woods at some promi- 

 nent point a short distance from the village, and sometimes placed between 

 the forks of trees or raised from the ground on posts. Upon the Columbia 

 River the Tsinuk had in particular two very noted cemeteries, a high iso- 

 lated bluff about three miles below the mouth of the Cowlitz, called Mount 

 Coffin, and one some distance above, called Coffin Rock. The former 

 would appear not to have been very ancient. Mr. Broughton, one of Van- 

 couver's lieutenants, who explored the river, makes mention only of several 

 canoes at this place ; and Lewis and Clarke, who noticed the mount, do not 

 speak of them at all, but at the time of Captain Wilkes's expedition it is con- 

 jectured that there were at least 3,000. A fire caused by the carelessness 

 of one of his party destroyed the whole, to the great indignation of the In- 

 dians. 



" Captain Belcher, of the British ship Sulphur, who visited the river in 

 1839, remarks: ' In the year 1836 [1826] the small-pox made great rav- 

 ages, and it was followed a few years since by the ague. Consequently 

 Corpse Island and Coffin Mount, as well as the adjacent shores, were studded 

 not only with canoes, but at the period of our visit the skulls and skeletons 



*Cout„ N. A. Ethnol., 1877, 1, p. 200. 



