BURIAL BOXES AND CANOES. 85 



food. I do not think that any of these tribes place articles of food with the 

 dead, nor have I been able to learn from living Indians that they formerly 

 followed that practice. What he took for snch I do not understand. He 

 also mentions seeing in the same place a cleared space recently burned 

 over, in which the skulls and bones of a number lay among the ashes. The 

 practice of burning the dead exists in parts of California and among the 

 Tshimsyan of Fort Simpson. It is also pursued by the "Carriers" of New 

 California, but no intermediate tribes, to my knowledge, follow it. Cer- 

 tainly those of the Sound do not at present. 



"It is clear from Vancouver's narrative that some great epidemic had 

 recently passed through the country, as manifested by the quantity of human 

 remains uncared for and exposed at the time of his visit, and very proba- 

 bly the Indians, being afraid, had burned a house, in which the inhabitants 

 had perished with the dead in it. This is frequently done. They almost 

 invariably remove from any place where sickness has prevailed, generally 

 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 these, by 

 the living inhabitants of the neighborhood, were appropriated to useful pur- 

 poses, such as pointing their arrows, spears, or other weapons. 



" It is hardly necessary to say that such a practice is altogether for- 

 eign to Indian character. The bones of the adults had probably been 

 removed and buried elsewhere. The corpses of children are variously dis- 

 posed of; sometimes by suspending them, at others by placing in the hollows 

 of trees A cemetery devoted to infants is, however, an unusual occurrence. 

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

 ments of the rite. The canoes were of great size and value — the Avar or 

 state canoes of the deceased. Frequently one was inverted over that hold- 

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

 deposited in a small canoe, which again was placed in a larger one and cov- 

 ered with a third. Among the Tsiituk and Tsihalis the tamahno-us board of 



