512 REPORT—1899. 
did the women make these baskets that they would hold liquids without 
trouble. In preparing any food two kettles were customarily used—one 
containing water for washing off any dirt that might adhere to the heated 
stones, and the other for holding the food. In boiling salmon for eating 
the fish were tied up in birch bark to prevent breaking and falling to 
ieces. 
4 The house furniture and utensils were few and simple. Tables and 
chairs, or such like conveniences, were quite unknown. Wooden dishes, 
hollowed out from the solid block by means of stone, bone, or beaver-teeth 
chisels, and wooden or horn spoons were sometimes used by the wealthier 
class ; but usually the food was served up and eaten off reed mats, which 
served also as seats, carpets, and beds. These latter were commonly laid 
directly on the ground, which was strewed with the bushy ends of fir 
branches. The beds of the common people were simply a few reed mats, 
but in the houses of the chiefs and headmen these were supplemented 
with skins and blankets woven from the hair of the mountain sheep or 
goat. The people always disrobed when going to bed, and as there 
were no division or apartments in the ‘keekwilee-houses,’ but for the 
dusk there could not have been much privacy about the matter. Yet it 
is clear from their folk-tales that the maidens of the upper ranks, at least, 
were modest and diffident, and when out bathing always chose the most 
secluded spots, and were as embarrassed and shamed at being seen naked 
as any white maiden might be. I have been struck again and again in 
my work among the Indians with this keen sense of modesty in the 
girls of the interior, particularly those who have come under the influence 
of the Sisters. 
The houses of the N’tlaka’pamug resembled those of the other interior 
tribes. or the greater part of the year they lived in semi-subterranean 
dwellings known in the trade jargon as ‘keekwilee-houses.’ These 
houses, of which there is no perfect specimen left in the province, 
were of varying dimensions. Those of Lytton were from 30 to 50 feet 
in diameter. Nothing of them now remains but the saucer-like depres- 
sions which mark the spots where they formerly stood. As a descrip- 
tion of these dwellings has been given both by Dr. Boas in his Reports, 
and by Dr. G. M. Dawson in his ‘ Notes,’ &ec., it will be unnecessary 
for me to give another here. I will only say that the dimensions of 
these dwellings as given by the above writers fall considerably below the 
dimensions of those commonly found among the central and lower 
divisions of the N’tlaka’pamug. Of the upper I cannot speak from per- 
sonal knowledge. Dr. G. M. Dawson speaks of those he saw as having 
a diameter of from 10 to 30 feet ; and Dr. Boas describes his as having 
a diameter of from 12 to 15 feet.'. The shortest diameter to be found on 
the old camp site at Lytton was 34 feet, and they rise from this to 54 
feet ; and the old men of the neighbourhood, whom I questioned on this 
matter, and most of whose lives had been spent in them, informed me that 
60 and even 70 feet were not uncommon diameters. There is one now, 
which I measured in company with Mr. Harlan Smith, of the New York 
Museum of Natural History, on the left bank of Stain Creek, not far 
1 The dimensions given by me were not from actual measurement, and I am ready 
to accept Mr. Hill-Tout’s figures. Dr. Boas’s illustration of the construction of these 
houses, in one of the Reports of the B. A. A. S. Committee on the N. W. tribes, is 
incorrect, as afterwards stated by him. The actual method of construction is shown 
in a diagram in my paper, here several times referred to by Mr. Hill-Tout,—G. M. D. 
