SOME ETHNOGRAPHIC PHASES OF CONCHOLOGY. 401 



litz, and all tbe Indians of tlie Columbia Eiver, The most common 

 and characteristic elevated bier of these western tribes is the canoe, 

 raised on poles, and decorated with relics pertaining to the deceased ; 

 and with the offerings of his friends. These Indian biers are invaria- 

 bly erected on an isolated rock or island, or some equally inaccessi- 

 ble spot, so as to be beyond the reach of beasts of prey, and are 

 the final resting places of the dead. Mr. Paul Kane has a highly 

 characteristic oil painting of the cemetery of the Coulitz Indians, 

 executed by him from sketches taken at the spot, on the Coulitz 

 river, where these singular canoe-biers are erected on a small island. 

 Among the Babeens this mode of scaffolding the dead is confined to 

 females, while the males are invariably burned. But different ideas 

 regulated the final honors paid to the dead among the eastern tribes 

 settled around the great lakes. Among the Pottowatamays, the Me. 

 namonies, the Ofctawas, the Indians of the Six Nations, and other tribes, 

 the practice pravailed the interring their dead in large sepulchral deposi- 

 tories, into which the bones were promiscuously gathered, after the final 

 honors andsacrifices had been offered to the deceased. This custom fully 

 accounts for the large ossuaries brought to light within the original 

 localities of these tribes ; and as the custom of depositing the favour- 

 ite weapons and implements of the deceased along side of him, is 

 common to nearly all savage people, and appears to have been univer- 

 sal among the Indians of the new world, this shews the origin of the 

 interesting objects of native art which many of these cemeteries have 

 disclosed. 



About the year 1837, one of a class of extensive ossuaries, 

 which have furnished many relics pertaining to the period of ancient 

 Indian occupation of the Canadian clearings, was accidentally discov- 

 ered in the township of Beverly, twelve miles from Dundas. An 

 elevated ridge, running from north to south, is covered by an old 

 growth of full-grown beech trees, standing somewhat widely apart ; 

 and across this, and consequently running from east to west, a series 

 of deposits of human bones were exposed, ten or eleven of which 

 were opened. They contained an immense number of bones, of both 

 sexes and of all ages, promiscuously heaped together, and inter- 

 spersed with many Indian relics, which furnished the chief tempta- 

 tion to their exploration ; and from their extent and the evidence 

 they disclosed of repeated interments, they undoubtedly indicated a 

 permanent location of the tribe, of which so many members had there 



