THE INDIANS OF THE NOETHWEST COAST. 319 



a similar piece forming the opposite side and end, and the joints secured 

 by pegs or dowels. Where four pieces are used the corners are secured 

 either by dove-tailing or by pegging. The bottom is made in a separate 

 piece and pegged to the sides and ends. The top is slightly arched at 

 the crown and bevelled on the under side to tit over the chest. Some- 

 times the top is flat and as thin as the sides, the edges having a broad 

 strip running around them to fit over the box. Another type of house- 

 hold box is about 18 itches square by 24 inches high, as shown in Fig. 

 272, Plate li, which also shows the method of cording. The top and 

 bottom are made in somewhat similar shape of separate pieces. The sides 

 are of a single wide thin piece of cedar, which is scarfed and deftly bent 

 three times at right angles by steaming and hammering, with very little 

 appearance of breaking at the bends, and pegged at the fourth corner, 

 making a neat and tight joint. These boxes and chests are either carved 

 or painted, or both, in totemic design, and are very elaborate and or- 

 namental. A smaller and more handy type of wooden box is shown in 

 Plate XLiD, which has a nse, at times, other than that as a household 

 utensil, viz, in receiving the cremated ashes of the dead. Its use as a 

 funeral box is shown in Plates lxiv and lxv. Figs. 340, 343, and 348. 

 A beautifully carved and polished Haida black slate box is represented 

 in Plate xliv. It is purely a work of art, and as such is a ^^plendid 

 illustration of the skill of these Indians in stone carving. The joints are 

 made with wooden dowels and further secured with fish glue. 



Cradles. — These are now rarely found, the child being carried slung 

 in a shawl or blanket over the back in the usual Indian fashion. Dixon 

 ^1787) describes the primitive cradle which he saw amongst the Haida 

 and Tlingit as follows: 



Three pieces of bark are fastened together so as to form a kind of chair j the infant, 

 after being wrapped in fur, is put into this chair and lashed so close tliat it can not 

 alter its postnre even with struggling, and the chair is so contrived that when a 

 mother wants to feed her child, orgive it the breast, there is no occasion to release it 

 from its shackles. Soft moss is used by the Indian nurse to keep the child clean.* 



Lisiansky mentions the wife of a chief coming on board his ship (1805) 

 carrying her child in a basket. At the present day a canvas or blanket 

 hammock is sometimes used, in camp or indoors, to rock the baby to 

 sleep. 



Paints. — As previously mentioned, the different kinds of paints used 

 by the Indians in this region are charcoal, roasted and burnt fungus, 

 white, red, and brown ochres, lignite, cinnabar, berr^^ juice, spruce sap, 

 and various other kinds of vegetable compounds. For tattooing and 

 painting the face and body black, charcoal and lignite are used. Oil is 

 mixed with all paints used on the body. Where lignite is used on wood, 

 or for other purposes ofa permanent nature, it is ground dry with salmon 

 eggs, first chewed with cedar bark. This gives consistency to the paint 



* Dixon, Voyage, p. 239. 



