Sickness, Death and Burial 



175 



stone cairns are probably the relics of that earlier tribe that peopled the coast 

 from Baillie island to Dolphin and Union strait. The six "stone graves" that 

 Mr. Stefansson noticed between Clouston bay and the Colville hills were almost 

 certainly meat-caches, hundreds of which are scattered about the hills and 

 valleys of this region.^ 



The only recent burial we saw was that of one Puivlik Eskimo, Haviron, 

 who died in April 1915, after an illnessthat had lasted all the winter. His body 

 was conveyed to the mainland near Cape Lambert and deposited on the shore 

 just above high-water mark. Mr. Wilkins, the photographer of the expedition, 

 examined the body a month or so later and furnished me with the following 

 description. "The corpse was on a point about twenty-five yards from the 



Fig. 54. The grave of Haviron 



(Photo by G. H. Wilkins). 



water and three or four feet above high-water mark. The coast hereabouts 

 was a mass of broken rocks and an occasional boulder. The corpse was placed 

 on the rocks, but no rocks had been placed on or around it. It was lying on its 

 left side with the head towards the east, the right arm doubled across the chest, 

 the left stretched along the body slightly to its front. It was dressed in a simple 

 suit of inner deerskin clothes, attigi (i.e., coat), pants, socks, and mittens, and 

 had on a pair of sealskin slippers. The right eye was open, the left closed, and 

 the mouth closed. The corpse was loosely tied in two deerskins, and its head 

 rested on a pair of folded outer pants. An outer attigi was noticed a few feet 



■Anthrop. Papers, A.M.N.H., Vol. XIV, pt. I, p. 301. 



