RELICS OP THE EARLY FRENCH PERIOD IN NEW BRUNSWICK. 
307 
there are no indications of anything else in the vicinity. Since writ- 
ing you, I have found on special enquiry that there were human 
bones in two of the holes. A button was found with the bracelets ; 
but I have failed to get either. From a reliable friend who saw the 
button, I learn that the button face ‘ which was as bright as gold, 
had a face of a man on it, surrounded by a halo, and a cross at the 
side of it.’ About forty-five years ago a metal box, containing a 
written document, was found about a mile from these graves, but the 
writing could not be read as the paper was ‘ rotten.’ The box had 
been cased in birch bark. 
“About two years ago, an Indian grave was broken into not far 
from the site of the graves I write about. I visited the spot and 
found that the occupant had been buried in a sitting posture ;* the 
hole was deep, but not more than three feet in diameter. The bones 
were very much decayed : nothing else was found in the hole.” 
We have in our museum three of these kettles from Tabusintac, 
and four from Tracadie. It has been reported that similar kettles have 
been found at Indian Point, Grand Lake. The kettle shown in plate x, 
fig. 4, was found by Dr. Smith, under the circumstances just described. 
It is of copper, 21 J inches in diameter, 12 inches deep, and has a 
capacity of 15 imperial gallons. The handle is of iron, rectangular in 
section and passing through copper ears, strongly fastened with three 
copper rivets to the body of the kettle. The bottom is nearly flat 
and gently rounded at the sides. This kettle weighs twenty pounds 
and Mr. Hevenor says the value of a similar vessel now would be 
about 1 10. 00. 
The other pots from Tracadie, three in number, are small, the 
smallest being six inches across the mouth and four inches deep. 
The kettles from Tabusintac differ in some respects from those 
found at Tracadie. In the Tracadie kettles the sides are neatly turned 
over an encircling iron rod so that the rod is not seen. In the Tabus- 
* Father Baird, in his Relation of New France, 1616 (Jesuit Relations and Allied Docu- 
ments, Vol. iii., pp. 129, the Burrows Brothers Co., Cleveland, 1897) says : “ They bury the 
dead in this manner : first, they swathe the body and tie it up in skins : not lengthwise but 
with the knees against the stomach and the head on the knees as we are in our mother’s 
womb. Afterward they put it in the grave which has been made very deep, not upon the 
back or lying down as we do, but sitting. A posture which they like very much, and which 
among them signifies reverence. For the children and the youths seat themselves thus in 
the presence of their fathers, and of the old whom they respect. We laugh at them and 
tell them that way of sitting is the fashion with monkeys, but they like it and find it con- 
venient.” 
