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CHAPTER \A’ 
ARCH/EOLOGICAL REMAINS' 
Although tlie many diverse languages and customs of the abor- 
igines suggest that the country was occupied for countless centuries 
before its discovery by Europeans, the remains of its j)rehistoric 
inhabitants are seldom conspicuous, and in many districts hardly dis- 
coverable even with careful research. There are no architectural 
1‘uins similar to the cliff dwellings in the southwest of the United 
States, the stone temples, walls, and highways of Central America 
and Peru, or the brick and stone monuments of tlie Old World. Stone 
entered into the construction of dwellings only on the Arctic and 
sub-Arctic coast-lines, where alone we fiiul habitations, still partly 
intact, that lead us back to the centuries preceding Columbus. The 
bark wigwams of the eastern Indians were impermanent structures 
frequently dismantled and removed to anothei’ site, and the skin 
tents of the plains’ and Mackenzie River tribes left no marks except 
circles of stones or faint depressions in tlie soil. West of the Rocky 
mountains, and in southeastern Ontario, the Indians occupied the 
same village sites for several years in succession; but even in those 
regions few traces of their dwellings remain, because the wood of 
which they were built rapidly disintegrated with the moisture aiul 
changing temperature. 
Yet if Canada is not wealthy in prehistoric remains it is by no 
means barren. Plven though the ancient dwellings have disappeared 
with hardly a trace, though most of the implements and utensils used 
by the earlier Indians have fallen into dust, many objects have been 
preserved that help us to reconstruct their history. Wood, horn, and 
skin may often have disintegrated, hut bone, antler, stone, pottery, 
ivory, and shell remain, and although the story they tell is partial and 
one-sided, we can often fill in the gaps from our knowledge of the 
historic Indians. The kitchen-middens on both the Atlantic and the 
Pacific coasts contain not only the empty shells of the molluscs on 
which the aborigines feasted, but objects of stone, bone, and native 
1 I havo recoivi'd miu'li assistanr-’ in this chapter from my colleagues. Mr. Harlan I. Smith and 
Mr. W. J. WintcmbiTg, .‘Xrcha'ologist and Assistant Arrli.-eologist, respectively, of the National Museum 
of Canada. 
