68 
THROUGH WONDERLAND. 
wooden houses that might have been standing a century ago, judging from the 
condition of the wooden buildings which I had examined on the Atlantic 
coast, and which are known to have been erected before the Revolutionary War. 
Those buildings were frail; these, built of massive timbers and posts of from 
two to three feet in diameter, some round, and others squared. The planks for 
the floors were several inches thick. The mortise and tenon work in the frames 
joined with accuracy, and other mechanical contrivances appeared in these 
structures. All were large, and some immense. I measured one house sixty 
by eighty feet. 
“ The domestic life is patriarchal, several families being gathered under one 
roof. Genealogies were kept for ages, and honors and distinctions made 
hereditary. To mark these, insignia, like a coat-of-arms, were adopted, and in 
rude carvings they strove to represent them. I could decipher, also, the paint- 
T’LINKET BASKET WORK. 
(Made by the Indians of the Inland Passage.) 
ings that once figured these upon the posts and sides of houses. The eagle, 
the whale, the bear and the otter, and other animals of sea and land, were the 
favorites, ofttimes coupled with a warrior in the attitude of triumph. Gigantic 
representations of these family emblems were erected near the house, on posts, 
twenty to thirty feet high, covered with carvings of animals, and the devices 
stained with permanent pigments of black, red and blue. [See illustration on 
page 66, which is the front of a chief’s house at Kaigan village.] Imaginary 
creatures resembling griffins or dragons, and reminding you of the mammoth 
animals that flourished in a distant geological period, were carved on the posts 
or pictured on the walls. Raised figures resembling hieroglyphics and Asiatic 
alphabets were carved on the inside wall. Some of the posts containing the 
family coat-of-arms, thus highly carved and decorated according to the native 
