. Annual report of the Bureau of ethnology to the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution ... An old resident informs mo thatthe Clallam Indians always bury their dead in a sitting posture. (c) About twenty years ago gold mines were discovered in British Columbia, andboats being scarce in this region, unprincipled white men took many of the canoes iuwhich the Indian dead had been left, emptying them of their contents. This incensedthe Indians avid they changed their mode of burial somewhat by burying the dead in oneplace, placing them in boxes whenever they could obtain them, by building scaf
. Annual report of the Bureau of ethnology to the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution ... An old resident informs mo thatthe Clallam Indians always bury their dead in a sitting posture. (c) About twenty years ago gold mines were discovered in British Columbia, andboats being scarce in this region, unprincipled white men took many of the canoes iuwhich the Indian dead had been left, emptying them of their contents. This incensedthe Indians avid they changed their mode of burial somewhat by burying the dead in oneplace, placing them in boxes whenever they could obtain them, by building scaffoldsfor them instead of placing them in forks of trees, and by cutting their canoes BO asto render them useless, when they were used as coffins or left by the side of the ruins of one such graveyard now remain about two miles from this all the remains were removed a few years ago. With this I furnish you the outlines of such graves which 1 have drawn. Fig. 25shows that at present only one pair of posts remains. I have supplied the other pairas they evidently FIG. 2tt.—TYut on Scaffold. Figure 20 is a recent grave at another place. That part which is covered with boardand cloth incloses the coffin, which is on a scaffold. As the Indians have been more in contact with the whites they have learned tobury in the ground, and this is the most common method at the present time. Thereare cemeteries everywhere where Indians have resided any length of time. After aperson has died a coffin is made after the cheaper kinds of American ones, the body isplaced in it, and also with it a number of articles, chiefly cloth or clothes, though oc-casionally money. I lately heard of a child heing buried with a twenty-dollar goldpiece in each hand and another in its mouth, but I am not able to vouch for the truthof it. As a general thing, money is too valuable with them for this purpose, and thereis too much temptation for some one to rob the grave when this is left i
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