washed and scrubbed.  Two large square holes were then cut in the bottom, at the bow and stern, for the twofold purpose of rendering the canoe unfit for further use, and therefore less likely to excite the cupidity of the whites (who are but too apt to help themselves to these depositories for the dead), and also to allow any rain to pass off readily.

When the canoe was ready, the corpse, wrapped in blankets, was brought out, and laid in it on mats previously spread.  All the wearing apparel was next put in beside the body, together with her trinkets, beads, little baskets, and various trifles she had prized.  More blankets were then covered over the body, and mats smoothed over all.  Next, a small canoe, which fitted into the large one, was placed, bottom up, over the corpse, and the whole then covered with mats.  The canoe was then raised up and placed on two parallel bars, elevated four or five feet from the ground, and supported by being inserted through holes mortised at the top of four stout posts previously firmly planted in the earth.  Around these holes were then hung blankets, and all the cooking utensils of the deceased, pots, kettles, and pans, each with a hole punched through it, and all her crockery-ware, every piece of which was first cracked or broken, to render it useless; and then, when all was done, they left her to remain for one year, when the bones would be buried in a box in the earth directly under the canoe; but that, with all its appendages, would never be molested, but left to go to gradual decay.

They regard these canoes precisely as we regard coffins, and would no more think of using one than we would of using our own graveyard relics; and it is, in their view, as much of a desecration for a white man to meddle or interfere with these, to them, sacred mementoes, as it would be to us to have an Indian open the graves of our relatives.  Many thoughtless white men have done this, and animosities have been thus occasioned.

Figure 23 represents this mode of burial.

From a number of other examples, the following, relating to the Twanas, and furnished by the Rev. M. Eells, missionary to the Skokomish Agency, Washington Territory, is selected: 

The deceased was a woman about thirty or thirty-five years of age, dead of consumption.  She died in the morning, and in the afternoon I went to the house to attend the funeral.  She had then been placed in a Hudson’s Bay Company’s box for a coffin, which was about 3-1/2 feet long, 1-1/2 wide, and 1-1/2 high.  She was very poor when she died, owing to her disease, or she could not have been put in this box.  A fire was burning near by, where a large number of her things had been consumed, and the rest was in three boxes near the coffin.  Her mother sang the mourning song, sometimes with others, and often saying, “My daughter, my daughter, why did you die?” and similar words.  The burial did not take place until the next