It is clear from Vancouver’s narrative that some great epidemic had recently passed through the country, as manifested by the quantity of human remains uncared for and exposed at the time of his visit, and very probably the Indians, being afraid, had buried a house, in which the inhabitants had perished with the dead in it.  This is frequently done.  They almost invariably remove from any place where sickness has prevailed, generally destroying the house also.

At Penn Cove Mr. Whalbey, one of Vancouver’s officers, noticed several sepulchers formed exactly like a sentry-box.  Some of them were open, and contained the skeletons of many young children tied up in baskets.  The smaller bones of adults were likewise noticed, but not one of the limb bones was found, which gave rise to an opinion that these, by the living inhabitants of the neighborhood, were appropriated to useful purposes, such as pointing their arrows, spears, or other weapons.

It is hardly necessary to say that such a practice is altogether foreign to Indian character.  The bones of the adults had probably been removed and buried elsewhere.  The corpses of children are variously disposed of; sometimes by suspending them, at others by placing in the hollows of trees.  A cemetery devoted to infants is, however, an unusual occurrence.  In cases of chiefs or men of note much pomp was used in the accompaniments of the rite.  The canoes were of great size and value—­the war or state canoes of the deceased.  Frequently one was inverted over that holding the body, and in one instance, near Shoalwater Bay, the corpse was deposited in a small canoe, which again was placed in a larger one and covered with a third.  Among the Tsinuk and Tsihalis the tamahno-[=u]s board of the owner was placed near him.  The Puget Sound Indians do not make these tamahno-[=u]s boards, but they sometimes constructed effigies of their chiefs, resembling the person as nearly as possible, dressed in his usual costume, and wearing the articles of which he was fond.  One of these, representing the Skagit chief Sneestum, stood very conspicuously upon a high bank on the eastern side of Whidbey Island.  The figures observed by Captain Clarke at the Cascades were either of this description or else the carved posts which had ornamented the interior of the houses of the deceased, and were connected with the superstition of the tamahno-[=u]s.  The most valuable articles of property were put into or hung up around the grave, being first carefully rendered unserviceable, and the living family were literally stripped to do honor to the dead.  No little self-denial must have been practiced in parting with articles so precious, but those interested frequently had the least to say