Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/836

 ANTHROPOLOGIC LITERATURE

Archeology of Lytton, British Columbia. By Harlan I. Smith. (Mem- oirs of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. n, An- thropology I.) New York : May 25, 1899. 4, pp. 1 29-161, pi.

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This publication, being a portion of the results of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, relates entirely to the archeology of Lytton and its vicinity.

Lytton, so-called for the Secretary of State for the Colonies at the time of the first gold-mining excitement in British Columbia, in 1858, was at one time an important point on the river-route to the interior and subsequently a well-known place on the stage line. It is now little more than a hamlet, with an adjoining Indian village and a station on the Canadian Pacific railway. The native name of the place is Tlk'um- tci'n, and so long as tradition goes back it has been the center of the so-called Thompson River Indians or N'tlakapamuq, a branch of the Salishan stock, the northern representatives of which, in the interior of British Columbia, including these tribes, are generally spoken of as the Shuswap people. There are several old village-sites in the vicinity of Lytton, but the center of the tribal habitat appears to have been on the point of land to the north of the Thompson river where it joins the Fraser. Both the Fraser and the Thompson in this vicinity are too rapid and too much broken for easy navigation, even by good canoemen. The skill of the Thompson river people at the present day is in this respect not great, and there is little to show that they were ever expert on the water ; but the junctions of the great valleys of the two rivers, with the land routes following there, the low elevation of the place with consequent favorable winter conditions, and above all its situation as an admirable station for the taking and curing of salmon, caused it to be an ideal site for the residence of people with the habits and mode of life common to those of the interior of British Columbia.

The ancient village-site above referred to is not, however, recorded to have been inhabited in any continuous manner in historic times, for the region ; and its burial-place, comprised in a group of low sand-hills (illustrated in the memoir), now constitutes the chief evidence of its former importance. These sand-hills, under the influence of the strong

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