Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/837

766 up-river winds, have been gutted out since the abandonment of the old village-site, and to some extent rearranged from year to year. In 1877 the writer made a collection of skulls and objects which had been deposited with the dead at this place, which since that time has been visited by a number of collectors. Mr Smith, with time and means at his disposal, has now made probably the last important collection which can be secured from the old burial-place, and although other sites are referred to by him, this constitutes the chief point of interest in his investigations.

Interments at this place appear to have ceased at or before the coming of the whites, as evidences are scarcely, if at all, found of materials which may have been obtained from the whites by trade, while many of the older burials must possess an antiquity of at least several hundred years. Neither the objects recovered, however, nor the type of the skulls obtained indicate any notable differences in habits or character from those of the people found there when the whites arrived. In other words, there is nothing to show that natives of the same stock and with similar habits have not continuously inhabited the vicinity since the earliest times represented.

The greater part of Mr Smith's memoir is naturally devoted to the description of the tools, weapons, ornaments, and other objects derived from the burial site, with the help of a number of admirable illustrations, drawn for the greater part from objects collected by himself, but supplemented by others obtained from the same place.

Some of these objects are of special interest. The material of the arrowheads is usually a black, fine-grained augite-porphyrite or "basalt." Many of these are of unusually small size and perfect workmanship, with a tendency to variety in form. With these, and showing a complete mastery of the art of stone-flaking, are various articles of fantastic design to which no particular utility can be assigned. A few such forms are figured, but in the museum of the Geological Survey of Canada are others even more remarkable. Stone hammers or pestles of the kind usually found on the Pacific coast are not uncommon. Jade celts or adzes are also a special feature of this locality, and, as already shown by the writer, this was a place of manufacture of such adzes, the material being obtained in the form of rolled fragments in Fraser river. Specimens of the materials employed were submitted to Prof. J. F. Kemp of Columbia University, who contributes a note on their physical and mineralogical characters, but is apparently unaware