Page:Cathlamet On the Columbia.djvu/28



HE village was made up of cedar houses thirty or forty feet long and fifteen or twenty feet wide. How they managed to split and cut out the cedar planks, sometimes twenty and thirty feet long, two to three feet wide and three to six inches thick, of which these houses were built, with the tools they had, is a mystery. With wedges made of elkhorn and chisels made of Beaver teeth, with flinty rocks and with fire, they, in some way, and at a great expenditure of labor, cut out the boards. The houses were well built, an opening was left along the ridge pole for the smoke to escape and there were cracks in the walls, but, excepting this and the door, there were no open- 8