person was generally left near the place where the death
occurred. The Skokomish Valley is said to have been full of canoes
containing persons thus buried. What their customs were while
burying, or what they placed around the dead, I am not informed but
am told that they did not take as much care then of their dead as
they do now. I am satisfied, however, that they then left some
articles around the dead. An old resident informs me that the
Clallam Indians always bury their dead in a sitting posture.

(_c_) About twenty years ago gold mines were discovered in British
Columbia, and boats being scarce in the region, unprincipled white
men took many of the canoes in which the Indian dead had been left,
emptying them of their contents. This incensed the Indians and they
changed their mode of burial somewhat by burying the dead in one
place, placing them in boxes whenever they could obtain them, by
building scaffolds for them instead of placing them in forks of
trees, and in cutting their canoes so as to render them useless,
when they were used as coffins or left by the side of the dead. The
ruins of one such graveyard now remain about two miles from this
agency. Nearly all the remains were removed a few years ago.

With this I furnish you the outlines of such graves which I have
drawn. Fig. 25 shows that at present only one pair of posts remains.
I have supplied the other pair as they evidently were.

[Illustration: FIG. 26.--Tent on Scaffold.]

Figure 26 is a recent grave at another place. That part which is
covered with board and cloth incloses the coffin which is on a
scaffold.

As the Indians have been more in contact with the whites they have
learned to bury in the ground, and this is the most common method at
the present time. There are cemeteries everywhere where Indians have
resided any length of time. After a person has died a coffin is made
after the cheaper kinds of American ones, the body is placed in it,
and also with it a number of articles, chiefly cloth or clothes,
though occasionally money. I lately heard of a child being buried
with a twenty-dollar gold piece in each hand and another in its
month, but I am not able to vouch for the truth of it. As a general
thing, money is too valuable with them for this purpose and there is
too much temptation for some one to rob the grave when this is left
in it.

[Illustration: FIG.