[Illustration: FIG. 24.--Twana Canoe-Burial.]
The reason why she was buried thus is said to be because she is a prominent woman in the tribe. In about nine months it is expected that there will be a "_pot-latch_" or distribution of money near this place, and as each tribe shall come they will send a delegation of two or three men, who will carry a present and leave it at the grave; soon after that shall be done she will be buried in the ground. Shortly after her death both her father and mother cut off their hair as a sign of their grief.
Figure 24 is from a sketch kindly furnished by Mr. Eells, and represents the burial mentioned in his narrative.
The Clallams and Twanas, an allied tribe, have not always followed canoe-burial, as may be seen from the following account, also written by Mr. Eells, who gives the reasons why the original mode of disposing of the dead was abandoned. It is extremely interesting, and characterized by painstaking attention to detail:
I divide this subject into five periods, varying according to time, though they are somewhat intermingled.
(_a_) There are places where skulls and skeletons have been plowed up or still remain in the ground and near together, in such a way as to give good ground for the belief which is held by white residents in the region, that formerly persons were buried in the ground and in irregular cemeteries. I know of such places in Duce Waillops among the Twanas, and at Dungeness and Port Angeles among the Clallams. These graves were made so long ago that the Indians of the present day profess to have no knowledge as to who is buried in them, except that they believe, undoubtedly, that they are the graves of their ancestors. I do not know that any care has ever been exercised by any one in exhuming these skeletons so as to learn any particulars about them. It is possible, however, that these persons were buried according to the (_b_) or canoe method, and that time has buried them where they now are.
[Illustration: FIG. 25.--Posts for Burial Canoes.]
(_b_) Formerly when a person died the body was placed in the forks of two trees and left there. There was no particular cemetery, but the 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.