LITMIR.BIZ

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to point to a rather remote past for the formation of these middens, I was reluctant to admit the obvious inference, until I had ascertained that the enormous stumps of cedar and fir which I found projecting from the midden — several of which have a diameter of from six to eight feet, and indicate by their rings from five to seven centuries’ growth — had their roots actually in the midden itself; and had obviously grown there since the midden had been formed. Ascertaining this by personal excavation, and realizing that nearly three-quarters of a millennium ha’d passed away, for certain, since the middens had been abandoned, I could no longer resist the inference that they had been formed when the islands opposite and below them were tidal shell-bearing flats; and I have since found no reason for questioning that conclusion.

      The question now naturally arises, When and for what reason was this ancient camping-ground abandoned? Was it at a period shortly before the appearance upon them of those forest giants whose size and approximate age I have just mentioned, or was it at a much earlier date; and was it abandoned because the particular community dwelling there had been exterminated by their enemies, or was it because the clams and mussels gave out in consequence of a sudden or a gradual rise in the level of the neighbouring flats? In seeking an answer to these queries, the cause of the abandonment of so ancient a camping-ground may possibly be found in this last reason. That is a gradual, or possibly a sudden, deposition of river detrius on these flats raised them above the reach of ordinary tides, and so brought about the extinction of the shell-fish at this point, and made it desirable for the natives to seek a camp lower down the river, where the molluscs were able, as now, to maintain an existence. This explanation has the advantage of simplicity, and seems plausible; but the former cause suggested is not unlikely the truer one. The abandonment, many centuries ago, of so many other middens elsewhere in the district along the neighbouring bays and inlets, where no such cause as this can be assigned — where clams and mussels still exist in great quantities, and have so existed from time immemorial, as the extensive midden-piles now testify — seems to call for a more comprehensive and less local explanation. And further evidence and a more thorough investigation than I have thus far been able to give them may confirm the conjecture, which certain other evidence would seem to support, that the intrusion of the Salishan emigrants into this district, and the inevitable extermination of many of the former inhabitants, is more likely the real cause of the desertion of this and the many other ancient camping-grounds of this region. Should this conjecture hereafter prove to be the truth, the results of Dr. Boas’ study of the Cowitchin tongue will receive an interesting and independent confirmation.² The discussion and settlement of this question, however, must needs be left till further evidence has been gathered.

      In considering the time when the abandonment took place, the physical changes which have clearly taken place in the estuary since the shells which enter so largely into the composition of the middens were gathered from the tidal-flats that have since become tree-clad and cultivable islands, afford us some clue to work upon in the case of the midden under consideration. If we can arrive at an estimate of the age of the islands, we shall get some idea of the period of abandonment; for there is little doubt, I think, that these Fraser middens were wholly formed before those physical changes which transformed the shell-bearing flats into islands, took place. In seeking to form this estimate, we are assisted in some measure by the independent, extraneous evidence of the enormous tree-stumps now found in the midden; and although Professor Cyrus Thomas has shown, in his investigations among the mounds east of the Rockies, that no great reliance can be placed upon the evidence of the age of trees based upon the number of their rings,³ the size, condition and other characteristics of these stumps all warrant one in saying that many of them are from 500 to 700 years old. The age of the islands, then, cannot be less than the age of the midden trees, though it may not be very considerably greater. Exactly how much older they are it seems impossible, from the evidence at hand at present, to say with any certainty. There is nothing in their formation, as far as I have been able to learn, for which it is necessary to assign a greater length of time than 1,000 years. They are wholly alluvial, and only just above the level of the freshets and high tides, and were often, before they were dyked, during the annual freshets, extensively inundated. And although they are in their higher parts now thickly covered with timber, I have not been able to find or hear of a tree more than a few feet in diameter or of more than three or four centuries’ growth at most. It might occur to some here that the best way to get at the age of the islands would be to ascertain the rate at which the deposits of the Fraser accumulate at this point; but a little experience of the ways of the Fraser would soon convince them that this would be no easy task. To begin with, there is no uniform rate of deposit; the amount of detrius brought down by the river depends altogether upon causes beyond our control or calculation; the quantity brought down sometimes in one year exceeding that of any other half dozen. Last year was an instance of the kind; and cases like last year happen every now and again at uncertain intervals. If amount of matter brought down by the water counted for anything, then islands as large or larger than those now existing might have been formed, if circumstances had been favourable, during last year’s freshet. It will be easily seen from this statement how useless it is to go to the river for information.⁴

      If, then, I am correct in estimating the period which has elapsed since the flats ceased to support shell-fish and took on the form of islands at a thousand years, something like this period has, in all probability, elapsed since this camping-ground was abandoned by its owners, if on account of the extinction of their chief food supply at this point; and possibly a very much longer period if from the other cause suggested, which much of the osteological evidence gathered from these middens seems to support, viz., the invasion of a hostile people. But placing the abandonment at the latest possible date consistent with the presence and condition of the stumps, say 500 years ago, when to this has been added the period covered by the formation of the midden mass, we still find ourselves in the possession, in this extensive pile of refuse, of a monument of the past second to none in the country in antiquity. That the accumulation of such a heap of human refuse as this midden presents, to make no mention of others almost as large, occupied a very considerable period of time there can be no doubt, I think. It possesses many features of the Danish kjoekken-moeddinger, which led such eminent investigators as Worsaae, Steenstrup and Lubbock to regard the period of formation of those well-known piles as extending, in the words of the learned author of the Origin of the Aryans, over “many centuries at least, more probably several millenniums.”⁵ I am not unjustified, therefore, in claiming a very considerable period of time for the accumulation of these similar and much larger heaps of British Columbia. Viewing it, therefore, from the most conservative standpoint, it may be reasonably conceded, I think, that the first layers of this midden could hardly have been laid down much later than the beginning of our own era.

      That this particular midden-pile was slowly formed through the centuries, and was not the rapid accumulations of a large body of people, is more than probable from the fact that there are on its surface, at some distance from each other, four or five crowns or eminences — due, as I have personally ascertained, not to any local elevation of the subsoil, but wholly to an increase in the midden-mass itself —which, from what we know of the mode of more recent accumulations of the kind, we may reasonably infer were old family centres. From these features, as well as from many other minor ones, such as the scarcity of relics, in comparison with other camping-grounds where large communities are known to have dwelt, it may fairly be concluded that this midden was the refuse-heap of a few families only; and when it is remembered what an enormous mass of stuff there is in it, we are bound, on any reasonable hypothesis, to allow a very considerable time for its accumulation. And from the fact that the midden is found to overlie with a sharp line of division the clean, coarse gravel of the drift — which, as far as I have been able to discover, shows little or no trace of vegetable matter, whereas the soil in the immediate vicinity of the midden and all along this bank is rich, dark and loamy to a depth of from a few inches to over a foot — it is pretty certain there was a settlement on this bank before the appearance of post-glacial vegetation in that district.

      Then the midden-mass itself bears unmistakable testimony to its extreme age, nearly everything taken from it, except the stones, being in the last stage of decay, an instance of which is the condition of the shell remains. Generally speaking, the shells when taken out whole, which happens rarely, all crumble to pieces at the touch,

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