The Salish People: Volume III - Charles Hill-Tout

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bear no marks of fire on them. And that the clam shell, at any rate, is exceedingly endurable is clear from the fact that trees of over half a millennium’s growth are repeatedly found along Burrard Inlet growing over refuse-heaps and gripping with their roots whole clam shells as perfect and firm as the day they were thrown out. I have shells in my possession that cannot be less than five centuries old, from the position in which they were found, but yet it would puzzle anybody to pick them out from a number of others of the same kind from which the fish were taken only a few years ago. There are numerous other signs besides this that speak of extreme age. It rarely happens that a skull is taken out whole; it generally falls to pieces in handling. Then again, not a particle of wood has been found in the midden so far, unless it be the rotting rootlets of the trees that penetrate the mass to a depth of several feet. Axe- and tomahawk-heads, which were undoubtedly once fastened into wooden hafts or handles, are quite common; but where they are found there is never any trace of their wooden hafts to be seen. These and sundry other unmistakable evidences all seem to the writer to speak clearly of the antiquity of the accumulation. I am anxious not to exaggerate this antiquity, especially in the face of the conclusion arrived at by Professor Cyrus Thomas after long and careful investigations in the mound and midden districts east of the Rockies. I merely desire to state the facts of the case as they appear to those who have visited and examined this midden; and think it possible that further investigation will make it necessary to extend rather than to curtail the age here indicated.

      In the accompanying plates I-III are figured a fair sample of the relics thus far taken from this midden. There is nothing particularly striking either in the utensils or weapons recovered from it. They are mostly simple in make and design, and such as are found among other primitive people elsewhere. No pottery of any kind has been found in these middens; indeed the ceramic art appears to have been wholly unknown to the aborigines of British Columbia. The mortars or bowls and pestles figured in the plates were not, as is often supposed, for corn-grinding purposes. They do not seem to have possessed such; no grain of any kind being known, as far as the writer has been able to discover, among the West Coast Indians north of the Columbia. Nor have the middens thus far supplied the smallest evidence of horticulture of any kind. Some of their tools and utensils, such as the pestle, or, more properly, stone-hammer, figured in plate II, and the instrument resembling a belay ing-pin, figured in plate III, are beautifully made and polished. These are wrought from a kind of granite of a hard- and close-grained quality. Others again are rude and rough in their make. It appears to have been customary to fashion their bowls after the likeness of some animal. The fish-head pattern appears to have been the most common. That shown in plate II is of an unusual type. It has a bird’s head with a quadruped’s body, the back being hollowed out in basin form. There was one taken from the old camping-grounds at Port Hammond which had a human face carved on one of its sides, the top of the head rising several inches above the edge or rim of the receptacle, of a type that in no way resembled or suggested the face of an Indian, and of a character wholly different from any the writer has seen elsewhere in British Columbia.6 Large numbers of barbed-bone spear-points are found. The stone adzes, axes, knives and chisels are generally of jade; and one or two have been found with edges as sharp and keen as if they were made of steel. Bone needles, with the eye sometimes in the centre, at other times in the end, are often found. A favourite weapon among these midden people seems to have been one formed from the young horn of the elk. These horns in their first growth are round and pointed, and at this stage are selected by the warriors for their poqamangans or skull-crackers. The horn was apparently inserted in a stick or otherwise secured to a haft. They were aptly termed skull-crackers, for three adult skulls have already been taken from this midden with circular perforations in their crowns evidently made by these horn tomahawks, and as clean cut as if the piece had been taken out with a mechanic’s punch.7

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      Another and significant point about the recovered crania of this midden is that they represent two distinct types: one decidedly brachycephalic, the other no less decidedly dolichocephalic. The former do not differ greatly from the crania of the Indians living round the estuary at the present time, and their presence in this midden may be due to intrusive burials; but the latter are wholly unlike the crania to be found among the tribes today; nor have I seen any so markedly dolichocephalic among the collected crania of the Province accessible to me. They are too decidedly dolichocephalic to be classified among any of the typical groups of this region as given by Dr. Franz Boas,8 and suggest affinity rather with the Eskimo or eastern stocks, or with the southern dolichocephali than with any in this region north of California. The cephalic index of one in the possession of the Art and Science Association of New Westminster, B.C., is 73.85, and that of one in the writer’s possession is practically the same, being 73.84; while the orbital indices of these two are 93.33 and 91.66 respectively. Both these crania are undeformed and normal and those of adults. A brief glance at the tables of the physical characteristics of the Indians of the Northwest Coast compiled by Dr. Franz Boas, and particularly those of the Lower Fraser River Indians will clearly show that these dolichocephali of the middens form a distinct type of their own and find no place among any of the eleven groups there distinguished by him. Other striking features of these midden crania which differentiate them further from the Lower Fraser group are the extreme narrowness of the forehead and the lofty sweep of the cranial vault. This is particularly seen in the height of the transverse arc, which as measured in the one in my possession, and which is not an extreme type, from one auditory foramen to the other across the sagittal suture is exactly thirteen inches, and the length of a line joining the glabella and the occipital foramen is 14.40 inches. These dolichocephalic crania are the osteological evidence I hinted at just now which seemed to support the hypothesis that the middens of this region were formed by a preSalishan people. Whether this is so or not, this much, at any rate, seems certain, that a people of marked dolichocephaly once lived somewhere in this region, for their crania have been found at one or two other points on the Fraser between Port Hammond and the estuary.

      So far no copper or other metal instruments of any kind have been found in these middens, all the relics recovered being either of bone, horn, ivory or stone. Of these by far the most numerous are bone; very few of stone are recovered. With the middens on the shores of Burrard Inlet the reverse is the case. Great numbers of stone instruments, particularly arrow- and spear-heads, have been picked up from the beach which have been washed from the old middens by the tides, the shore at several points here having sunk apparently some feet below its former level. In addition to the spear- and arrow-heads thus found, I have discovered at more than one point along these shores — which seem to be an old armoury of the midden people of that neighbourhood — several magazines or stores of designed but unfinished spear-and arrow-heads, all bearing the undoubted marks, in the method of their cleavage, of the skilled and experienced stone worker. A few well-directed blows from a skilful hand have divided larger masses of desirable stone into numbers of triangular and ovate pieces, easily transported and worked up into finished points at the arrow-maker’s leisure. The stone commonly thus broken up was either a dark argillaceous boulder of crystalline character or boulders of dark gray basalt; and as I have been unable to find any of the former in whole blocks or boulders, on the shores of Burrard Inlet or elsewhere in the neighbourhood, the breaking had probably been done at some other point by others, from whom they were not unlikely bartered for dried clams, of which they had an inexhaustible supply here, and which, we know, were highly prized by inland-dwelling tribes. And as the arrow- and spear-heads I possess, taken from the Lytton burial heaps, are of the same material it is not unlikely that this is the direction from which these stones came, as also the jade tools, jade boulders being occasionally found in the Thompson.9

      It may now be interesting to pass from the middens and offer a few remarks on the tumuli or burial mounds of this region. As far as is known at present the mounds of British Columbia seem to be confined to the Cowitchin [Halkomelem] area. This may not be so in reality. It so happens that on account of that area being the most settled and accessible it has received the most attention from explorers; and this seeming restriction of area may thus be accounted for. As the country becomes more widely settled and opened up

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