The Salish People: Volume III - Charles Hill-Tout

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or from the combination of circumstances, the human remains in this mound have been better preserved, in part, than in the others. The long bones and several others, as well as the skull, were taken out almost whole, though, unfortunately, all but the skull soon crumbled away. This, happily, I have been able in part to preserve. It is a strangely deformed skull, and in its excessive abnormality is probably without a parallel throughout the region of contorted crania. It does not appear, moreover, to conform to any of the three types known to have been practised in former times on this coast.14 A bit of a second skull was recovered from one of the other mounds curiously enough preserved – when even the teeth had decayed, leaving nothing but an outline of their form in enamel – by being saturated with the verdigris from a copper ring buried with and alongside it. This piece, though small, is fortunately an important bit. It formed the upper part of the left orbit with adjoining portions of the frontal bone which shows the same extraordinary depression as is seen in the other. From this evidence it would seem that these mound builders practised cranial contortion of a very exaggerated kind and of a type unlike any known elsewhere in British Columbia past or present. Whether the custom will throw any light upon their history or help to identify them remains yet to be seen.

      To continue the description of the mounds, I may say the fourth class differs in several essential features from the preceding series. The chief characteristic seen here is an outer rectangular boundary of boulders, set side by side in the form of a square, having each of its sides facing towards one of the cardinal points of the compass like the pyramids of Mexico. This square was apparently laid off before the body was interred, which was placed in the centre and covered as before with a pile of boulders similar to those forming the square. Over these again, and between them and the outer square, a layer of quicksand was placed; then followed a thin layer of the dark gritty sand found in the other mound; over this again came more quicksand, followed by a layer of coarse brown sand over the whole extent of the mount extending to and beyond the outer boulders; and on top of this the sepulchral fire was kindled. Over the ashes of this fire more quicksand was heaped, followed by the capping of clay (plate IV). The base or floor of this mound must have been sunk several feet below the level of the general surface of the land. The mound stood about six feet above the surrounding soil, but its height from top to bottom at the centre was nearly eleven feet. The copper bracelet figured on plate VI was taken from this mound. The copper awl or spindle shown in the same plate (#3) was taken from the mound in which the skull and bones were found; and the rectangular object, a pair of which was recovered, from a mound of the fifth order. The ring on this plate (#4) was taken from a mound of the second class and was the one found in conjunction with the bit of skull before spoken of, enclosed in a fold of hide and wrapped up in a wad of cedar bark. These five copper objects, with the addition of some bits of red ochre, a fragment of coarsely woven blanket of the hair of the mountain sheep and a small quantity of human hair of two colours, black and brown, form the entire collection of relics taken from these mounds.

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       Plate II: Stone Implements

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       Plate III: Bone and Stone Implements

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       Plate VI: Copper Instruments

      The next and concluding class of the series shows a considerable advance upon the preceding ones. The plan here, as seen in plate V, is much more elaborate and complex. Instead of the one outer square as in the others formed by a single line of boulders, we have three squares, one within the other, in the innermost of which, beneath the pile of boulders, lay the body; and the outer one is composed in this instance of two parallel rows of boulders, capped and united by a third. I am sorry to say that the superficial mass of this mound, and another alongside and apparently like it, had been too much disturbed before my attention was drawn to them to allow me to make a section plan of their structure above the boulders, or to speak with any certainty of anything beyond their ground plan. But judging from the others and from the sandy condition of the soil on them, I should be inclined to say they much resembled those of the fourth class in this respect. In connection with this employment of different sands I may state that a number of mounds have recently been opened up on the St. John’s River, Florida, the chief characteristic of which seems to be the employment of different kinds of sand in distinct layers.15

      To give an idea of the labour involved in the construction of these mounds it may be stated that it took a man with the help of a hand barrow and other suitable tools, eight days to remove a few yards off the soil only from the underlying boulders of the mound whose ground plan is given in plate V. What time it must have taken the builders to erect one of these more elaborate sepulchres with their inferior tools can easily be imagined. The total weight of the boulders in this mound could not be estimated at less than 25 to 30 tons. To bring and place the boulders alone must have taken a number of men many days; and many more must have been consumed in bringing such large quantities of sand in their simple receptacles, and in digging the clay which caps the structure throughout its whole area to a depth of several feet.

      Some of the mounds of the Vancouver Island group are pyramidal in form. Whether any of these latter ones were of that form originally cannot now be determined. Exteriorly they present the appearance of truncated cones rather than four-sided pyramids, but this may easily be due to time and the elements. The boulders, I may here state, found in these mounds weight from 25 Ibs. up to 200 Ibs. each and were apparently brought from some of the mountain-stream beds, no stone of any kind, not even a pebble, being found anywhere on the ranch. There are several of these streams a mile or so back from the river where they might have come from.

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      Plate IV: Section of Mound of Fourth Series.

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      Plate V: Plan of Mounds of Fifth Series.

      In concluding my remarks I trust it may be conceded that the notes I have been able to gather show that the mounds and middens of British Columbia are worthy of the attention of archaeologists, and that we possess in them positive and reliable records of the antiquity and culture-status of the prehistoric tribes of that Province. That any degree of civilization higher than that manifested by the Haidas and their neighbours, the Tsimseans, has ever existed in that region, I think, is extremely doubtful, the evidence from the mounds and middens all tending to strengthen and corroborate what has been gathered from other sources, that the aborigines of the Northwestern Slope, from the Mackenzie to the Yukon and from that river to the Columbia, if not beyond, had scarcely emerged from primitive savagery and barbarism when Europeans first came in contact with them a little over a century ago.16

      My best thanks are due to my friend Mr. Carlyle Ellis, of Vancouver, B.C., for his kind assistance in preparing the drawings for the plates accompanying this paper.

      1 Reprinted, with acknowledgement, from Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada 1 (1895) section II pp. 103–122. Since Hill-Tout was not at that time a member of the Society, G. M. Dawson “communicated” the paper to the meeting of 15 May 1895.

      2 Hill-Tout had little else at his disposal but Boas’ report to the British Association for 1890, and was probably referring to “The Salish Languages of British Columbia” pp. 679–692. Here, Boas uses the Snanaimuq (Nanaimo) dialect for his examples, but he customarily uses the term Cowichan for the Hakomelem language as a whole.

      3 Cyrus Thomas Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology (1894).

      4 Charles Borden in “Cultural History

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