This Was The Part Destined
For Those Who Had Recently Died; A Little Further On, Bones Half
Decayed Were Scattered
About, and in the centre of the building
was a large pile of them heaped promiscuously on each other.
At
The eastern extremity was a mat, on which twenty-one skulls
were placed in a circular form; the mode of interment being
first to wrap the body in robes, then as it decays to throw
the bones into the heap, and place the skulls together.
From the different boards and pieces of canoes which form
the vault were suspended, on the inside, fishing-nets, baskets,
wooden bowls, robes, skins, trenchers, and trinkets of various kinds,
obviously intended as offerings of affection to deceased relatives.
On the outside of the vault were the skeletons of several horses,
and great quantities of their bones were in the neighborhood,
which induced us to believe that these animals were most probably
sacrificed at the funeral rites of their masters."
Just below this stand the party met Indians who traded with tribes
living near the great falls of the Columbia. That place they designated
as "Tum-tum," a word that signifies the throbbing of the heart.
One of these Indians had a sailor's jacket, and others had a blue
blanket and a scarlet blanket. These articles had found their way
up the river from white traders on the seashore.
On the twenty-first of October the explorers discovered a considerable
stream which appeared to rise in the southeast and empty into the Columbia
on the left.
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