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"It Consists Of Eight Vaults Made Of Pine Or Cedar Boards
Closely Connected, About Eight Feet Square And Six In Height;
The Top Covered With Wide Boards Sloping A Little, So As To Convey
Off The Rain.
The direction of all of these vaults is east and west,
the door being on the eastern side, partially
Stopped with wide
boards decorated with rude pictures of men and other animals.
On entering he found in some of them four dead bodies, carefully wrapped
in skins, tied with cords of grass and bark, lying on a mat,
in a direction east and west. The other vaults contained only bones,
which were in some of them piled to the height of four feet.
On the tops of the vaults, and on poles attached to them,
bung brass kettles and frying-pans with holes in their bottoms,
baskets, bowls, sea-shells, skins, pieces of cloth, hair, bags of
trinkets and small bones - the offerings of friendship or affection,
which have been saved by a pious veneration from the ferocity
of war, or the more dangerous temptations of individual gain.
The whole of the walls as well as the door were decorated with strange
figures cut and painted on them; and besides were several wooden
images of men, some so old and decayed as to have almost lost
their shape, which were all placed against the sides of the vaults.
These images, as well as those in the houses we have lately seen,
do not appear to be at all the objects of adoration; in this place
they were most probably intended as resemblances of those whose
decease they indicate; when we observe them in houses, they occupy
the most conspicuous part, but are treated more like ornaments
than objects of worship."
The white men were visited at their camp by many Indians from the villages
farther up the stream.
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