Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 23.djvu/118

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had decayed, yet where it lay in the copper tubes or beads it is well preserved.

This double necklace must have been a badge of dis- tinction marking this central skeleton as the chief in whose honor the mound and sacrificial fires were made. On the skeleton was found woven matting made of fine strips of bark or some material resembling reeds or cat- tails, while the cross braid was of finer texture and ap- pears to be lake or marsh grass. This matting may have served both as a mattress and as a funeral robe for the body of the deceased. There was evidence also that the body had been dressed in some garment of deer, buf- falo, or bear skin presumably with the hair on, from the amount of short darkish red hair found with the bones, as we concluded if the deceased had been of the hairy Aino tribe of the island of Yezo, he could hardly have had so much hair on his body as was found, and so we attri- bute the hair to that on some dress the deceased had on of deer or buffalo skin at the time of his being de- posited in the grave. There were also found three small sticks, each dressed smoothly and about five inches long, of the size of a lead pencil, pointed on one end, and of light colored wood, and which may have served as fasteners or buttons to hold the folds of the funeral robes together or else to pin the matting closely around the body. They have the appearance somewhat of wooden needles. The most interesting and unusual find was that of a beautiful perfectly constructed canoe paddle, the blade and carved handle being all made of a piece of large bone of some animal. If it was not such a perfect canoe paddle it would be termed a sword or sacrificial knife. The symbol measures 22 inches in length and the blade at the widest place in its middle is nearly four inches ; the thickness at the middle is nearly one inch and it gradually tapers to a thin edge on each side like a dagger. The handle is shaped somewhat like