Another depository of this kind upon an island in the river a few miles above gave it the name of Sepulcher Inland.  The Watlala, a tribe of the Upper Tainuk, whose burial place is here described, are now nearly extinct; but a number of the sepulchers still remain in different states of preservation.  The position of the body, as noticed by Clarke, is, I believe, of universal observance, the head being always placed to the west.  The reason assigned to me is that the road to the me-mel us-illa-hee, the country of the dead, is toward the west, and if they place them otherwise they would be confused.  East of the Cascade Mountains the tribes whose habits are equestrian, and who use canoes only for ferriage or transportation purposes, bury their dead, usually heaping over them piles of stones, either to mark the spot or to prevent the bodies from being exhumed by the prairie wolf.  Among the Yakamas we saw many of their graves placed in conspicuous points of the basaltic walls which line the lower valleys, and designated by a clump of poles planted over them, from which fluttered various articles of dress.  Formerly these prairie tribes killed horses over the graves—­a custom now falling into disuse in consequence of the teachings of the whites.

Upon Puget Sound all the forms obtain in different localities.  Among the Makuh of Cape Flattery the graves are covered with a sort of box, rudely constructed of boards, and elsewhere on the Sound the same method is adopted in some cases, while in others the bodies are placed on elevated scaffolds.  As a general thing, however, the Indians upon the water placed the dead in canoes, while those at a distance from it buried them.  Most of the graves are surrounded with strips of cloth, blankets, and other articles of property.  Mr. Cameron, an English gentleman residing at Esquimalt Harbor, Vancouver Island, informed me that on his place there were graves having at each corner a large stone, the interior space filled with rubbish.  The origin of these was unknown to the present Indians.

The distinctions of rank or wealth in all cases were very marked; persons of no consideration and slaves being buried with very little care or respect.  Vancouver, whose attention was particularly attracted to their methods of disposing of the dead, mentions that at Port Discovery he saw baskets suspended to the trees containing the skeletons of young children, and, what is not easily explained, small square boxes, containing, apparently, food.  I do not think that any of these tribes place articles of food with the dead, nor have I been able to learn from living Indians that they formerly followed that practice.  What he took for such I do not understand.  He also mentions seeing in the same place a cleared space recently burned over, in which the skulls and bones of a number lay among the ashes.  The practice of burning the dead exists in parts of California and among the Tshimsyan