Their treatment of disease was simply horrible. Rheumatism called for cautery with hot irons; nervous fever and prostration, with yells that might wake the dead; headache, with cutting the scalp. Blood-sucking, practised literally, and always an extra charge, was therefore very much in vogue with the doctor. In cases of difficulty of breathing, the medicine-man would fill his own mouth with worms, maggots, and beetles, or, if the case was a grave one, a small frog, which he then pretended to extract from the lungs of his patient, to the great relief of his friends. Insanity and delirium, always attributed to demoniac possession, called for a five days' diet of black water beetles. A parody on modern spiritualism in its lowest forms entered largely into their jugglery.

With the Indians the dead seemed to have been an object of horror to the living. They feared the evil influence of their departed spirits, and believed that those newly gone hence have a desire to return and to haunt familiar paths and touch the bodies of their beloved ones. They are, therefore, driven away as soon as the breath has departed from the body and the wail always set up on such occasions has died, by sweeping clean the lodge, or, as among the Chinooks, by carrying flaming torches through it. Some cast ashes into the air, thinking that the spirits dread the dust. Ashes are also scattered along the route by which the dead are carried to their graves. Here we find a resemblance to the Chinese custom of strewing paper to occupy the demons and direct their attention from the corpse.

Their mourning for the dead, as in Oriental lands, is for the most part really hired, certain old hags volunteering, but expecting to be paid for their services. This is done as the sun rises. Strewing ashes on the head, as in olden days, is among the Umpquas a sign of mourning. A widow does not wash or comb her hair, and woe be to the reputation of the bereaved wife if she howls not lustily, for should she neglect it, she is regarded with contempt as already anxious to remarry. "East of the mountains the tribes-possibly from dread of the spirits— never mourned at night." To sum up this matter of Indian grieving for the dead, the dirtier and shabbier the mourner, the more sincere and consequently agreeable to the ghost of the departed was supposed to be his sorrow.

As regards the disposition of their dead, their modes of sepul

ture differ. Kuykendall tells us, and his narrative is so full and interesting that it is difficult to resist the temptation to quote him even more fully than our space would admit, "that those east of the Cascades burned their dead, while the Indians of Puget Sound committed their corpses to canoes, putting the body in a larger and turning the smaller canoe over it. These canoes were propped up two or three feet from the ground." How much more poetical it would have been if they had given them, thus embarked, to the tides on which they had so often floated, to drift to and fro, like the restless souls that had once inhabited them, upon the equally restless ocean! "On the Columbia River the dead were left in houses built of bark or cedar boards. The corpse was lashed to a post in an inclined position till the fluids were entirely drained away, and then placed horizontally. Their dead-houses were covered and kept carefully closed. Islands on the Columbia were favored burialplaces, as being more secure from the ravages of wild beasts. Some of the Chinooks put their dead infants into quiet, still pools of water. Whatever mode of sepulture might be chosen, much of the personal property of the deceased was placed about the corpse. His pipe, weapons, and domestic utensils, his clothing, ornaments, and money went with him to the grave, that he should not go naked and unarmed to the spirit land. Yet all were broken, so as to render them-doubtless to prevent theft— useless to the living; the robes and blankets in which the body itself was enclosed were left perfect, the presence of the corpse being considered a sufficient protection. The burial ceremonies of the Columbia River Indians were more punctilious than those of Northern Washington. In the old days slaves were killed that their master might be waited on in the "happy huntinggrounds." They were strangled, or-horrible to relate!-lashed face to face with the corpse, and thus left to die. His horses and dogs were also put to death, that their owner might ride gallantly into the council chamber of the Great Spirit.

East of the mountains it was the custom to rehabiliment the dead; in other words, they took up their bones, cleaned and redressed them in fresh robes and blankets, and then returned them to their place of rest. Sometimes this was done several times. The river tribes had regular ossuaries, where they stored the remains of the departed. So history repeats itself--the Cata

combs of Rome and the ossuaries of the land of which Bryant sings in his "Thanatopsis":

"Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound

Save his own dashings; yet the dead are there,
And millions in those solitudes,

Since first the flight of years began,

Have laid them down in their last sleep."

"At the Cascades there was formerly one extensive ossuary, mentioned by Lewis and Clarke ninety years ago, when in much better condition than it was sixty years later. It was mostly destroyed by the building of the postage railroad over the Cascades."

The Indians of Klamath Lake at one time burned their dead chiefs and their living slaves with them.

There is much of romantic suggestion in the fact that the Indians of the Northwest believed that there was some mystic influence connected with the wild rosebush, whose perfume, so exquisite to the living, they imagined most offensive to the dead; hence their use of it to drive away the ghosts of the departed. They placed these rosebushes about the beds of their sick and dying, that the spirits might tangle and wound themselves with their thorns, and so be driven from those whom they were striving to win and beckon away to join them in the silent land. The Indian dreads and avoids the grave even of his dearest friend, ghosts and spirits being about them, especially at that midnight hour when we are told

Brave, indeed, would be the squaw who could be induced during the hours of darkness to visit or even pass by the restingplaces of those silent sleepers. Should she be obliged to do so while carrying her babe, she does it with infinite dread, and surrounds the papoose-board on which her infant rests with the wild rosebushes already mentioned, to fright away the spirits, whom they believe have a particular love and affinity for these little ones, and are always on the watch, striving to snatch away their souls and bear them to the unseen land.

"Neither salmon nor berries may be eaten after touching a