The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1895-09-08
INpIAN GIRLS MUMMY
In Canoe Slowed in the Branches
of n Cedar Tree in Oregon,
Where 1t Has Probably Been for
n Century.

The boys down on the creek have
been finding some pretty respectable
nuggets of the yellow metal. but
have found a nugget that eclipses
them all. My strange find is none
other than real mummified Indian
girl. This wonderful thing was found
sealed up in a canoe-Shaped coffin, the
containing casixet having been depos-
tied more than 100 years ago in the
crotch of an enormous cedar tree of
dense foliage.
The coffin, if such it may be called,
consists really OF two canoes, the
smaller one, which contains the body,
having been covered by a closely-fr-
ting larger one placed bottom up, and
the whole besmeared with cement
more than an inch in thickness. This
cement resembles a hard, dry pitch,
quite impervious to air and water.
Before the curious receptacle could
be removed from it's arboreal home we
had to cut down a fir tree which must
have grown from a sapling after the
noe-coffin was placed in position.
This was clearly evident from the fact
that one end of the caSket was badly
damned and tightly Wedged in be-
tween the fir tree and one of the trunks
OF the forked cedar.
The fir tree was over thirty inches in
diameter three feet from the ground.
and we counted 127 annual growth
rings on the face Of the stump. How
long before the sprouting of this fir
tree loving hands had laid away the
dead girl is, of course, all conjecture.
The ancient charnel tree really COM
! prised three trunks of nearly equal
size; thus. it will be seen that the cas-
ket had stable, and enduring resting
place in the triform crotch.
After the fir had been felled and Ia
ken away, a good deal of chopping and
saving had to be done before the cas-
ket could be removed from its perch,
since. on account of the growth of the
cedar trunks. it was held in a vice
like grip and its sides were deeply
indented by the slow pressure it had
for years sustained. The whole was
at last safely lowered to the ground
from a perpendicular height Of at least
| twenty-five feet. and there is every
reason to believe that the casket must
have been gradually raised one-third
of this distance through the century S
growth of the main trunk which sup
ported the crotch
have spoken of this coffin as be-
ing made up of two canoes, since it is
we'll known that our early Puget
sound Indians deposited their dead in
canoes resting upon the lower
! branches of wide spreading fir or ce-
dar trees. But the present instance
is case widely different. Here we
| are at least fifteen miles from the
nearest stream or other body of water
navigable for even Chinook dugout
| Besides, it is plain that the casSet and
| its cover We're never intended for ca
noes, since they are barely long enough
and wide enough to subserve the pur-
pose for which it would seem they
were so deftly fashioned long years
ago, a burial case for the dead.
To open the coffin our only recourse
was to saw off a lid all the wav around
as the cover fitted tightly and the ce.
ment in the seams was harder than
| the wood itself Immediately under
the lid there was thick, soft layer
of packing of finely picked cedar bark
! much resembling oakuH, just such a