The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-03-11

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 each individual being distinguished from
 the others by the colors of the sacks.
 The Chinese will undergo any privation
 to have good funeral. The Alaskan In dians do likewise, They take what they
 have and borrow money from their
 friends to spend upon the funeral of a
 relative. They put his favorite posses
 sions on the grave, and clothing and bed ding alongside the coffln After the fu- neral is over they give great feast Tn
 honor of the deceased, and the food they eat is supposed to nourish the spirit or the dear departed as 1t goes to the other world. They differ from the Chinese in that they seldom bury the dead in mounds. Tn southeastern Alaska it rains so much that the ground is always wet and the people put up as vaults litle houses of wood set upon poles. The soil of many of the islands is too shallow for graves. and a cemetery may consist of scores of such little houses, each not larger than a dog kennel.
 Burial vaults of this kind are to be found in the interior. I saw many of them on my way down the Yukon. In some cases they covered the top of a hill. The houses were painted in all the colors of the rainbow, and some had rude crosses of wood or of iron pipes. screwed together. rising above them. Practically
 all of the Indians are now Christians but their old superstitons are mixed with their new religion, and it is sometimes hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. At Fort Yukon I photo- graphed cemetery not far from the mis- sion station. Here the dead were buried in the ground, and each tomb marked with board painted white, while each collection of graves was surrounded by a fence of bright-colored palings.
 In southeastern Alaska a curious sur vival of the old customs is to be seen in the totem poles which formerly stood before each house and often over the graves of the chiefs and others These totem poles are not tombstones nor idols, and they were never regarded as such by the Indians. They are tribal emblems. crests or coats-of- arms, and the natives are as proud of them as the nobility of Europe are of their emblems of heraldry. The Indian can read totem pole as easily as you read this newspaper. He knows just what each sign means, and where the tribal signs end and the indi- vidual signs begin. The totem in front or a house tells him who lives there and also the story of their ancestors Simi- lar crests are used on baskets, mocca- sins and in carvings of wood, stone and copper; and If native had letterhead, he would probably print some of these signs at the top of the sheet.
 During my stay at Sitka I visited the Sheldon Jackson museum, which has many relics of early Alaska. One of it's former curators says that the totem pole was invented by the Haida Indians, and that it was of three different kinds. One kind was erected in front of house. ho1 10 of diffarant animals. and represented the totems of a family and their relatives Another totem pole was called the death totem. This was sometimes a mortuary post which con- tained the ashes of the dead and it was sometimes erected over the grave. third class of totem poles was put up by the Haidas as monuments of remarka ble events that had taken place. The last illustrated legends and other stories It was a record of history, and the story was told by combinations of figures or carvings-a sort of picture writing, as it were. The Haidas were divided into three classes; the rich the middle class and the slaves. The slaves were never allowed to erect poles in front of their dwellings, and the higher the pole, as a general rul. the richer and more aristocratic the owner.
 tte lOLciil pOlcb dDOot tlC o"CiAHoS of the Indians range in height from that of man to that of four-story house. They are carved out of solid tree trunks, and some of the larger ones are valued at several thousand dollars apiece. Many of them are beautifully carved and their ugliness is that of design, rather than execution. Most of the carvings are those of animals and birds, and each figure means something. The house poles indi- cate to which of the two great families of the Indians the inmates belong. These families cover southeastern Alaska. They are known as the Eagle and the Crow. Fla oh has it's subdivisions. which are shown by subtotems. To the Eagle fam fly belong the subdivisions of the Bear, Wolf, Shark, Whale and others; and to the Crow family belong the Seals, Frogs. Salmons and Beavers. There are numer- ous other subdivisions, but they all be- long to the Eagles and Crows.
 According to the unwritten law of these Indians, a husband and wife cannot be of the same tribal family. Miss Crow must always expect to marry a MT. Eagle. al- though her husband may belong to any one of the subdivisions of the great Eagle family. It is perfectly proper for her to unite with a Shark, Whale, Wolf or Bear, for they all go back to the Eagle family, but she cannot marry Salmon, Seal, Frog or Beaver, who descend from the Crow. This prevents the intermarriage of