used continuously by them for any great length of time.
One of the strange sights that Lewis and Clark saw about this Wahkiakum village of Cathlamet were the burial canoes. The last of these were not destroyed until late in the fifties, and when Lewis and Clark came they were very numerous about the village and in the Columbia sloughs between the Elokomon and Skamokawa Rivers. The low, deep moan of the Columbia River bar, forty miles to the westward, is clearly heard at Cathlamet, and it may be due to this that these burial canoes placed high in the Cottonwood and Balm of Gilead trees were always placed with their sharp-pointed prows to the west. With every paddle in place, with his robes and furs about him and all his wealth of beads and trinkets at his feet, the
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