Yamhill, it
became apparent that the number of men at Yaquina Bay would have to
be reduced, so in view of this necessity, it was deemed advisable to
build a block-house for the better protection of the agents and I
looked about for suitable ground on which to erect it. Nearly all
around the bay the land rose up from the beach very abruptly, and the
only good site that could be found was some level ground used as the
burial-place of the Yaquina Bay Indians--a small band of fish-eating
people who had lived near this point on the coast for ages. They
were a robust lot, of tall and well-shaped figures, and were called
in the Chinook tongue "salt chuck," which means fish-eaters, or
eaters of food from the salt water. Many of the young men and women
were handsome in feature below the forehead, having fine eyes,
aquiline noses and good mouths, but, in conformity with a
long-standing custom, all had flat heads, which gave them a distorted
and hideous appearance, particularly some of the women, who went to
the extreme of fashion and flattened the head to the rear in a sharp
horizontal ridge by confining it between two boards, one running back
from the forehead at an angle of about forty degrees, and the other up
perpendicularly from the back of the neck. When a head had been
shaped artistically the dusky maiden owner was marked as a belle, and
one could become reconciled to it after a time, but when carelessness
and neglect had governed in the adjustment of the boards, there
probably was nothing in the form of a human being on the face of the
earth that appeared so ugly.

It was the mortuary ground of these Indians that occupied the only
level spot we could get for the block-house. Their dead were buried
in canoes, which rested in the crotches of forked sticks a few feet
above-ground. The graveyard was not large, containing probably from
forty to fifty canoes in a fair state of preservation. According to
the custom of all Indian tribes on the Pacific coast, when one of
their number died all his worldly effects were buried with him, so
that the canoes were filled with old clothes, blankets, pieces of
calico and the like, intended for the use of the departed in the
happy hunting grounds.

I made known to the Indians that we would have to take this piece of
ground for the blockhouse. They demurred at first, for there is
nothing more painful to an Indian than disturbing his dead, but they
finally consented to hold a counc