husband could dispose of an unsatisfactory wife. He could kill her by personal ill-usage,[2] or keep her to labor for means to purchase and support another wife, or as many more as his means and desires induced him to buy.[3] The general relations between the husband and wife among the native races in Western Oregon were that the husband should kill the game or catch the fish, as the subsistence was from game or fish. The dressing of skins for clothing, the weaving of rush mats for camp covers or for beds, the preparation of cedar bark for clothing, nets and ropes, and the digging of roots, gathering of berries, etc., were all left to the wife and the slaves at her command, if there were any. The husband and wife seemed to have separate property rights as to themselves, and on the death of either the most valuable of it, and often all of it, was sacrificed to the manes of the dead. Sometimes living slaves were bound and placed near the dead body of a person of importance in the tribe.[4] Under this custom, when a leading man like Chenamus, Chief of the Chinooks, died, the body was carefully swathed in cedar bark wrappings; his war canoe or barge of state was used as his coffin, and his second best canoe, if he had two, was inverted and placed over the body as a defense against the weather or wild beasts; a small hole was made in the lower canoe and it was placed in a slanting position to facilitate complete drainage. No money reward would induce an Indian of the Lower Columbia to enter and labor in a canoe that had been thus used for the dead. Thus the best and generally all the property worth notice was rendered useless to the living. The wife in such a case might be owner of slaves in her own right, or of a _business canoe_, and in some cases of a small canoe used on the Lower Columbia root gathering, or by the husband or sons in hunting water fowl. Such a wife becoming a widow— supposing her dead husband a chief, succeeded by a son by another of his wives, or by a brother, unfriendly and jealous of her influence,—would not be a totally helpless outcast. She would have the means of gathering her own subsistence. This, however, was above the common lot of native widows. The same custom of destroying the property of the dead prevailed amongst natives of the Willamette Valley when the American home builders first came; and it was a common sight to come upon a recently made grave and scare the buzzards or coyotes from feasting on carcasses of horses slain to the departed, the grave itself being indicated by the cooking utensils and tawdry personal adornments of the deceased. Under this custom there was no property left for distribution by the average native. A chief, living with thrifty care for his family, might leave slaves to be divided among his sons or daughters, as some few did, but often when the heirs were sons or daughters of different mothers bitter family feuds were a natural result, and the law of might decided. There