The Bertelson Suquamish Collection

Abstract

Ernest Bertelson began his collecting twenty or twenty-one years ago on a sandy spit on the former Suquamish Indian Reservation at Suquamish, Washington. Suquamish is on the west shore of Puget Sound almost directly across from Seattle and the spit lies south of the present Seattle-Suquamish ferry landing. On this same point of land, once stood the renowned Old Man House, largest aboriginal structure of the American Northwest. The bulk of the collection consists of chipped stone artifacts, varying in workmanship from beautifully finished points to crudely worked flakes and pecked cores. Some polished stone, a few bone pieces, and one piece of copper are also included. Mr. Bertelson moved away from Suquamish in 1944 and the collection, which has been kept intact, is now housed with his brother in Minnesota. By the summer of 1945 the spit was surveyed and divided into small building lots for the erection of a summer colony so that the possibility of obtaining further information is slight indeed.