A Note on Extinct Fauna and Man

In the last issue of American Antiquity, Cressman and Laughlin describe probable artifacts in association with mammoths in the Williamette Valley, Oregon. This association reminded me of a queer detail picked up in Puget Sound, Washington.While giving incidental vocabulary, a Puyallup informant named one too many members of the local cat family: cougar, panther, mountain lion, and a fourth, lion. The Salish term for the latter, he explained, was currently used for the maned lion seen in zoos, etc., but had previously referred to a much larger animal with enormous teeth. In his boyhood, people had told of the ferocious attacks of this cat on children and adults, although actual encounters, he insisted, had ceased “long, long” before.