1892-93.] NOTES ON THE WESTERN DENES. 35 



Works and Implements unknown among the Western D^n^s. 



Before attempting to detail what our aborigines have or had of 

 , archsological ware, it may not be amiss to enumerate what they do not 

 have and apparently never had. 



Throughout the whole extent of their territory, no mounds, enclosures, 

 fortifications of a permanent character or any earthen works suggesting 

 human agency are to be found, nor is their existence, past or present, 

 .even as much as suspected by any Carrier, Tse'kehne or Tsi[koh'tin. In 

 the same manner, pottery, clay implements, perforated stones, mortars, 

 -ceremonial gorgets, gouges, stone sledges and articles of shell either plain, 

 carved or engraved, have to this day remained unknown among them. 

 They did formerly, and do still occasionally, use stone pestles. But for the 

 mortars common among natives of most heterogeneous stocks, they 

 substitute a dressed skin spread on the ground whereon they pound dried 

 salmon, salmon vertebrae, bones, etc. 



Such sweeping assertions may astonish those readers who have already 

 been informed by Dr. D. G. Brinton that among the Denes " utensils 

 were of wood, horn or stone, though the Takully women manufactured 

 a coarse pottery and also spun and wove yarn from the hair of the 

 mountain goat."* This statement is quite a surprise to me, inasmuch as 

 I supposed it was a fact well known to Americanists that no pottery of 

 any description existed among such north-western stocks of aborigines 

 as the Dene, the Tsimpsian, the Haida, the Kwakwintl, the Tlinget and 

 the Eskiijno. As for the spinning of the hair of the mountain goat Dr. 

 Brinton probably confounds the Carriers (his Takully) with the Pacific 

 Coast tribes which did and occasionally do make good blankets out of 

 that material.-f- 



I have also mentioned the mortars among articles unknown to the 

 original Denes. Therefore I must call attention to a statement of A. 

 Niblack in his valuable monograph on " The Coast Indians of Southern 

 Alaska " wherein he says : " These [mortars] were by some people 

 supposed to indicate that in early days these Indians ground maize as 

 did and do the hunting Indians of the tnterior."\ The italics are mine. 



* The American Race, p. 71. 



t A gentleman speaking de visu states that "yarn is spun from the wool of the mountain goat 

 (not the mountain sheep or big-horn) and is woven into excellent blankets which are highly 

 coloured and ornamented." (Notes by Mr. J. C. Callbreath in G. M. Dawson's "Notes on the 

 Indian tribes of the Yukon District" etc., reprint, p. 6). But this statement applies to the 

 Tha^than division of the Nah'ane, not the Carrier tribe. 



J The Coast Indians, etc., in Ann. Rep. of the U. S. National Museum, p. 281 ; 1890. 



