■*6 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. IV. 



All these differences in type and material are suggestive of what 

 appears to be a well established fact, namely that the Western Denes 

 had no fixed standard in view when engaged in the manufacture of their 

 adze-blades. Any stone of sufficient hardness and consistency was 

 probably picked up, and after a rough blocking off, was given as sharp 

 an edge as the material was susceptible of acquiring by means of the 

 least possible exertion. No attention whatever seems to have been 

 paid to the details and no regard manifested for the elegance of the 

 implement. 



This remark applies to adze-blades of genuine Dene origin. Bat the 

 Carriers, especially the more prominent members of the tribe, possessed 

 much finer axes of which fig. 8 is a fair example. This is a thoroughly 

 polished stone axe. In shape and material it is typical of all the 

 polished implements of that class. They are, as a rule, of a greenish 

 gray rock identified by Dr. G. M. Dawson as fine felspathic slate 

 or falsite. Although they were extensively used among the Western 

 Dt^nes, it would hardly be consistent with truth to credit the latter with 

 their manufacture. Indeed I am rather inclined to believe — and this is 

 borne out by the declarations of living aborigines — that, in so far at 

 least as the Carrier tribe is concerned, most of them were imported from 

 among the neighbouring tribes. The Carriers of the old stock were 

 exceedingly poor workmen, and their old men are unanimous in 

 asserting that their best axes were bartered from the Tse'kehne and 

 the sea-coast Indians. It is therefore quite possible that the implement 

 above figured had an extraneous origin. 



Fig. 9. 

 All these various types of axes were hafted to a handle generally of 



