138 THANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. IV- 



to fall on their side. ' Thus it was,' they add, 'that those Indians secured 

 the copper mountain, and we have ever since been obliged to have 

 recourse to them for what we require of that metal to make bracelets for 

 our wives and daughters.' " 



The reference to this wonderful towering mountain of copper, fantastic 

 as it may appear, might perhaps be explained by the existence of the 

 monumental Pillar Rock on the shore of Graham Island, a sketch of 

 which will be found in G. M. Dawson's Report on the Queen Charlotte 

 Islands.* Even in prehistoric times, some Carriers had evidently visited 

 the Pacific Coast, as may be inferred from a few of their legends where- 

 in some peculiarities proper to that region are introduced with a tolerable 

 amount of accuracy. On the other hand, as most of their copper was 

 imported from the coast, it was but natural that, according to the custom 

 of primitive peoples of assigning a fabulous origin to extraordinary 

 objects, they should associate in their narrative the wonderful pillar-rock 

 with the no less wonderful yellow metal. 



I might point here to the adventures of a mythic Carrier, a sort of 

 wandering Jew, who underwent many a stirring experience on the Pacific 

 Coast while in quest of a stolen wife, and who is the first personage 

 mentioned as possessing copper. The fact that the possibly historical 

 data hidden amidst the details of that legend are interwoven with many 

 miraculous circumstances, would lead us to suppose that the knowledge 

 of that metal among the Western Denes dates back from a rather re- 

 mote epoch. 



Be this as it may, I have never met with more than five kinds of 

 copper objects of genuine Carrier or Tsi^Koh'tin manufacture. These 



Fig- 125. 



are the hair tweezers, the bracelets, the finger rings, the harpoon tips and 

 the dog collars. The hair tweezers f were originally of cariboo horn. 



They then consisted of two thin pieces of horn given the required shape 

 by means of heating, and tied together at one end with sinew threads 

 (fig. 124). The copper tweezers were of one piece and affected the form 

 represented in fig. 125. The object of both was to remove any super- 



* Montreal, 1880 ; plate ii. 



•*■ T'i3i-a7ita, " grebe- bill," a noun of the third category. 



