140 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. IV. 



Fig. 128 can be adduced as a further evidence of that power of imita- 

 tion which I have more than once quoted as one of the 

 characteristics of the tribes under study, especially the 

 Carriers. Finger-rings,* it is hardly necessary to say^ 

 were unknown among the primitive Denes ; but they 

 no sooner became aware of their existence among the 

 whites than they set upon fabricating them with what- 

 ever material at their command. One of the results 

 Fig. 128. ^^,^g ^Yic ring sketched above which has been found 



here, Fort Saint James. 



IRON IMPLEMENTS. 



Whether hematite was known to the Western Denes prior to their 

 contact with European civilization cannot well be ascertained at the 

 present time. It would seem highly probable that it was among all the 

 tribes but the Carrier, which to-day has no other word for " iron " or iron 

 ore than that used for " knife." Even among the Tse'kehne, who call a 

 knife />i's and iron tsa-tsone (beaver-dung), it is very doubtful if they ever 

 subjected hematite to any treatment calculated to reduce it to the shape 

 of a working tool. Yet I think I am warranted in asserting that iron 

 implements have been known and used even among the Carriers for at 

 least two centuries, that is one hundred years before they had heard of 

 the whites. The memory of the appearance of the first iron axe at this 

 place (Stuart's Lake Mission) has been kept vivid to this day by the 

 descendants of its original possessor. Their narrative, when shorn of a 

 few excrescences, I believe to be historically true, inasmuch as names of 

 persons and of localities, together with minute particulars connected 

 therewith, are freely mentioned. Their veracity is made still more 

 apparent by the genuine and unbroken genealogy of the present chief of 

 this village up to the first possessor of the marvellous implement. A full 

 account of the deeds of the various personages introduced in the 

 chronicle might prove not uninteresting even to the general reader. For 

 the present I shall content myself with its initial chapter. The chief of 

 Stuart's Lake will be our narrator, 



" The first man {i.e. Carrier) who ever possessed an iron axe was my 

 grandfather {i.e. one of my ancestors). His name was Na'kwsl, and, 

 owing to his rank as one of the most influential notables, but more par- 

 ticularly on account of the great age he attained, he has remained famous 

 among us. He was so old when he died that his hair had turned yellow, 

 after having long been snow-white. He was a most irascible man and 



* La-tksl't?, "passed round the finger." 



