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TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



[Vol. IV 



4. His successor was Kiuah, who made war and slaughtered hosts of 

 Lower Carriers. By a second wife he had 



5. Atsuj, a second son, who died five years ago, over one hundred 

 years old, since he remembered the arrival of Sir Al. Mackenzie's party 

 in the country. He left three generations of descendants. 



Reference has been made to a prehistoric iron pointed spear. Tradition 

 furthermore records the killing, in ante-European times, of 

 a cariboo with an iron or steel knife or dagger. This 

 happened on this lake, some 15 miles from here. Below, 

 the reader will also find figured a steel dagger which came 

 into the possession of the Carriers some no or 120 years 

 ago — their country was discovered in 1793. It was instru- 

 mental in killing several men and was originally much 

 larger. The handle was also of a different description, the 

 knife being one of a class of steel daggers called in the 

 dialect of the Babines f/ak-ttanisfs?r, or " rounded at the 

 end " (of the handle). It probably resembled the instru- 

 ment represented by fig. 108 ^ of Niblack's "The Indians 

 of Southern Alaska."* 



The presence of steel implements, even so early and 

 so far away in the interior of British Columbia, is not 

 calculated to disconcert the archaeologist, considering the 

 frequent intercourse the inland tribes had from time im- 

 memorial with the Coast Indians. Both Cook and Dixon ascribe the 

 introduction of such tools among the Coast tribes to the Russians whose 

 first recorded expedition on the Northern Pacific Ocean dates from 1740. 

 But Na'kwal's iron axe cannot evidently be attributed to the influence 

 of the Russians, since it had apparently reached this place long before 

 I. I. Behring's expedition was fitted out. Coast Indians must naturally 

 have been slow in parting with such valuable implements. Moreover it 

 should not be forgotten that not more than fifteen years before the 

 advent of the whites among the Carriers, iron tools were still so rare 

 among the Coast tribes that in 1779 a Captain Gray master of one of 

 the Boston trading vessels, is reported to have got at Nootka, on Van- 

 couver Island, two-hundred otter skins worth about $8,000 for an old 

 iron chisel If 



Fig. 129. 



* Ann. Report, National Museum, i88S. 



t Christmas No. of the Victoria "Colonist," 1891. 



