1892-93.] NOTES ON THE WESTERN DlENilS. 1 93» 



end being, when necessary, fastened with a string to the adjoining part 

 of the lodge covering. The smoke escapes through the interstices 

 between the converging poles left uncovered at the top. To guard 

 against snow, rain or adverse winds, an additional piece of skin is sewn 

 on the outside from the apex of the conical covering down to some 

 distance, while its free side is secured to a long pole planted in the ground 

 close by. This appendage is utilized as a shutter wherewith the top 

 opening of the lodge is partially or entirely covered, as the state of the 

 weather may suggest. 



The summer lodge of the Tse'kehne has sometimes two entrances, and 

 in this case the outward covering generally consists simply of two 

 blankets or skins stretched over the frame poles, one between each door> 

 The upper half of the cone is thus left uncovered. 



Summer and winter, the fire is started right in the centre and, instead 

 of the wooden tripod used among the Blackfeet to suspend their kettles,* 

 the Tse'kehne prefer a stick reaching horizontally at the proper distance 

 above the fire to two opposite poles of the frame to which it is fastened. 



Carriers, Tsi^Koh'tin and Tse'kehne, nowadays more generally use, 

 during their summer travellings, either cotton tents, or shelters composed 

 of three or four sticks thrust slantingly in the ground, over which a sheet 

 of cotton or canvas is spread. The latter style of shelter was probably 

 the only one known among them prior to the introduction of European 

 textile fabrics, save that, of course, a moose skin replaced the canvas or 

 cotton sheet. 



Of course the child of the forest, when in his primitive state, can boast 

 the possession of no artificial means of reckoning time or measuring long 

 distances. But Dame Nature provides him with a seldom failing standard 

 measure in the shape of the sun, the course of which is familiar to him, 

 no matter how far he may have swerved from beaten paths. Long distances 

 are determined by the number of camps, and shorter ones by the position 

 of the sun in the heavens. The sun serves also as his watch by daytime,, 

 and its bearings are easily taken in by the native mind. After it has left 

 his pine-clad mountains to illuminate unknown worlds, the aborigine 

 again looks up above to ascertain how long he will be deprived of its 

 beneficent rays. The Great Bear then becomes to him the hands of a 

 God given clock, and the distance it has travelled around its axis, the 

 polar star, over the dial which we call the heavens, is very seldom, if ever, 

 misreckoned. The Western Denes are familiar with a few constellations 

 which are, as among us, called after mythic personages ; but none is 



*Rev. E. Legal, loco citato. 



