1892-93.] NOTES ON THE WESTERN D^NES. ly9- 



CHAPTER XII. 



Monuments and Pictography. 



A search for " monuments " among such a primitive people as the 

 Dene cannot be but unproductive of satisfactory results. Indeed, 

 throughout the whole territory of both the TsijKoh'tin and the Tsekehne,. 

 not a single work is now extant which could, with any degree of 

 appropriateness, be classed under that head. Even such as may now be 

 seen among the Carriers are — barring funeral monuments — exceedingly 

 scarce. All of them may be reduced to two distinct categories : wooden^ 

 carved monuments, and painted or drawn monuments. Hence the two- 

 divisions of this chapter : carved monuments and pictography. 



Carved Monuments. 



Genuine carved monuments are to-day very few, and seem to have 

 always been so among the Carriers. Indeed so scarce are they that every 

 one of those now extant will easily be illustrated herewith. I shall pass 

 over thetotemic columns of the Hwotso'ten which are still in a good state 

 of preservation, for the reason that their carving and erection were the work 

 of their exogenous neighbours, the Kitikson, whose nearer village stands 

 hardly three miles off Those monuments are merely witnesses to the 

 influence exercised by outsiders over a very unartistic race, and the 

 custom of erecting them had not been adopted by the main bulk of the 

 Carrier tribe. This cannot be said of the famous commemorative 

 mortuary columns so common all over the North Pacific Coast, and 

 which had been appropriated as far inland as the boundaries of the 

 Ts6'kehne territory. All of these have long disappeared, with the 

 exception of the two herewith represented, which I sketched ten years 

 ago at qrak, a village site among the Nutca'tenne, the population of which 

 is now extinct. These columns are a further corroborative evidence of 

 my thesis, viz., that the Dene race has no eye for the beautiful. 

 Compared with those of the Coast Indians, they stand in the relation of 

 an undeveloped embryo to the matured being. As is well known among 

 Americanists, such works served as depositories for the few remaining 

 charred bones of the deceased, and were erected in close proximity to the 

 village. The two specimens figured below are rather plainer than the 

 average mortuary column of the Carriers since, according to my 

 informants, the totem crest of the deceased was generally carved in. 



