TRANSACTIONS 



THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE 



THREE CARRIER MYTHS. 



CO 



a V^ ^ '^ . ^ With Notes and Comments. 



^ SClB^^**^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^" Father Morice, O. M. I. 



\Read 2nd November, fSpj.^ 

 INTRODUCTION. 



In point of length and general diffusion, the most important of the 

 legends current among the Carrier Indians is that which records the 

 g adventures and many deeds of gstas, their national culture hero. But 

 it cannot be described as a Carrier legend : it is merely a Carrier versior» 

 of a myth which is the original property of the Pacific Coast Indians^ 

 Barring some details due mainly to local colouring, its chief incidents are 

 identical, and its hero is but a counterfeit of the Yetl of the Clingit, the 

 Ni-kil-stlas of the Haida and the Kaneakeluh of the Kwakwiutl. Hence, 

 as my studies have so far had for objective the distinctive traits of 

 strictly Dene life and the morphology of the Den^ languages, I do not 

 acknowledge myself open to the charge of negligence in not having, to 

 this day, collected more than fragments of that story. 



It were tedious, as well as unprofitable, to repeat here what I have said 

 in my former essays of the mixed origin of the Carrier sociology and 

 mythology^. It must suffice to remark that better opportunities and 

 prolonged investigations have not changed by the length of one iota my 

 convictions in that respect. Even one of the three legends which I now 

 introduce to the lovers of folk-lore, the second, has but a dubiously 

 D^n^ origin. I find no equivalent of it in the collection of the " 7'ra- 

 ditions indiennes du Canada Nord-Ouesf published in 1888 by the Abb^ 

 E. Petitot^. Yet its details and intrinsic features would seem genuinely 

 Carrier. 



With the exception of the third, which is widely diffused among 

 different Dene tribes, none of them has, in the eyes of the natives, any 

 paramount importance. If I single them out among the others which I 



*Are the Carrier Sociology and Mythology indigenous or exotic? Trans. Royal Soc^ 

 Canada, Sect. II, 1892. 



'Alen9on, E. Renaud de Broise, Place d'Armes, 5. 



