1896-97-1 THE DfiNES OF AMERICA IDENTIFIED WITH THE TUNGUS OF ASIA. 195 



announcement of his death to all concerned by young men of another 

 clan who were rewarded for their pains, the singing and dancing of 

 a mercenary alien clansman, to the assembled mourners, meeting 

 for several nights. The remains were then provisionally placed under 

 a bark roof-like shelter, near which the widow and children dwelt in 

 a small hut of similar form. For two or three years the widow was the 

 slave of her husband's relations, and bewailed him. Then his chief 

 representative, having acquired much property, was prepared for the 

 cremation of what remained of the corpse. In view of a large assembly 

 the funeral pile was kindled, and attempts were made to burn the 

 widow, after which the property was given away in a potlatch. This 

 was the Carrier custom, but among the Sekanais it was different 

 " Supposing the deceased was an influential person, dear to the band, 

 they would hollow a kind of coffin out of a large spruce tree, and 

 suspend his remains therein on the forks formed by the branches of two 

 contiguous trees. Some instances are also recounted in which the 

 remains of such persons were closed up in a standing position in 

 the hollow trunk of a large tree while in its natural state. The lid or 

 door of these primitive coffins was usually formed of a split piece of 

 wood, which, when strongly laced with long switches of red willow, held 

 it to the trunk of the tree in its original shape." 



PECULIAR ARTS OF THE TUNGUS AND THE DENES. 



It has already appeared that the Tungus and the Denes equally made 

 use of porcupine quills and beads, or, in default of the latter, tubular 

 shells, such as the dentalium, in the ornamentation of their dress. The 

 snowshoe was common to both. This contrivance is, at least, as 

 old as the Christian era, for Strabo found it in the Caucasus. " The 

 heights are impassable in winter ; in summer they are ascended by 

 fastening on the feet shoes as wide as drumj, made of raw hide, and 

 furnished with spikes on account of the snow and ice." The toboggan, 

 or sledge, was also a Tungus vehicle drawn by horses and reindeer, but 

 more frequently by dogs, and not seldom by men or women. The 

 Russians classified the Tungus in relation to it, as Horse, Reindeer, Dog, 

 and Foot-going Tungus. This toboggan was called by the different 

 tribes natar, tolyoki, tolgoki, turki, sherche, and fara. By a strange 

 perversity, none of my vocabularies contain the Dene word for 

 toboggan, and Father Morice, in his Notes on the Western Denes, has 

 nothing to say regarding it. Mackenzie, referring to the Chepewyans, 

 as he calls them, remarks : " The sledges are formed of thin slips 

 of board turned up also in front, and are highly polished with crooked 



