1896-97-] THE DEN^S OF AMERICA IDENTIFIED WITH THE TUNGUS OF ASIA. 2O3 



paragraph, the Western Denes observed no religious ceremonies. They 

 made no sacrifices, worshipped no deity, and had no definite ciiltus, 

 unless we dignify with that name the Shamanism of the Northern 

 Asiatic races which obtained among them. True, they vaguely believed 

 in a kind of impersonal and undefined Divinity, not quite pantheistic, 

 but rather more so than individual, almost co-essential with the celestial 

 forces, the cause efficient of rain and snow, winds and other firmamental 

 phenomena. They called it Yuttoere (that which is on high), in Carrier. 

 But they did not worship this power — they rather feared it and 

 endeavoured to get out of its reach, or, when this was impossible, to 

 propitiate it and the spirits who were supposed to obey it, with the help 

 and through the incantations of the nelhgen or conjurer. This shaman 

 was credited, when exercising his mysterious art, with the power of 

 controlling the coming or departing of evil spirits. Even when not 

 actually conjuring, he was believed to be able to kill by his mere will 

 any objectionable person. His services were called into requisition in 

 time of famine, to prevent tempests, procure favourable winds, hasten 

 the arrival of salmon and ensure its abundance, but, more generally, in 

 case of sickness, which they believed to be concrete (not unlike the 

 microbes of modern chemists), and always due to the presence or ill-will 

 of spirits." Elsewhere Father Morice says : " We find that the Navajos 

 and Apaches still hold to their superstitious beliefs and ceremonies, and 

 keep themselves aloof of any civilizing influence." 



The mythology, rites and ceremonies of the Apaches and Navajos are 

 very elaborate. Some of them are treated in the Fifth and Eighth 

 Annual Reports of the United States Bureau of Ethnology, by Dr. 

 Washington Matthews and Mr. James Stevenson. These tribes had 

 altars and sacrifices, but whether they sacrificed white dogs, as formerly 

 did the Dakotas, I have no present means of knowing. The eating of a 

 live dog by the Carriers in their lycanthropy looks like the degradation 

 of an original rite connected with the animal, and the almost universal 

 tradition that derives the Denes from a canine ancestor is too remark- 

 able to pass over. In his Three Carrier Myths, Father Morice gives 

 three such traditional stories, one of which is embalmed in the Dogrib 

 name. One of the Tungusi tribes was called " Indachun takurara Golo." 

 the region where dogs are kept. In a paper contributed to the Royal 

 Society of Canada, Father Morice has illustrated the propensity of the 

 D^nes to borrow foreign customs, and thus almost necessarily to lose 

 their own. It is, therefore, hardly begging the question to ask whether 

 the white dog sacrifice of the Tungus may not have been one of the 

 Dene rites that have fallen into desuetude in the course of years. 



