82 MASKS AND I.AHRETS. 



As is well known, this race has reached a more than ordinary stage 

 of culture, and promiscuous rights in the unmarried females had be- 

 come, at the time of their discovery by the whites, to a great extent 

 eliminated from their social code, though in certain contingencies not 

 extinguished. Among their Iunuit neighbors it prevailed up to a recent 

 date, and the theory is still held by them, in spite of their partial civil- 

 ization by the Russi in missionaries, though not openly put in practice. 



The labret (formerly a slender bone or wooden pin, now generally of 

 silver) among the Tlinkit now means, and has long meant, maturity 

 only, and chastity in young girls is (away from civilized influences) a 

 matter of high importance, to which there is recent testimony of a re- 

 liable kind. The marriage of a girl was followed by the substitution of 

 a larger plug, which was gradually enlarged, and typified the power r 

 privileges, and respect enjoyed by the real head of the family. This 

 practice has now gone out of date entirely, 1 owing, no doubt, to the in- 

 fluence of the adverse opinion of the whites upon the younger people 

 of the tribe. 



In none of these people does development of culture seem to have 

 arrived at that stage where a religious significance would attach itself 

 to the rite or to the symbol of it. It is for this reason, it may be sup- 

 posed, that the labret appears only on those masks which were used in 

 social amusements, jollifications, and, so far as I have observed, on 

 none of those used in incantations by the Shamans or those indisputa- 

 bly connected with the exercise of some religious or mystic rite. For 

 the same reason it would be aud is absent from those images or carv- 

 ings having such a connection among the Northern races, and from most 

 of the Mexican stone carvings. 



Were the practice coincident with the distribution of certain race- 

 stocks, it would have less significance. It is its occurrence on certain 

 orographic lines, among people of nearly every American linguistic 

 family when located in such vicinity ; its absence among kindred 

 branches geographically otherwise distributed, and the geographical 

 relations of the Hues along which it is found, which gives it its impor- 

 tance. 



Deferring speculations in regard to the origin or cause of this state 



1 In regard to labrets. among the Haida women, Dr. George M. Dawson, writing in 

 1878, states that "Until lately the females among the Haidas all wore labrets 

 in the lower lip. * Only among the old women can this monstrosity be now 



found in its original form. Many middle-aged females have a small aperture in the 

 lip, through which a little beaten silver tube of the size of a quill is thrust, project- 

 ing from the face about a quarter of an inch. The younger women have not even 

 this remnant of the old custom. The piercing of the lip was the occasion of a cere- 

 mony and giving away of property. During the operation the aunt of the child 

 must hold her. The shape of the Haida lip-piece or stai-eh was oval. Among the 

 Tsimpsean and Stakhin-kwan (Indians of Port Simpsou and Stikine River Tlinkit) 

 it was with the former more elongated and with the latter circular. (Dawson on the 

 Haida Indians, in the Report of Progress for 1878-'79, Dominion Geological Survey,. 

 Montreal, 1880, pp. 108, 109 B.) 



