THE WESTERN DENES. 161 



above legend, that entrance to the abode of the shades is denied to 

 those who have not received the honors of sepulture (typified among 

 them by cremation) was common to most ancient nations, and is still 

 to be found among several modern barbarous people. 



But I perceive that I am becoming didactic when I intended to 

 content myself with the mere exposition of facts. Let us be brief. 



Metempsychosis was believed in by the Carriers and the Sekanais 

 and very likely by the two other tribes also, though I could not 

 positively aflirm this. It amounted in their estimation, to the regen- 

 eration of persons who had led a virtuous life and wei"e supposed to 

 be rewarded thei-efor by a new birth. Transformations into beings 

 of a lower order however, than that of their former condition, wei'e 

 repugnant to their psychological ideas. 



They also attached to dreams the same importance as did most 

 people of antiquity. It was while dreaming that they pretended ta 

 communicate with the supernatural world, that their shamans were 

 invested with their wonderful power over nature, and that every 

 individual was assigned his particular nagwal or tutelary animal- 

 genius. Oftentimes they painted this genius with vermilion on pro- 

 minent rocks in the most frequented places, and these rough inscrip- 

 tions are about the only monuments the immediate ancestors of the 

 present Denes have left as. 



XVIII. 



Closely related to a people's religious beliefs are their superstitious 

 observances, and, as a rule, the more the former have deviated from 

 original truths, the more will the latter be found to have developed 

 both in number and relative consideration. This is strictly true of 

 the Western Denes who, lacking even the primordial notion of a 

 Supreme Being, were encumbered with a multitude of vain obser- 

 vances to which they attached the greatest importance. I have 

 already in the course of this monograph incidentally hinted at some 

 of them. Yet, before bringing it to a close, I feel that I shall have 

 to add a few words on this subject. To avoid the tediousness 

 necessarily x'esulting from a long nomenclature of apparent trivialities, 

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