90 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



stream canneries have reduced the annual runs. But fish are still taken 

 with nets, now woven of machine thread, and with steel hooks and 

 flies. Fishermen ply the lake in dugout canoes which are frequently 

 powered by outboard gasoline motors. A few men are beginning to 

 build planked boats after the white man's models. 



Except for their continued reliance on hunting and trapping, the 

 Carrier are scarcely distinguishable in material culture from many 

 of their white neighbors. Log cabins have replaced their ancient 

 bark houses and are furnished with beds, tables, chairs, and stoves. 

 Metal pots and pans are standard kitchen equipment, although 

 excellent birchbark vessels are still made for home use as well as for 

 trade. Clothing comes from the store. Moccasins are still popular, 

 but rubbers are worn over them in wet weather. 



In social features the Carrier are little different from the white 

 man. Native songs, dances, and folklore, though surviving to some 

 extent in neighboring communities, have practically vanished. The 

 Indians regularly attend the Catholic church. Each morning my in- 

 formant walked 4 miles to mass and returned home before my 

 arrival. The Carrier language is spoken by all Indians but the syllabary 

 is known only to a few old men. Others read and write Carrier with 

 English letters learned at school. 



Word having come of an Indian mummy that needed rescuing 

 from an island west of Ketchikan, Alaska, I continued on to the 

 coast. A brief visit was made to the Carrier and Tsimshian Indian 

 villages and fishing stations (fig. 86) near Hazelton. The Tsimshian, 

 living on the lower Skeena River, have a full-fledged totemic art 

 that still may be seen on the totem poles at Kitwanga (fig. 87) and 

 on the totemic grave stones (fig. 88) in the Hazelton cemetery. 



From Prince Rupert, the railroad terminus on the coast, I went 

 by steamer to Ketchikan. Lloyd Bransford, of the United States 

 Forest Service, who discovered the mummy site, kindly accompanied 

 me on a trip to recover the burial materials. We chartered a seaplane 

 and, in an hour and a half, flew the distance that would have re- 

 quired several days by boat. We found several box burials (fig. 89) 

 of the early historic period. One of the bodies was excellently pre- 

 served, probably because of desiccation. It was an adult male, 

 dressed in buckskin and wrapped in a woven cedar bark blanket, his 

 hair braided into many small queues and daubed with red paint. 

 Without disturbing him, we removed his box, a coffin of adz-hewn 

 cedar planks inlaid with shell, to the plane. As it would not fit inside, 

 it was lashed to a pontoon (fig. 90) where it rode dizzily back to 

 Ketchikan. 



