27 
Modern Decline 
Geretne and gidete, therefore, direct instruction in the everyday tasks 
and story-telling, were the two methods evolved or borrowed by the 
western Carriers to train their children in the newly established mode of 
life. By these two methods, century after century, they handed down the 
torch of their civilization. It was on its educational system, indeed, how- 
ever varied it might be in different places, that the strength and vitality of 
west coast culture largely depended. As long as this aboriginal education 
remained intact that culture flourished and spread. The western Carrier 
tribes had fallen wholly under its influence; and it had taken firm root 
among the eastern tribes. Even the Sekani to the north were adopting 
a typical clan system, with crests and privileges, maternal descent, and a 
division into nobles and commoners. But the times have changed again. 
Rifles and steel traps have diminished the supply of game and lessened 
the importance of hunting. Economically life has become more complex, 
more difficult. Old traditions and old ideas have been discredited, and old 
regulations and taboos that held sway for countless centuries have been 
ruthlessly flung aside under the new regime brought in by the white man. 
The young men no longer respect their elders; the girls stalk brazenly 
about, aping the manners of their white sisters, but without the guidance 
of a regulated home life and an unbroken code of conduct. The older men, 
unable to remould their minds, spend their days in a pathetic attempt to 
reconcile their traditional ideas and beliefs with the new ones so suddenly 
thrust upon them from without; or else they cling desperately to the old 
beliefs, justifying them with the new-born theory of a separate revelation 
to their ancestors long ago. So the communities are declining. “The old 
graveyards are small,” the Indians say, “but the new ones large and 
overflowing.” And it is not the changed economic conditions that are 
producing this decline, nor the new diseases introduced by the white man, 
but the weakening of the old social bonds of the community, and the 
breaking-down of the old educational system, without its replacement by 
another as adequate. 
