362 
berries, but salmon ascemlcd their rivers so irregularly that the 
Chilcotin bought much of their supply from the Shuswap of the Fraser 
river and from the Bella (\)ola Indians across the mountains. To 
the latter they sold flried service- and soap-berries, paints of different 
colours, the furs of various animals, and, in more modern times, 
snow-shoes; to the 8huswap a few furs, but mainly dentalia shells 
and woven blankets of floats’ wool furnished them by (he Bella Coola. 
Trade naturally led to other interchanges until the culture of 
the (diilcotin became a blend of elements from several different 
sources. They learned from the Sliuswap to weave rush mats and 
coiled baskets with imbricated decorations, even to carry their babies 
in osier hampers instead of in the birch-bark cradles used by many 
Athajiaskan tribes to the northward. Some of them ]tointed the ends 
of their bark canoes to correspond with the sturgeon-nosed canoes 
of the Interior Salish and Kootenay, and s])ent the winter months 
in small, subterranean houses that differed only in size from the 
winter dwellings of the Shuswap. The Bella Coola supplied them 
with shell ornaments, head-bands of cedar bark to wear at dances, 
wooden boxes and trays for holding their food, and stone pestles for 
pounding their berries. Their clothing, however, resembled that of 
other Athapaskan tribes (moccasins, leggings, breech-cloth or skirt, ^ 
belt, robe, and cap); the majority preferred, even in the winter 
months, the Athapaskan rectangular, earth-covered lodge walled and 
roofed with bark or brush; and woven baskets weie not more common 
than the birch-bark baskets and water-pails typical of northern and 
eastern Canada. 
In their social organization the Chilcotin followed largely the 
Bella Coola. There were three or four bands in the tribe, each of 
•which subdivided its members into the three classes, nobles, common- 
ers, and slaves, and grouped the first two into clans. We know very 
little about these clans except that the most powerful was named 
the Raven, and that they reckoned descent through both the male 
and the female lines. Individuals obtained high rank by giving pot- 
latches, but in one or two banrls the chieftainship seems to have been 
hereditary. Boys and girls went into seclusion at adolescence, as 
usual, but the guardian spirits acquired by boys at tliis period were 
often determined by inheritance, owing to the influence of the Pacific 
1 It seems jirobable that, like the Carrier, they did not adopt tlie breeth-eloth iintLl the early 
years of the nineteenth century. 
