363 
Coast customs. The clan held an elaborate potlatch at the funeral 
of a nobleman, distributed most of his possessions, and erected over 
his grave a wooden pillar carved to represent his crest. Yet the 
Chilcotin did not always bury their dead. Sometimes they cremated 
them, or left them on the surface of the ground under a pile of stones 
or brush. 
Thompson remarked that the Chilcotin were bolder and more 
restless than their neighbours, the Carrier and the Shuswap, and 
during the first half of the nineteenth century the tribe harl a bafi 
reputation for turbulence. Smallpox decimated it about 1862, and 
the remnants of the population settled down to ranching. Some of 
them moved to the vicinity of Alexandria, on the Fraser river, where 
they have merged with the Shuswap and Carrier. The majority still 
occupy their old territory, and the westernmost band still crosses the 
mountains each summer to visit the Indians at Bella Coola. Their 
total number probably does not exceed 450, a serious reduction from 
the 2,500 estimated by Mooney as the pre-European population, or 
the 1.500 estimated by Teit.^ 
CAKKIEH 
The Carrier lived directly north of the Chilcotin. in the valleys 
of the ui)j)er Fraser, Blackwater, Nechako, and Bulkley rivers, and 
around Stuart and Babine lakes up to the borders of Bear lake. 
Their name (English. Carrier; French, Porteur, said to be a trans- 
lation of the term applied to them by their eastern neighbours, the 
Sekani ) refers to their peculiar custom of compelling widows to carry 
on their backs the charred bones of their dead husbands. They had 
no common name for themselves, only names for the independent 
sub-tribes into which they were divided. In the nineteenth century^ 
however, they adopted for themselves the obscure title Takulli, 
bestowed on them apparently by Europeans. 
All the rivers in tlie Carrier country teemed with salmon during: 
the summer months, and the lakes contained abundant carp and other 
fish that the Indians could capture under the ice during the winter. 
As wdth the coast tribes, therefore, fish was the staple food throughout 
the year. When the snow^ was off the ground the Carrier gathered 
many berries and roots, and hunted caribou, bears, beaver, marmots, 
1 Mooney : Op. cil., p. 27. Teit, .J, : "The Slni.swap ” ; Mem. .\in. Mus. Nat. Hist,, vol, 4; Jesup 
Expedition, vol. 2, p, 761 (Nenv York). 
