368 
men, and ])erfor]n other miracles that were beyond the power of the 
lay Indian. The sub-tribes that lived nearest the Tsimshian adopted 
the secret cannibal society of the coast tribes, and linked it with the 
superstition of an invisible, intanf>;ible force, dwelling in the moun- 
tains, that struck down its victims without warning and made them 
subject to periodic dementia. All the Carrier believed in reincarna- 
tion, and in an afterlife for the soul in a shadowy underworld, or in 
some far-away land in the west; but the doctrine was held too lightly 
to affect the daily current of their lives, and the average Indian felt 
that his career would come to a close with the burning of his body 
on the funeral pyre.^ 
Many epidemics, of European origin, have assailed the Carrier 
since the end of the eighteenth century, and the decline in population 
they initiated has continued to the present day. The tribe, reduced 
in numbers from 8,500- (in 1780) to about 2,000, has been confined 
to reserves within its old territory, wliich is now traversed by a trans- 
continental railway. European settlement has revolutionized the old 
mode of life. Fewer and smaller slioals of salmon ascend tlie rivers 
each year, and deer, caribou, and beaver have become mucli scarcer. 
With their fishing and hunting restricted, the Carrier have taken to 
petty farming, but they lack the farmer’s love for the soil, and work 
without hope or energy. They lack, too, aptitude and training for 
the mechanical and clerical tasks that modern industry may require 
of them, and as labourers they ai’e less patient and steady than Euro- 
pean workmen. Some of the younger men cut railway ties in winter, 
or trap the fur-bearing animals that linger in the remoter and more 
mountainous districts. But the Carrier do not understand the com- 
plex civilization that has broken like a cataract over their lieads, and 
they can neither ride the current nor escape it. The white settlers 
around them treat them with contempt,'^ and begrudge them even the 
narrow lands the government has set aside for them. So they will 
share the fate of all, or nearly all, the tribes in British Columbia and 
disappear unnoticed within three or four generations. 
1 For good flo.sfiiption.s of tlio peculiar funeral rites of llie Cfuricr, and the sufferings of widows, 
See Cox: Op. cit., )). 387 ff, and Harmon: Op. cit., p. 216 ff. 
Mooney: Op. eit., p. 27. 
3 On the Skcena and Bnlkley livers, as in some other parts of Eritish Columbia, a white man will 
not walk beside an Indian, but marches in front of him, unless, of conr.se, the two men are hunting 
together. 
