369 
TSETSAI'T 
Bordering botii Tsiinshian and Carrier on the north were the 
Tsetsaut Indians, who seem to have numbered about 500 at the 
beginning of the nineteenth century, but could reckon only three 
survivors at its close. They claimed the iiort Invest shore of Portland 
inlet, perhaps also the eastern shore of Behm canal, thence north 
almost to the Iskut river, and east across the Nass and tSkeena rivers 
to Bear lake. Although their territory touched the sea they were 
really an inland people, like all the Athapaskan tribes of Canada, for 
they lived on the land game and on the salmon in the rivers, and 
resorted to the salt water only for the oolakan run in the early spring. 
Tsetsaut, “inland people,” was a term applied by the Tsiinshian 
to every Athapaskan tribe in the interior of British Columbia. The 
true name of what we know as the Tsetsaut tribe cannot now be 
recovered. The Tahltan called them Black Bear people, because, 
unlike tlie neighbouring peoples, they frequently wore clothing of 
black bear skin. They had many feuds with the Tahltan, particu- 
larly with an extinct branch of that tribe, the Lakuyip, that hunted 
around the headwaters of the Skeena and Stikine rivers. Their chief 
enemies, however, were the Tlinkit, and the Tsiinshian of the Xass 
river; it was among the last-named jieople tliat the remnants of the 
tribe survived as slaves. 
The culture of the Tsetsaut was a blend of Athapaskan and 
Pacific Coast traits. Their principal food, besides fish, was the meat 
of the marmot, their dwellings peculiar lean-tos, sheatlied with bark 
on roof and sides, that bore a slight resemblance to the underground 
houses of the Interior Salish and Chilcotin. Their canoes were 
covered with bark — cedar bark instead of birch bark — probably 
because the latter was scarce; and they used cooking vessels and 
baskets of bark or of woven siiruce roots. In all these features, and 
in part of their folk-lore, tliey resembled other Athapaskan tribes. 
Common among Athajiaskan tribes, too, but rare or unknown on the 
Pacific coast, were the customs of a mother-in-law avoiding any meet- 
ing with her son-in-law, and of parents dropping their earlier names 
and calling themselves father or mother of such and such a child. Yet 
the social organization of the Tsetsaut, and about half of their folk- 
lore, were borrowed directly fi’om the coast tribes. Like the 
