92 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

in cold weather. The usual supply of fringes, tassels, and coloured ornaments
served to conceal the seams in the garment.

In addition to this robe of furs — which occasionally took the shape
of a blanket of dressed moose skin — the women wore an apron twelve or
eighteen inches broad, reaching almost to the knees and made of a piece
of deer skin or, among the poorer Carriers, of several salmon skins. This
last material, though used quite extensively by the latter in the preparation
of leggings, mocassins and bags, was not appreciated when it was a question
of aprons worn over the bare flesh, as its roughness and lack of suppleness
rendered it far from pleasant to the wearer.

During the cold season both sexes, but more especially the women on
account of the outdoor work to which they were subjected, added to the
foregoing a sort of small blanket of undressed skin of any fur-bearing animal,
which covered their breast from the neck to the waist. This pectoral blanket
was kept in position by means of strings passing behind the neck and also
secured by the outer girdle round the waist. In olden times a swan’s skin
served an identical purpose.

When I first ministered to the spiritual wants of the Chilcotins, robes
of marmot or hare skins were still fairly common among a part of the tribe.
But, when of marmot skin, the robe was worn with the hair next to the body,
and its folds were gathered round the middle by means of a belt from which
hung beaver nails or teeth, old thimbles, beads or shells of brass cartridges,
which produced while walking a jingling sound dear to the native ear.

Among the Tscet’saut, or Dénés of Portland Canal, this robe is reported
to have been of bird skins in prehistoric times. The women of that band also
wore a short coat and jacket, both of which were of mountain goat skins!.

The leggings of the western Dénés were always of dressed skin, gene-
rally of moose or cariboo. They covered the legs in their whole length, and
were held in position by a string connected either with the outer belt or
with the girdle which retained the breech-piece. They were furthermore secured
below the knee by means of ornamental garters which, in later times, con-
sisted of cords plaited out of variously coloured yarn, with several pendent
tassels or woollen tufts at each extremity. These were originally worked with
porcupine quills by the young women, who would then present them to
their favourites of the sterner sex, so that the standing of a young Carrier
hunter among the unmarried females was determined by the number of
garters he wore.

" Cf. Tenth Report of the North-Western Tribes of Canada, p. 39. The ethnologist will
not fail to notice in the garments said to have been worn by the ancient Carriers and Tscet’saut
a significant similarity with the cloaks of the same material which the Russians found in general
use among the natives of the Aleutian Islands, when they discovered the same. Cf. “Account
of the Russian Discoveries” by W. Coxe, passim. London, 1787,