118 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

himself at their hands that they ‘are characterized by such unbounded hospi-
tality, as to be ever ready to share with their fellow-creatures, whether white
or red men, the last morcel of food they possessed?.”

The fact is that, as a rule, the Dénés are more hospitable to people
of their own race than the whites usually are to unknown wayfarers. Nevertheless,
owing probably to the state of penury which may be said to be chronic with
the northern tribes, it is an implied understanding that he who gives shall
receive some kind of compensation, either then and there, or on a similar
occasion. Do ut des, is the rule with practically all the northern Dénés. On
that account it would hardly be proper to call them generous, though they
usually affect the greatest free-handedness, and the most insulting term in
their whole vocabulary is the epithet stingy.

What about their sense of gratitude? There is hardly a more widespread
fallacy than the notion that this is a sentiment totally unknown to the Indian.
Harmon writes: “J never knew a Carrier to be grateful for a favour bestowed
upon him?” Another fur trader, Ross Cox, has also the following anent the
southern portion of the same tribe: “We have repeatedly afforded relief to
numbers who were dying from starvation or disease, and who, but for our
assistance, would have perished; yet ingratitude is so strongly implanted in
their savage nature, that these very individuals, in periods of plenty, have
been the first to prevent us from taking a salmon®.” Long before, Hearne
had gone as far as to state that the Northern Indians “seem to be entirely
unacquainted even with the name of gratitude+.” And yet Mackenzie relates
of a young Déné whose wound he treated: “I was so successful that about
Christmas my patient engaged in a hunting party and brought me the tongue
of an elk: nor was he finally ungrateful. When he left me I received the
warmest acknowledgments both from him and his relations with whom he
departed for my care of him®.” On the other hand, the account of the Carriers
and Chilcotins by Ross Cox, or rather his informant Jos. McGillivray, is
marked by gross exaggerations and not a few inaccuracies.

The ways of the Indian are totally different from those of the Caucasian.
The former is not verbally demonstrative in his gratitude, and, as to the
sentiment itself, though it certainly exists within him, we must not forget that
with children this is liable to vanish much sooner than with white adults.

Their morals.

As to the morals of the Dénés while still in their aboriginal state, their
standard varied considerably according to the tribes. Some, like the Sékanais

1 “Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Arctic Ocean’, vol. Il, p. 35.
2 Op. cit., p. 240.

3 “Adventures on the Columbia River’, p. 326. New-York, 1832.

* Op. cit., p. 307.:

* “Voyages from Montreal’, vol. Il, p. 12.