1894-95. ] THREE CARRIER MYTHS. 33

was thus translated up to the sky, and she it is whom we see every
morning under the shape of a big star. Her basket full of burning coals:
explains how it is that the star is so bright.

COMMENTS.

I think that it requires but little acumen to perceive the difference:
which exists between the present and the preceding stories. The purely
mythic character of the one is as clear as the legendary complexion of
the others. This remark applies more especially to the second part of
the latter narrative, which is altogether mythic or fabulous, while the
episode of the procreation of the hybrid brothers and sister might per-
haps be regarded as figurative of the mixed origin of the Déné stock.
Unless we choose to see in the representative of the canine gens and its
nocturnal visits to the maiden a counterpart of the Incubus, the male
demon who was formerly believed to consort with women in their sleep.
But the first hypothesis is much more probable and natural. Taken as
a whole and compared with the other American, and some Asiatic, races,
the Déné nation is of a relatively moral disposition, and the monstrous
union of the virgin with the old dog might be taken as symbolical of the
former intermarriages between the original ancestors of the Déné, who-
ever they may have been, and some immoral and dissolute race either in
Asia or on the coast of America.

Indeed, a particular Déné tribe, that of the Dog-Ribs!, owes its dis-
tinctive name to a similar traditional intercourse of a dog with a woman,
and the members of that tribe believe themselves to be the offspring of

that union. Shorn of a few repetitions and unimportant monologues,
their story is as follows :-—

A woman belonging to the tribe of the Yellow-Knives? was living with
her brothers when a beautiful stranger came from an unknown land,
whom she was made to marry, as so far she had persisted in remaining
single. As she awoke during the night she was surprised not to find
her husband by her side, but instead she heard a dog gnawing some
bones left on the hearth. As she had no dog, she was puzzled and was
curious to ascertain whence the canine had come. Fire was rekindled, but
no dog was seen. After some more rest, she again awoke to hear the
same gnawing in the dark, when one of her brothers threw his axe in the
direction of the noise. There was a great outcry, and after the fire had
been kindled again, a big black dog was seen lying lifeless, whereby she

1 An Eastern Déné tribe whose habitat lies between Great Slave Lake and Great Bear Lake.
? Tabitat east of Lake Athapaska.

3