NORTHERN INTERIOR OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

gradually driven into the recesses of that. lofty range,
where they had acquired their name, and finally to the
west thereof, by a section of their own tribe now con-
stituted into a distinct branch of the great Déné family,
the Beaver Indians, who for many years had been at
enmity with their parent stock. Of late years an element
had forced itself into the conflict which was telling terribly
against the Sekanais proper. “ Detonating bows” due to
strangers in the east, who came nobody knew whence,
were playing havoc among the less favored mountaineers,
who, on several occasions, were slaughtered like sheep in
the most treacherous manner. Parties of Beavers armed
with guns would play with the fright inspired by their
weapons, and, discharging them in the midst of the un-
sophisticated Sekanais, would kill them to the last.

Thus it came to pass that no mountain fastnesses could
afford them shelter or anything like real security. More-
over, as fright is contagious, the terrible deeds of the
Beavers went to the ears of the far-away Carriers, who to
this day have remained persuaded of their innate lust for
carnage. So much so, indeed, that hardly a summer now
passes without some parties of the Western Dénés running
home with the intelligence that bodies of Beaver Indians
are lurking in the woods, evidently bent on slaughter.

To some of our readers an explanation of this reversal
of fortunes is hardly necessary. It was but the natural

statement which we had never noticed until some time after the foregoing
had been written) : ‘‘ They [the Sekanais] are a small part of a tribe who, but a
few years since, came from the east side of the Rocky Mountains” (‘‘ An Account
of the Indians Living West of the Rocky Mountains,” p. 265, New York reprint).
Why their numbers were so insignificant the reader will soon see. Another
proof of that author’s wonderful sagacity is his remark to the effect that ‘‘ the
people who are now called Si-can-nies, I suspect, at no distant period,
belonged to the tribe called Beaver Indians.” (/dzd, zbzd.)

1. The true name of that tribe is 7sé’éhne, ‘* People-on-the- Rocks,” z.¢.,
the Rocky Mountains. 30