IN THE NORTH 51

It would be difficult to imagine a set of simpler, more
unsophisticated and honest people. As Father Morice
has written in one of his earliest works, among the
Tsé’kéhné ‘‘a trader will sometimes go on a trapping
expedition leaving his store unlocked, without fear of
any of its contents going amiss. Meanwhile, a native
may call in his absence, help himself to as much
powder and shot or any other item as he may need;
but he will never fail to leave there an exact equivalent
in furs.’”*

As to the Babines, they are much less pliant and
more conservative of their old ways than the two
aforesaid tribes. Because of their proximity to natives
of Tsimsian parentage, who, in course of time, have
lent them most of their ancestral customs, they are
very much attached thereto—which means for
Catholics very difficult to convert to real Christianity.

While they respect the priest, nay, entertain for
him a fear akin to superstition, as they deem him some
sort of a higher medicine-man, they would not do
away with their own jugglers, or sorcerers, were
passionately fond of the potlatch® and concomitant
evils, and, as to morality, they too often would adhere
to a woman only as long as they did not meet one more
suited to their taste. It is useless to say that such
dispositions were not much conducive to the tenets
and ethics of the Christian religion. Hence incessant
battling and fighting and thundering on the part of
our missionary. On the occasion of his visits, they
would indeed promise all he wanted, but forgot their
word as soon as he had turned his back.

Things went on without much amelioration for quite
a few years, until his superior, the Rt. Rev. Bishop

4 Notes archeological, industrial and sociological on the Western

Dénés, p. 19; Toronto, 1893.
° For an explanation of this famous public feast see Chapter VI.