SS

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DENES. 73

Longevity and Commiscegenation.

Besides the above the Dénés have diseases peculiar to themselves, which
are induced by imagination, fear or superstition. I know of cases when other-
wise healthy individuals died, because they were sure to have seen in their
rambles through the woods a fabulous animal whose appearance is believed
to portend evil, and of others who were convinced that they were the victims
of the ill-will of persons supposed to be endowed with malefic powers. On
the other hand, I am almost as certain that some would have died, who
survived through the strong faith they had in my medical and other abilities.

The Dénés, especially those of the old stock, are generally long-lived.
Hence nothing could be less accurate than Brinton’s remark that in the north
few live beyond fifty’. The truth is that they age incomparably more slowly
than the whites, and a man of fifty is in the prime of life among them.
I have known a Carrier who, from the events he remembered, must have
been close on a hundred years old, and he died of an accident. Dr. Hrdlicka
mentions? a Navaho who was “slightly over a hundred years”. Nay, in their
legends people of that tribe estimate at 102 years the age of an old man?
Taya, whose portrait was taken after a severe attack of influenza which
changed considerably his personal appearance, was fully eighty at the time of
his sickness, and, on recovering therefrom, he continued to be one of the
best hunters of the Carrier tribe. Even at the present time, there are not a
few Babines and Carriers with great-grandchildren.

Halfbreeds are scarce among the Dénés. Of course, their physique de-
pends greatly on that of their parents. The offspring of a fair-complexioned
white and of a Carrier is usually quite handsome, while the children of a
dark-haired Canadian, for instance, will have almost the appearance of pure
Indians. The accompanying illustration represents a full halfbreed (Duncan)
with a quarteroon, the son of a halfbreed woman by a full-blooded Indian.

A mixture of blood, even with representatives of different but aboriginal
races, almost in every case improves the stock. George Sadi az is a power-
fully built man, half Carrier and half Tsimpsian, while Charlie Murdock is
also a pure Indian the son of an Algonquin father by a Sékanais mother.
The anthropologist will not fail to remark the difference in the cast of their
faces due in both cases to the physical characteristics of their maternal pa-
rents. The latter is married to a quarteroon Carrier; hence the more rounded
and fuller facies of his children.

The Déné halfbreeds are, as a rule, an agreeable set of people, very
religiously inclined, but weak in presence of temptation. They are notably more
prolific than the full-blooded Indians, and their children seem more healthy in
their infancy. (eetoedeen
«The American Race’, p. 70.

? “Observations on the Navaho”, p. 342.
* “The Early Navajo and Apache”, by Fred. Hodge (Amer. Anthropologist, July 1895, p. 224).