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ing to Cox, their western brothers and sisters, Carriers and Chil-
cotin, ‘are fond of European clothing.’

On the other hand, the neighbors of these aborigines of Tsim-
shian, Kwakiutl or Tlingit parentage are just as remarkable for
their extreme conservatism and stubborn adherence to the ways
and institutions bequeathed by their ancestors. Catholic mission-
aries could never make an impression on them, because they
stoutly refused to modify these ways and forego their more or
less pagan ceremonies.

Now when contact is established between two such dissimilar
families, one weak and conscious of its inferiority, the other
conceited and strongly attached to the least of its ancestral ob-
servances, which of the two is likely to copy? Which one will
serve as a model for the other?

As a consequence of such contact: 1st, the Babines and Carriers,
to neglect other tribes, have partly abandoned their nomadic life
to settle in fixed villages; 2nd, they have exchanged their tra-
ditional patriarchate for the matrilineal form of government pre-
vailing among their western neighbors; 3rd, they have adopted
all the consequent institutions flourishing among the latter:
hereditary petty chiefs, or noblemen (feneza’) wearing peculiar
ear-rings, the potlatch and attendant festivities, ceremonial dances
and theatrical representations, as well as the cremation of the
dead—all formerly unknown to the other Déné of the north.

Nay more, if we study closely the march inland of these various
institutions, we will not fail to remark that the quantity of the
same borrowed by the Déné was in exact proportion to the
proximity of the heterogeneous races stationed on the Coast, or
immediately east of it. Thus:

1st. The River Babines (of the Bulkley valley), some of whom
practically had daily intercourse with the Tsimshian of the Skeena,
in the course of time adopted all of their customs, including not
only the gentes and petty chiefs, cremation and potlatching, but
even the wearing of labrets by the women, the ear-pendants of the
chiefs and the erection of totem poles in front of their communal
lodges.

45 Adventures on the Columbia River, 2: 377.

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