MORICE] FUR TRADER IN ANTHROPOLOGY 71

hereditary noblemen or petty chiefs and scarcely any festivals of
any kind. Indeed it is rather difficult to repress a smile at the
mere implicit mention of such institutions in connection with
such a primitive people.

These existed among their western neighbors, the Carriers, but
they were borrowed sociological items, and since I must again

insist that the mourning customs associated with Carrier cremation are the ©
result of diffusion from the Tsimshian,*2

I may be allowed once for all to give my proofs therefor, an evi-
dence which any student can gather on the spot.

The original Déné were the most uncultivated, nay anarchistic,
people one can imagine, the most authentic type of the savage—
with no government or even social organization to speak of.
Indeed, I would fain see in their nomadic bands the living relics
of primeval society: groups of unsophisticated human beings
seeking their living, without any kind of public restraint, in the
recesses of the woods of the depths of the lakes and rivers, under
the benevolent eyes of their elders.

And here I fully realize that I run counter to the contention of
able and respectable scientists with regard to the priority of
patriarchy and matriarchy. I do not pretend to have the monop-
oly of good sense on a subject which is ever debatable. I merely
put on record the conclusions I have reached through my studies
of the Déné stock.

It is this in a few words. The father of a family being naturally
its support and mainstay, it no less naturally devolves upon him
to direct and protect its members. These, when married in their
turn, will continue to look up to him for guidance and advice,
and will derive whatever social rights may fall to their lot from
their close relationship with him. Hence groups of related families
under the grandfather, great-uncle, or anyone chosen by the same
appear to me the first units of primitive society.

At any rate, such was, before the advent of the whites, the
state of the Déné divisions east of the Rocky mountains, including
the Sékanais who are an eastern tribe even when living west of that

#® McLeod, ibid., 569.