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TAREE “CARRIER MYTHS.
With Notes and Comments.

BY THE REV. FATHER MORICE, O.M.I.
[Read 2nd November, 1895.)
INTRODUCTION.

In point of length and general diffusion, the most important of the
legends current among the Carrier Indians is that which records the
adventures and many deeds of yYstas, their national culture hero. But
it cannot be described as a Carrier legend: it is merely a Carrier version -
of a myth which is the original property of the Pacific Coast Indians.
Barring some details due mainly to local colouring, its chief incidents are
identical, and its hero is but a counterfeit of the Yétl of the Clingit, the
Ni-kil-stlas of the Haida and the Kaneakeluh of the Kwakwiutl. Hence,
as my studies have so far had for objective the distinctive traits of
strictly Déné life and the morphology of the Déné languages, I do not
acknowledge myself open to the charge of negligence in not having, to
this day, collected more than fragments of that story.

It were tedious, as well as unprofitable, to repeat here what I have said
in my former essays of the mixed origin of the Carrier sociology and
mythology’. It must suffice to remark that better opportunities and
prolonged investigations have not changed by the length of one iota my
convictions in that respect. Even one of the three legends which I now |
introduce to the lovers of folk-lore, the second, has but a dubiously
Déné origin. I find no equivalent of it in the collection of the “ 77xa-
ditions tndiennes du Canada Nord-Ouest” published in 1888 by the Abbé
E. Petitot*. Yet its details and intrinsic features would seem genuinely
Carrier.

With the exception of the third, which is widely diffused among
different Déné tribes, none of them has, in the eyes of the natives, any
paramount importance. If I single them out among the others which I

‘Are the Carrier Sociology and Mythology indigenous or exotic? Trans. Royal Soc.
Canada, Sect. II, 1892.
2Alencon, E. Renaud de Broise, Place d’Armes, 5.