372 ACCULTURATION IN SEVEN AMERICAN INDIAN TRIBES

and rarely came in contact with the White population. The
initial contact was definitely not traumatic. There seems to have
been not the slightest physical conflict with the Whites. The
Chilcotins, for example, met the full brunt of an expanding,
money-mad White population. Settled in good ranching country,
and almost in the heart of the caribou gold fields the Chilcotins
were soon overwhelmed by the Whites. Smallpox, venereal dis-
ease, and wars with the Whites quickly decimated the population.
The Carrier villages along the Fraser River, in the direct line of
the advancing traders and gold prospectors, never recovered from
the first brutal impact of the Whites. Today, at least on the
surface, the Fraser River Carrier are little different from poor
White settlers. |

The Catholic missionaries of the Oblate of Mary the Im-
maculate, a French Catholic order, followed closely upon the fur-
traders. From the Alkatcho Carrier account, the first Catholic
priest they met some sixty years ago converted them quickly and
easily to Catholicism. They had already heard of the missionaries
from their Kluskus neighbors, whose conversion had preceded
their own. An account of this first meeting was obtained from
only one informant (about fifty-six years of age):

Father Morice came when I was a small boy. He came with an inter-
preter and three horses. He showed this Catholic business. He made
camp some little way off. Some old men went over to see the White man.
The old men came back and said, “It’s a priest, he got big talk.” We
had heard from a long way about a priest. Now he came. An interpreter
came and told us to go on the other side just a little way. Everyone came
to the tent and sat outside. The White man sat inside. Then he came out
and talked. “This people will all be Catholic by and by,” he said. Then
he talked a little bit and showed that Catholic business and then he
went back. He told everybody to go to Kluskus next June. We did that.
The priest was there. It was not Father Morice. He made me a Catholic.
He put that water on my head, and gave me the name Charlie. I was
too young to know then.

When they next met the priest at Kluskus, he appointed a
village chief, a captain, two watchmen for the church, and two
policemen. The Carrier approved of these appointments and ap-
parently accepted the authority of these men.

The Alkatcho Carrier country is at present suitable only for