NORTHERN INTERIOR OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

valuable, and its possession was the means of considerably
enhancing the notable’s prestige among the entire Carrier
tribe.

At that time it was customary for those Indians to
migrate, at the approach of every winter, to a place where
firewood was plentiful enough to supply the needs of the
different families grouped around their chiefs or ¢ewnezas,
and to erect, for use during the cold season, large huts of
slender logs with spruce-bark roofs and doorways covered
with brush. One day, when some of Na’kweel’s family
were cutting boughs for the entrance to his lodge, the line
which fastened his adze to its handle getting loosened,
the blade suddenly dashed off and fell among the branches
already cut. After searching among these, it became
apparent that the instrument must have dropped down in
the snow, where it could not be found until the services of
the medicine-man had been resorted to.t

Physically, Na’kwoel was short and very corpulent, a
feature quite rare among the western Dénés. As to his
psychological disposition, a little episode is to this day
related, which goes to illustrate the man and his times.

As he was, one winter day, on the ice of Lake Green-
wood, busy cutting up some cariboo, which friendly
neighbors had killed for him, footsteps on the frozen
snow told him of the approach of a native from Natleh,
Fraser Lake. Immediately seizing his bow and arrows,

1. The native chronicler goes on to relate how that shaman, who enjoyed
a wonderful reputation even among his peers, had a personal totem or familiar
genius, in the shape of a skunk-skin, which he wore hanging from his neck.
This, during his trances, he used to press in his hands, when it emitted a
piercing scream. On the occasion of Na’kweel’s loss, in the midst of dancing,
singing and beating of drums, the shaman squeezed his skunk-skin, upon
which it cried as if the animal had been alive, and, detaching itself from the
neck of the medicine man, it made for the heap of boughs, wherein it plunged
and remained for a while. When it came back, it bore in its mouth the lost
adze blade ! Io