MORICE] FUR TRADER IN ANTHROPOLOGY 81

Though I fail to see a “biography” in the mere fixing of a
woman’s nationality, I will not be so cruel as to begrudge him
that frail ground for satisfaction. To others I shall simply say this.

Because of the extreme simplicity of their mode of life, their
absolute lack of culture and their strictly nomadic ways,*° the
Sékanais are looked down upon as unredeemed savages by the
Carriers. Yet in some cases association with those despised
neighbors could have for the latter advantages the prospect of
which could open to them the ranks of Carrier society. Neglecting
what I have myself written on the subject, one will gather from
Harmon® the fact that the whole western country was sharply
divided into distinct hunting grounds, and will easily surmise how
very valuable were to people who practised potlatching, with its
attendant features of dressed skin, fur and food distributions, the
plots on which such resources were found and on which nobody
could legally encroach.

Now the Sékanais were exceedingly well provided in this respect
and most of those among them who chose to better their social
position by seeking the hand of a Carrier lassie were assured of
success on that score—the brothers of his bride becoming by
reason of such an alliance entitled to hunt on those grounds. This
was the great, one may almost say the only, excuse for unions
which would have otherwise been regarded in the light of mé-
salliances.

60 Tt was the contention of Mr. Henry W. Henshaw, in one of the first volumes of
this periodical (the seventh), that it is a fallacy to say that the Indians are nomadic.
“The term nomadic,” claims that writer, ‘‘is not, in fact, properly applicable to any
Indian tribe’’ (105; the italics are mine). What is then to be nomadic? According to
the Standard Dictionary, it is to have “no fixed abode.” But there has never been
among the*Sékanais not only a single village, but even a single house. Their bands are
continually on the move according to the migrations of the larger game on the flesh
of which they chiefly subsist.

So inveterate are their roving habits and contempt for any “‘fixed abode”’ that
they cannot stand the houses of the Carriers. Some of them would formerly congre-
gate at Fort St. James on the occasion of some great Christian festival, and would have,
of course, to accept of the hospitality of their Carrier friends. But after two or three
days stay there, they would break loose from their unwelcome captivity, and build to
themselves huts of boughs at the entrance of the forest.

O32, 2D),