14

a

have no fishing rights in that place. They sometimes visit Bear lake still,
and occasionally Takla lake. The number of the band is unknown; in
1923 it appeared to contain about eight families.

The T'seloni band amalgamated with the Sasuchan or Bear Lake band
when Fort Grahame was established, and a new band of breeds, known to
the Tseloni and Sasuchan Indians as Otzane,! now occupies its old territory a
on Fox and Kechika rivers. The leader and creator of this band was a i
man named Davie or David, the son of a French-Canadian trapper and |
a Sasuchan mother. Marriage with a Tseloni woman gave him hunting
rights in the old T'seloni territory, where he raised a family of four
daughters. He selected husbands for them with great care; one was a 2
Kaska Indian, the second a Sasuchan Sekani, the third a half-breed, with 4
a Scotch father and Kaska mother; the origin of the fourth, now dead, is 5
unknown. Another family of breeds, probably kinsfolk of Davie’s wife,
joined the band, which in 1924 numbered forty individuals. Davie wielded
the authority of a Hebrew patriarch. He kept his party in its hunting
grounds aloof from all settlements except for two or three weeks in the
early summer when he led them to a trading post, either Lower Post on
the Liard or Fort Grahame on Finlay river; and at the posts he camped
away from other Indians lest the craving for an idler and more luxurious
life should sap the energies of his people and induce some of them to
remain. Thus, when he visited Fort Grahame in 1924 he camped on the
opposite bank of Finlay river, and departed as soon as he had disposed
of his furs. His band was remarkably free of the diseases that have
attacked the surrounding Indians; the adults were well clad, the children
clean and healthy. As hunters and trappers their reputation was unsur-
passed in the whole of British Columbia. But Davie, the leader, was an
old man in his seventies, and none of the younger men seemed capable
of taking his place. White trappers and prospectors were already invading
their hunting grounds, and isolation would soon be impossible. So this
attempt to create a new and independent tribe could only prove abortive.

The separation of the Sekani from the Beaver, and the creation of
these two new bands within modern times, throws an interesting light on
the manner in which new bands and even tribes may have arisen in the
distant past. The Beaver, under pressure from the Cree and the early
fur traders, adopted a new culture and lost their feeling of kinship with
the western members of their group. These western members, the Sekani,
had already developed new contacts with Carrier and other tribes, and
the formidable barrier of the Rocky mountains assisted a cleavage that
was already developing through outside impulses. The levelling power
of white civilization has prevented the Beaver and Sekani from becoming
markealy distinct, but the parallel case of the Beaver and.Sarcee shows
what might have happened if the white man had delayed his coming for
another century; for the Sarcee, who separated from the Beaver group

1 The Gitksan and western Carrier Indians often apply the term Otzane to Fort Grahame.