CHAPTER IV

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE AND MATERIAL CULTURE

Mackenzie has left the following description of the Sekani whom he
met at the headwaters of Parsnip river: +

“They are low in stature, not exceeding five feet six or seven inches;
and they are of that meagre appearance which might be expected of a
people whose life is one succession of difficulties, in procuring subsistence.
Their faces are round, with high cheek bones; and their eyes, which are
small, are of a dark brown colour; the cartilage of their nose is perforated,
but without any ornaments suspended from it; their hair is of a dingy
black, hanging loose and in disorder over their shoulders, but irregularly
cut in the front, so as not to obstruct the sight; their beards are eradicated,
with the exception of a few straggling hairs, and their complexion is a
swarthy yellow. . . . (The women) are in general of a more lusty
make than the other sex, and taller in proportion, but infinitely their
inferiors in cleanliness. A black artificial stripe crosses the face beneath
the eye, from ear to ear, which I first took for scabs, from the accumulavcion
of dirt on it. Their hair, which is longer than that of the men, is divided
from the forehead to the crown, and drawn back in long plaits behind the
ears.”

The Sekani of the present day resemble in height the nearest Carriers,
males averaging 169:3 cm., females 157-8 ecm. Both tribes are slightly
taller than the coastal tribes of British Columbia, from whom the Sekani
differ also by their narrowness of head and sparseness of build, the latter
a consequence, probably, of their more active life, and greater privations.?
The narrowness of the head causes a lower cephalic index, bringing the
Sekani into the sub-brachycephalic group; the figures are males 79°38,
females 79:2. The combination of narrow head and lean features makes
the cheek-bones appear unusually outstanding, although actually both the
breadth and length of the face seem to differ little from those of tribes to
the westward. The nasal indices were, males 70-7, females 71-6, figures
slightly lower than those given for coast tribes, through a reduction, appar-
ently, in the breadth of the nose; but in this case a comparison with the
measurements of another observer is unsatisfactory because of differences
in technique and the difficulty of determining the nasion in living subjects.®

1 Mackenzie, Sir Alexander: Voyages from Montreal through the Continent of North America to the Frozen
and Pacific Oceans in 1789 and 1793; London, 1801, pp. 204ff.
ai 2 Many of the Fort Grahame Sekani in 1924 were distinctly undernourished, and suffering from skin and eye

iseases.

8 Detailed figures of Sekani measurements and a comparison with the Beaver, Chipewyan, and Cree Indians,
are given by Professor J. C. Boileau Grant, in Bulletin 81 of the National Museum of Canada. For the statements
in this paragraph I have compared my own measurements (in Grant’s report just mentioned) with those given by
Dr. Franz Boas for the coast tribes in ‘The North-Western Tribes of Canada,’’ Report of the British Association
for the Advancement of Science, 1898, pp. 628-683.

26665—34