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ing to Cox, their western brothers and sisters, Carriers and Chil- cotin, ‘are fond of European clothing.’

On the other hand, the neighbors of these aborigines of Tsim- shian, Kwakiutl or Tlingit parentage are just as remarkable for their extreme conservatism and stubborn adherence to the ways and institutions bequeathed by their ancestors. Catholic mission- aries could never make an impression on them, because they stoutly refused to modify these ways and forego their more or less pagan ceremonies.

Now when contact is established between two such dissimilar families, one weak and conscious of its inferiority, the other conceited and strongly attached to the least of its ancestral ob- servances, which of the two is likely to copy? Which one will serve as a model for the other?

As a consequence of such contact: 1st, the Babines and Carriers, to neglect other tribes, have partly abandoned their nomadic life to settle in fixed villages; 2nd, they have exchanged their tra- ditional patriarchate for the matrilineal form of government pre- vailing among their western neighbors; 3rd, they have adopted all the consequent institutions flourishing among the latter: hereditary petty chiefs, or noblemen (feneza’) wearing peculiar ear-rings, the potlatch and attendant festivities, ceremonial dances and theatrical representations, as well as the cremation of the dead—all formerly unknown to the other Déné of the north.

Nay more, if we study closely the march inland of these various institutions, we will not fail to remark that the quantity of the same borrowed by the Déné was in exact proportion to the proximity of the heterogeneous races stationed on the Coast, or immediately east of it. Thus:

1st. The River Babines (of the Bulkley valley), some of whom practically had daily intercourse with the Tsimshian of the Skeena, in the course of time adopted all of their customs, including not only the gentes and petty chiefs, cremation and potlatching, but even the wearing of labrets by the women, the ear-pendants of the chiefs and the erection of totem poles in front of their communal lodges.

45 Adventures on the Columbia River, 2: 377.

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