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