TAIT
431
TAKKALI
and spiritually, and was at times meanly calumniated.
But after death her name soon became venerated in
Rome. Her body was several times transferred, and
rests finally at S. Crisogono in Trastevere. The
Erocess of her beatification was begun in 1863, but as not yet been finished.
SlLVESTRO dell" Addolorata, Vita de la ven. serva di Dio Anna-Maria Taigi (Rome, inon: Cvlixte de ia Providence, Vie de la ven. Anna-Mari.: ~ . ■ ■ I.. Tournai, 1877), tr. Smith SuGO (London. ISr.^ ;■'■ de la vied' Anna
Maria-Taigi (Paris, 1854); H . , rcn. serm di Dio,
Anna Maria Taigi (Rome, ISd ■ [ . , /,a ven. servante de
Dieu, Anna-Maria Taigi (5tb cu., J'lins, iviilj.
G. LlVARTOS Oliger.
Tait Indians (Tc-U, "Those up river"), a collec- tive term for those members of the Cowiclian tribe, of Salishan linguistic stock, occupying the Lower Fraser River, Y.ale District, British Columbia (Canada), be- tween Nicomon and Yale, where they border upon the Thompson River Indians. They have several small reserves within the jurisdiction of Fraser River agency, of which the principal are Cliehalis (116), Cheam (9.5), Hope (79), and Yale (76). From per- haps 30C)0 souls a century ago they have decreased, through smallpox, disease, and former dissipation, since the occup.ation of the countrv by the whites, to 932 in 1S90 and 578 in 1910. The gospel was preached to them by the Oblates, beginning with Fr. Charles Grandidier in 18G9, at which time the whole Cowichan tribe was sunk in the lowest stage of degradation from drimkcnness and association with depraved whites, drunken murders being of almost nightly occurrence. Within two years they were completely reclaimed, all Christians, sober and law-abiding; all due, according to Protestant testimony, "To the honest and perse- vering labours of a poor Catholic priest who receives no salary, and is fed by the Indians" ("The British Colonist", Victoria, B. C, 26 March, 1861, quoted in Jilorice, "History of the Catholic Church in Western Canada", II, 312). Of the whole number all but seventy-five are now Catholic, the others being Anglican or Methodist, and are offi- cially reported as law-abiding, industrious, strictly moral, and generally temperate. Their principal ed- ucational centre is St. Mary's Mission, on the Fraser River, established in 1861 under the management of the Oblates assisted by the Sisters of St. Ann, be- sides a smaller and more recent mission school at Yale. Of the Cowichan language, which is spoken by a number of bands about Lower Fraser and on the oppo- site coast of Vancouver Island, very little has been recorded beyond some vocabularies by Tolmie and Dawson. A brief sketch of the ethnology of the tribe group is given by Boas in "Reporta to the British Association for the Advancement of Science". In their primitive customs and characteristics they re- sembled the cognate Songish, Squamish, Shuswap, and LiUooet.
Boas, First General Report on Indians of British Columbia in Reports to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (London, 1889): Idem, Indian Tribes of the Lower Fraser Hirer (Inc. ciJ., 1890); Annual Reports of the Department of Indian Affairs of Canada (Ottawa): MoRicE, History of the Catholic Church in Western Canada (2 vols., Toronto, 1910); Tolmie and Dawson, Comparaiite Vocabularies . . . of British Columbia in Geological and Natural History Survey of Canada (Montreal, 1884).
James Moonet.
Takkali (more properly Takhehl, plural Tak- HEHLNEI, the hybrid name by whirh the Carrier In- dians of t he iiort hern interior of Brit ish Columbia were originally made known by the fur traders, who some- times comprised under that denomination the Chil- cotin and the Babine tribes as well. The Carriers proper inhabit mf)re or less permanent villages dis- seminated from the forks of Lake Tatla in the north to .Vlexandria in the south, or from l)ri° 1.5' to ,52" 30' X. lat. They are subdivided into a number of septs, based mostly on differences in speech, all of which can be reduced to two main branches: the
Lower and the Upper Carriers, the line of demarca-
tion running between Stuart and Fraser Lakes.
They number to-day some 1614 individuals, dis-
tributed in twelve villages. W'e may remark that
under the fostering care of the missionaries, the popu-
lation of some of those villages has of late years been
constantly on the increase. This cannot be said of
their southern neighbours, the Chilcotins, a rather
restless horde now temporarily settled along the Chil-
cotin valley. As late as 1864 thej' still numbered
fully 1500 souls; but attacks of small-po.\ and other
causes have reduced their population to some 450.
When the Babines in the north were first visited by
the whites, those amongst tliem who claimed as their
home the valley of the lake (mIIccI ;ifter them boa.sted
alone a population of at lc:ist 2iliK). Together with
their congeners on the Bulkley Ri\cr they do not now
number more than 530 souls.
Socially speaking, the Carriers and the Babines fol- low matriarchy, succession to titles and property be- ing among them along the female line. They are in a way ruled over by a number of hereditary petty chiefs, who alone own the land on which their co-clansmen hunt for the benefit of their respective headmen. A number of clans divide the tribes, which in the eyes of the natives are the source of a relationship at least as binding as regular consanguinity is with us. Before the advent of the missionaries the main duty of these chiefs, or noblemen, was the giving of noisy feasts called "potlatches" on the North Pacific coast, which consisted in the public distribution, to the members of clans different from that of tlie donors, of eatables, dressed skins, blankets, and other pieces of wearing apparel. These bounties usually celebrated the de- mise of some individual. They had to be scrupu- lously reciprocated as soon as a similar occasion pre- sented itself to the recipients of the same. The Chil- cotins knew also of those "potlatches", but among them inheritance followed patrilineal principles, and their chiefs had more power because less numerous and unconnected with the clan system. W'ith them the son of a chief succeeded his father, instead of a nephew taking the place of his maternal uncle as among the Carriers and Babines. Likewise, while the two last-named tribes cremated their dead, the Chilcotins buried them, generally on hills or knolls. The members of the three tribes believed in the im- mortality of the soul and followed the religious sys- tem outlined in the article D6n£s, where the reason for the names Carrier and Babine will also be found. The first contact of the Carriers with the whites dates from 1793; the Chilcotins first met them in 1808, and the Babines in 1812, while the first notions they ob- tained of the religion of the newcomers were derived from the Catholic servants of the traders among them. In 1842 the Carriers received their first missionary in the person of Rev. M. Demers (q. v.), and four years later Father J. Nobili not only retraced his itinerary but also evangelized the Babines. The good seed dis- tributed by these apostolic men could not, however, come to full germination before the spring of 1873, when a permanent mission was established by Father J.-M. Le Jacq, O.M.I., on the b.anks of Lake Stuart, whence the Carrier and Babine villages were periodi- cally visited. The less sedentary Chilcotins had al- ready received a few visits from this priest since 1S67, the date of the foundation of St. Joseph's Mission, some distance from their lands. The Carriers, espe- cially, proved easily amenable to Catholic ways of thinking, and in the course of years all of them were fully converted to the Catholic religion. Such was the state of affairs among them when A. G. Morice left the north after a residence of nineteen years among the Carriers. Though as religiously inclined, the Babines took more time to fully attain the moral standard prespnt<Ml to their appreciation. To-day all those aborigines are Catholics, and the conduct of
