Carrier

Carrier, Athabaskan-speaking North American Indian tribe centred in the upper branches of the Fraser River between the Coast Mountains and the Rocky Mountains in what is now central British Columbia. The name by which they are most commonly known derives from the custom in which widows carried the ashes of their deceased husbands in knapsacks for three years. The name Takulli (“People Who Go upon the Water”) is of obscure origin and may well be a misunderstanding of the name Dakelh. Although their original territory was significantly inland from the Pacific, traditional Carrier culture shared many of the customs of the Northwest Coast Indians.

The Carrier were semisedentary, moving seasonally between villages and hunting and fishing camps. Southern Carrier people lived in semisubterranean houses; northern Carrier people made gabled houses of poles and planks, much like those of their coastal neighbours. Both types of dwellings were communal.

Carrier social organization was also much like that of the coastal tribes, though without the slavery commonly practiced among those neighbours. It included elaborate class structures composed of nobles and commoners, usually with complex obligations to marry outside one’s lineage, clan, and house. Each subgroup had exclusive rights to its territory, and encroachments by other subgroups constituted grounds for reprisal or compensation. The Carrier practiced the potlatch, the custom of large gift-giving feasts or ceremonies for the recognition of such significant events as marriage.

Carrier economics relied chiefly on the plentiful river salmon, which the people supplemented by hunting various kinds of local game and collecting wild plant foods. They exploited resources from the abundant woodlands and had a woodworking tradition that created highly decorated utilitarian items such as canoes, weapons, and cooking vessels. Carrier craftsmen carved pillars, commonly referred to as totem poles, depicting the crests of noble-status individuals and lineages, as well as spirit-beings from religion, myth, and legend. Carrier religious beliefs centred on a great sky god and many spirits in nature which were contacted through dreams, visions, ritual, and magic. They also believed in both reincarnation and an afterlife.

Early 21st-century population estimates indicated more than 1,000 Carrier descendants.