1886.] ^ i [Gatschet. 



these disputed terms came from Nancy, who had more opportunity to see 

 Micmacs in St. John's than Mary March. 



Ir> our comparative list No. 2, most of the terms do not rest upon 

 radical affinity, but merely on apparent or imaginary resemblance. In 

 publishing his comparative list, Mr. Latham did not at all pretend to prove 

 by it the affinity of Beothuk to Algonkin dialects ; for he distinctly states 

 (p. 453) : " that it was akin to the (languages of the) ordinary American 

 Indians rather than to the Eskimo ; further investigation showing that, of 

 the ordinary American languages, it was Algonkin rather than aught else." 

 In fact, no real affinity is traceable except in dog, bad and moccasin, and 

 even here the unreliable orthography of the words preserved leaves the 

 matter enveloped in uncertainty. 



The suffix -eesh and the plurals in -ook are perhaps the strongest argu- 

 ments that can be brought forward for Algonkin affinity of Beothuk, but 

 compared to the overwhelming bulk of words entirely differing this can- 

 not prove anything. In going over the Beothuk list in 1882 with a clergy- 

 man thoroughly conversant with Ojibwe, Rev. Ignatius Tomazin, then of 

 Red Lake, Minnesota, he was unable to find any term in Ojibwe corre- 

 sponding, except wobee white, and if gigarimanet, net, stood for fishnet, 

 gigo was the Ojibwe term for fish. 



The facts which most strongly militate against an assumed kinship of 

 Beothuk with Algonkin dialects are as follows : 



(1.) The phonetic system of both differs largely ; Beothuk lacks f and 

 probably v, while 1 is scarce ; in Micmac and the majority of Algon- 

 kin dialects th, r, dr and- c l are wanting, but occur in Beothuk. 

 (2.) The objective case exists in Beothuk, but none of the Algonkin dia- 

 lects has another oblique case except the locative. 

 (3.) The numerals differ entirely in both, which would not be the case if 



there was the least affinity between the two. 

 (4.) The terms for the parts of the human and animal body, for colors 

 (except white), for animals and plants, for natural phenomena, for the 

 celestial bodies and other objects of nature, as well as the radicals of 

 adjectives and verbs differ completely. 

 "When we add all this to the great discrepancy in ethnologic particulars, as 

 canoes, dress, implements, manners and customs, we come to the conclu- 

 sion that the Red Indians of Newfoundland must have been a race dis- 

 tinct from the races on the mainland shores surrounding them on the 

 North and "West. Their language I do not hesitate, after a long study of 

 its precarious and unreliable remnants, to regard as belonging to a sepa- 

 rate linguistic family, clearly distinct from Inuit, Tinne, Iroquois and 

 Algonkin. Once a refugee from some part of the mainland of North 

 America, the Beothuk tribe may have lived for centuries isolated upon 

 Newfoundland, sustaining itself by fishing and the chase.* When we look 



* Linguistic stocks reduced like Beothuk to a small compass are of the high- 

 est importance for anthropologic science. Not only do they disclose by them- 

 selves a new side of ethnic life, but they also afford a glimpse at the former 

 distribution of tribes, nations, races and their languages and ethnographic 

 peculiarities. 



