26 GEORGE M. DAWSON ON THE 



spoken iu the country. His father spoke this language, hut as he was but a little boy 

 when his father died, he remembered only a few words. He could not say whence his 

 people originally came, but after endeavouring to get him to think this out unsuccessfully, 

 I asked him if the old language was like that of the Tshilkotin (Tinneh) to the north, and 

 he said it was the same. After much thought, he gave me the following words as belong- 

 ing to the old language, and even of some of these he did not appear to be quite sure : — 



Sus, grizzly bear. TH-ta-â-nl' , knife. 



Tsc-a-kai', woman. Ti-pl, mountain sh«ep. 



Nootl or t^t-hutz, man (alternative Si-pai', lake trout. 



words). Notl-ta-hat'-se, wild currant? 



Klos-lio, rattlesnake. SU-l-tshl-i , spoon. 



Sis-yâ-ne, big deer of old ; either Pin-a-U-Tl-l-ltz' , look out ! or take care. 



wapiti or caribou. 



Of these words, that for bear is identical with the Tshilkotin, and that for woman is 

 nearly identical with the word obtained by me with the same meaning from the Nakoon- 

 tloon sept of the same tribe. 



The following interesting account of the first knowledge of the whites obtained by 

 the Northern Salish, and more particularly by the Shuswaps, is also due to Mr. J. "W. 

 Mackay, who states that, in compiling it, he has endeavoured to bring together the dif- 

 ferent narratives of the event which he has heard. As in the previous case, I retain his 

 orthography unchanged : — 



Pila-ka-mu-lah-uh was a Spokane chief connected, through his mother, with the Oka- 

 nagans of Penticton (lower end of Okanagan Lake) and the Shuswaps proper of Spallum- 

 sheen (between the head of Okanagan Lake and Great Shuswap Lake). One of his wives, 

 the mother of N-kua-la, was a Similkameen woman of the Tinneh type, which is clearly 

 shown in the physique of her descendants to the i^resent day. In the father's time, the tribes 

 living west of the Eocky Mountains and near enough to the Great Plains to engage in the 

 hunting of the buffalo, were in the habit of crossing the mountains every summer for 

 this purpose. They banded together for mutual protection against the Blackfoot people 

 on these expeditions, the Spokane, Kulspelm and Kootauies generally forming a single 

 party, with which, however, the Nez Percées and Cour d'Alainés were sometimes united. 

 On one of their expeditions these Indians met a party of Canadian trappers or Coureurs 

 des bois at the eastern end of Hell's Gate Pass, near the site of the present town of 

 Helena (Montana). The western Indians fraternized with these men, who joined Math 

 them in their hunt, and towards autumn, when the western Indians set out on their 

 return, they w^e accompanied by two of the white men named Finan Macdonald' and 

 Lagacé. These two men were guests of the Colville chief, who took them to his winter 

 quarters at Kettle Falls, on the Columbia, at the north end of the Colville A'alley. Mac- 

 donald and Lagacé espoused the two daughters of their host and afterwards had children 

 by them. 



' Macdonald is mentioned by Ross Cox as having been in tlie employment of the Northwest Company in charge 

 of a post among the Flatheads in 1812, so that the events here narrated must liave occurred about the beginning 

 of the century. See " The Columbia River," by Ross Cox, Vol. i, p. 172. 



