148 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [Vot. III. 
Mantchou, the Tongouse, the Mongul and the Samoyed.’* I do not 
speak of more recent and better known Americanists such as Gallatin, 
Humboldt, Schoolcraft, Gibbs and a host of others—without mentioning 
those who are still living—whose researches and judicious studies have 
illustrated American science. All of them concur in the opinion that 
the most infallible sign of the congenerousness of two Indian tribes is 
the similarity of their speech. 
What Smith Barton did for the Iroquoian, Siouan, Muskogean and 
other languages may, I think, be repeated in favour of the Athabaskan 
or Déné idioms. Or indeed it may be that our own efforts will simply 
be the continuation of what he commenced himself; for I am not aware 
of the nature of all the dialects he examined. Be it as it may, his move 
being certainly a step in the right direction, I beg to enrol myself as 
one of his humble followers. [| live in the midst of Indians who belong 
to an Aboriginal family roaming over thousands of miles in the North 
West of British America. In that immense expanse of country we 
find many congenerous tribes which cannot understand each other, and 
yet from the territory of the Loucheux of Northern Alaska to the plains 
bordering on the Chilcotin river in Southern British Columbia, words 
expressive of those primaries of Indian life such as beaver, bear, canoe, 
and of the objects of simplest import as water, fire, stone, etc., are 
singularly similar when not altogether identical. 
This almost perfect homonymy has ever struck me as a circumstance of 
the utmost importance to the ethnologist. For if we are to discover in 
any corner of the globe races connected with our Dénés by direct or 
parallel descent from a common stock, it seems to me that it must be 
through the medium of these fixed, immutable and probably very ancient 
root words. And I dare hope that this assumption will bear the most 
rigid criticism. For were we to suppose for an instant that, owing to 
some impossible cataclysm, we are suddenly deprived of the least his- 
torical records relating to the civilized nations, how could we, for 
example, reconstitute the ethnological map of Europe otherwise than 
with the help of the roots of the languages spoken by its inhabitants? 
In like manner, had not the roots of the liturgical Coptic tongue been 
identical with the Egyptian of the Pharaohs of old, the key to those 
mysterious hieroglyphics which for centuries puzzled generations of 
savants would still be sought after. The basis for comparison failing, 
no practical result could have been obtained. 
Therefore, instead of presumptuously building up hasty theories before 
* Al. von Humboldt, Views of the Cordilleras, Vol. 1. 
stil 
a a 
