•8 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. IV. 



CHAPTER I. 



Ethnological Sketch.— The Name "D^ni^." 



For the benefit of such of my readers as may not have seen my former 

 essays, I must repeat that by Denes I mean that large family of Ameri- 

 can Aborigines commonly known under the names of Tinne, Tinneh, 

 Tenni (Bompas), Tenne (Kennicot) and Athapaskans. As I have already 

 pointed out elsewhere, all of these appellations are inappropriate. For 

 more reasons than one, they should, in my estimation, be discarded in 

 favour of "Dene." Neither Tinne nor Tinneh have any meaning in the 

 dialect of the many tribes into which that extensive stock is divided. 

 The ethnologists who arc responsible for these nicknames gathered them 

 from the desinence of several tribal names probably badly pronounced, 

 and certainly misspelt, by the earliest voyageurs or traders who made 

 mention of these Aborigines. The verbal suffix 'Tinne, or 'Tenne, is 

 evidently the term they aimed at rendering. Now to the native ear the 

 difference between T and 'T is infinitely greater than is with us that 

 which exists between such letters as W and G, since these are commut- 

 able in the Aryan languages,* while the former are not in the Dend 

 dialects. Thus, in Carrier, ta means " lip," and 'ta " feather ; " to means 

 "up," and 'to "nest;" tis stands for "younger sister," and 'tis for 

 " coals ; " taz is the root for " heavy," and 'taz signifies " backward ; " 

 ndstaih is equivalent to " I dance," while 'nas'taih means " I ripen." 

 These contrasts could be multiplied almost ad ijifiniium. 



Furthermore, 'Tinne, being a suffix, cannot stand without its verbal 

 support. Thie would-be noun is composed of the root of the verb 

 Invosten (or kwos'tin, etc., according to the dialect) which means " I 

 inhabit," and the personal plural particle ne (or ni) resulting in the 

 verbal noun hwo'temie (or kivo'tinni, etc.) " inhabitants," which when 

 suffixed to a name of river is contracted into 'tenne, etc., as in Naz-l-ioh- 

 ^ tenne, Tsij-Y^oh-tinni. Thus this pretended word corresponds in every 

 particular — save that in Dene it is a verbal not substantive, affix — to the 

 final -enses of Lugdunenses, Massilienses, Carthaginienses, Colossenses, 

 etc. Now who ever dreamt of denominating by that final the latin 

 speaking peoples ? Who would, for instance, call Ens the French nation 



* As is evident from the conversion of William into Gulielmus, Guylielmo, Guillermo, Guil- 

 herme and Guillaume ; of War into Guerre and Guerra, etc. ; of Warrant into Garantir, etc. 



