10 TKANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. IV- 



ern Dene tribes. Therefore, on his own basis of word formation, the 

 abbe Petitot should call the whole race Tani-Dindjie,* not Dene- 

 Dindjie. 



But we should not overlook the numerous offshoots it has spread out 

 through the Western and Southern States of the American Union, and 

 whose tcMiTi for " man," and consequently for themselves considered as 

 aborigines, is practically identical with " Den6"+ Why then should we 

 not call the whole stock Dene, after the native name of the most central — 

 taking into consideration the southern scattered tribes — and one of the 

 most populous branches thereof PiJ: We could perhaps find a precedent 

 for this in the names of such European peoples as the Italian, the 

 French and even the English, which came to be given the entire nation 

 after they had long represented one of the most important of its original 

 tribes, the Itali, the Franks and the Angles or Angli. 



Despite their minuteness, the foregoing remarks have been deemed 

 necessary since their substance, as embodied in a foot-note to a former 

 paper by the writer does not appear to have received the attention he 

 cannot help thinking it deserved at the hands of Ethnologists. Even the 

 few who have noticed it now seem to labour under the impression that 

 the Denes are a branch of the Athapaskan family lately made known 

 to the scientific world Is!!} Such is the force of habit! Others suppose that 

 Tinne and D(§n^ are the same word under two different dialectical forms.|| 



Distribution of the D^n^s. 



No other aboriginal stock in North America, perhaps not even 

 excepting the Algonquian, covers so great an extent of territory as the 

 Dene. The British Isles, France and Spain, Italy and any two or three 

 of the minor European commonwealths taken together would hardly 

 represent the area of the region occupied by that large family. And yet 

 it is no exaggeration to say that few American races are less known than 

 the Northern Denes who, in point of territory, constitute the main bulk 



* 7>;// is the Tsi{Koh'tin word lor " man." 



t It slioiikl be remembered in this connection that in all the Den^ dialects the vowels have 

 almost no linguistic importance whatever, the quintessence of the words being condensed in the 

 initial consonants of each syllable. Also, it may be worth noting here that T and D, P and B, 

 G and K, etc., are commutable even within each separate dialect. 



X The aboriginal race of the Alaskan littoral is called Tlingit after the word it uses to say 

 "man." Why should this not also be the case with the Dene family? 



§ The Athapaskan Bibliography, /<zj«>«, 1892. 



II Language as a test of Mental Capacity, by H. Hale. Transact, R. S. C, p. 81, 1891. 



