1892-93.] NOTES ON THE WESTERN DENES. 11 



of the whole nation. West of the Rocky Mountains, they are to be 

 found from Si"" 30' of latitude to the borders of the Eskimo tribes, while 

 on tiie east side of the same range they people the immense plains and 

 forests which extend from the Northern Saskatchewan down almost to 

 the delta of the Mackenzie River. From West to East they roam, 

 undisputed masters of the soil, over the almost entire breadth of the 

 American Continent, though a narrow strip of sea shore country separates 

 their ancestral domain from the waters of the Pacific and those of the 

 Atlantic. With that unimportant restriction, they might be said to 

 occupy the immense stretch of land intervening between the two oceans t 



In the words of Horatio Hale, this is, east of the Rocky Mountains 

 " a dreary region of rocks and marshes, of shallow lakes and treacherous 

 rivers, offering no attractions except such as the hunter finds in the 

 numerous fur-bearing animals which roam over it and afford the native 

 tribes a precarious subsistence. When this resource fails, they live on 

 lichens which they gather from the rocks."* West of the Rockies, the 

 country inhabited by them is rugged and heavily timbered, dotted with 

 numerous deep lakes, and intersected by swift, torrential rivers. Their 

 staple food is venison and salmon, according to the geographical position, 

 of their tribal grounds. 



i->' 



I have already given, in a volume of the " Proceedings of the Canadian 

 Institute, "t the names and habitat of the northern tribes together with 

 their approximative population. Let me only remark that in that list 

 I classed the Beaver Indians as a separate tribe merely to conform to 

 the long! established custom of the traders and missionaries. But as in 

 America, Ethnography is based chiefly, if not entirely, on Philology, I must 

 explain that, from a philological standpoint, the Beavers {Tsdtenne in 

 Carrier) are genuine Tse'kehne. The idiomatic differences noticeable in 

 the speech of these two artificial divisions are not any more pronounced 

 than those which exist between the dialects of the Lower and the Upper 

 Carriers. The reason the Beavers go by a distinctive name even among 

 their congeners is that, being citizens of the plains, they cannot with 

 propriety be called Tse'kehne or " Inhabitants of the Rocks " viz. : the 

 Rocky Mountains. 



For the perfect completeness of our aboriginal census, we should add 

 to the above the Sarcees, a band of Tse'kehne who, upon a difference 



* Language as a test of Mental Capacity, p. Si ; Transact. R. S. C. Vol. ix., Sec. 11, 1891. 

 tThe Western Denes, etc., Proc. Can. Inst. Vol. vii., p. 113. 



