22 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. IV, 



Matthews.* Now, clothing these texts -Aith the orthography denotive of 

 the peculiarly exploding and sibilant sounds, which I think they must 

 receive to become correct renderings, I find side by side, with some terms 

 proper to the tribe or borrowed from adjacent stocks, no less than 

 seventy-two words which are easily recognizable here, at a distance of 

 perhaps 2,000 miles from the nearest Navajo. To form a just idea of 

 the proportion of genuine Uene with local or foreign words, it should be 

 borne in mind that these texts are composed merely of a (ew words very 

 often repeated. 



Distribution of the Western D^ni^s. 



Now that we have made some acquaintance with the divisions and 

 main traits of the Den^ nation in general, we may particularize and 

 furnish the reader with more precise ethnologic data concerning the tribes 

 whose technology and industries we are about to review. These we have 

 already named : they are the TsijKoh'tin, The Carriers and the Tse'kehne. 

 As some savants have done me the honour of asking for more detailed 

 information on their ethnographic status than were contained in a former 

 paper on the same, I shall now proceed to give their tribal subdivisions 

 or septs, together with their aboriginal names, the habitat of the natives 

 thereby determined and, as far as practicable, their present population,, 

 and the number of their villages. 



West of the Rocky Mountains we have from south to north : — 



The Tsi/Ko/i'tiH, who actually inhabit the Chilcotin valley and roam 

 over the bunch grass covered plateaus that skirt it on either side, from 

 the 50' to the 52"^ 30' of latitude north. Their territory is bordered in 

 the east by the Fraser River, and in the west by the Cascade Range of 

 mountains. But not unfrequently a few bands manage to cross over and 

 make inroads for hunting purposes into the territory of the Sishaj and 

 other coast tribes. Of course the latter resent these encroachments upon 

 their ancestral domains ; but as hunting for peltries is not extensively 

 practised by them, the harm done by the poachers is not very great. 



It is perhaps worth remarking in this connection that the " Linguistic 

 Map of British Columbia" prefixed to Dr. F. Boas' Report on the B. C. 

 tribes for iSpof is somewhat inaccurate in that it gives the TsijKoh'tin 

 quite a tract of land on the east side of the Fraser which, as a matter of 

 fact, is now and has been occupied from time immemorial by three 

 villages of Shushwap Indians, viz.: Soda-Creek, Sugar-Cane and Alkali- 



* Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, 1883-84. 



+ Sixth Report on the N. W. Tribes of Canada, London, 1890. 



