32 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VOL. IV, 



CHAPTER II. 



Preliminaries — Phi lological. 



Even Philology is not without bearing on Archaeology. More than 

 once the former will prove a great help towards elucidating such problems 

 as the relative age or history of the human products whose aggregate 

 constitutes the raison (T etre of the latter. Thus the necessaries of native 

 life, those objects which are the most indispensable to savage man and 

 whose appearance as technological items must therefore have been the 

 earliest are, as a rule, expressed in D^ne by monosyllabic roots as thity 

 water; Kaw/, fire; ]o, fish; tsa, beaver; 'kra, arrow; pij, snare; kuhy 

 trap ; etc. Other objects or implements of more complex nature or less 

 general import, or the use of which supposes higher steps in the industrial 

 ladder, are rendered by polysyllabic words. In the language of the 

 Denes, the more primitive an object, philologically also the simpler its 

 name. Implements of complicated structure or of recent introduction 

 among the aborigines have almost invariably names of similarly composite 

 fabric. 



These considerations have led me to give, either in the text or through 

 foot-notes, the aboriginal name of each item of native technology men- 

 tioned in the present monograph. As we shall presently see, some of 

 these names admit of no literal translation ; but when such translation is 

 possible, it shall accompany the Indian word. Unless otherwise noted, 

 those names will be in the Carrier dialect. 



That the reader may the more easily recognize the category to which 

 such words etymologically belong, and thereby judge of the place the 

 objects they represent occupy in the Dene technology, I deem it not 

 irrelevant to reproduce here the following paragraphs from a former paper 

 on the Dene languages, 



" Considered in their material structure and etymology, the Dene 

 nouns may be divided into four classes. These are the primary roots 

 which are all monosyllabic as in Chinese. Such arejj^rt, sky ; thu, water ; 

 tse, stone ; J^j-, black bear; etc. Theyare essentially nominative: they 

 neither define nor describe the object they designate; they merely 

 differentiate it from another. I consider them as the remnants of the 

 primitive Den^ language, inasmuch as they are to be found with little or 



