5i8 Transactions of the Canadian Institute. [Vol. V'II. 



i.e., the Skat-kwan."^ As a matter of fact, the latter are just as pure 

 non-Dene as the former are undoubted Dene. 



In common with all the Dene and many other aboriginal families, 

 the Nah'ane recognize as their property no other vocable than Dene, 

 " men," though the branch of that tribe best known to me, the Thalh- 

 than, will occasionally call themselves Tcitco'tinneh or " stick-people," 

 whereby they simply translate the name given them by outsiders, since, 

 according to Dawson, and as I have myself ascertained, "the interior 

 Indians are collectively known on the coast as 'stick Indians.' "^ 



So much for the name of the tribe. Now as to its ethnographical 

 status. This seems even more of a mystery to the few writers who have 

 ever referred to it. 



It is now over nine years since I stated myself that the Nah'ane 

 " hunting grounds lie to the north of those of the Tse'kehne. But I am 

 not familiar enough with their tribal divisions to state them with any 

 degree of certainty, nor do I sufficiently possess their technology to 

 speak authoritatively of it."^ 



I am glad to be now in a position to say that, in the course of the 

 present year, I have taken a trip to their chief village Thalhthan,* in 

 order to add as much as possible to my knowledge of that tribe and its 

 language. I have succeeded in gathering besides the material for a 

 grammatical compendium, quite a goodly little dictionary, and not a few 

 texts in its dialect which I intend shortly to publish. Yet I must con- 

 fess that we must still fall back, for the details of their frontiers and 

 some other particulars, on what the late Dr. G. M. Dawson wrote of them 

 in 1887 — Notes on the Indian tribes of the . . . northern portion of 

 British Columbia.^ Inaccurate as it is from a philological standpoint, 

 his is the only account of the Western Nah^ane worth referring to. 



1 Notes on the Indian Tribes of the Yukon District, etc., p. 2. 



2 Tenth Report, p. 39, note. 



3 Notes on the Western D^n^s, Transactions Canadian Institute, Vol. IV., p. 31. 



4 Most writers spell this word Tahltan, when they do not have it simply Taltan, and Dr. Boas 

 corrects them by changing it into Ta'tltan. All sin through ignorance of the D<5n6 phonetics and of the 

 meaning of that word, which is a contraction of Tha-soelhthan^ tha. the usual alteration of thu, water 

 n compounds, and scelhthan, a verb which has reference to some heavy object lying therein. 



5 Annual Report of Geological Survey of Canada. 



