1902-3.] The Nah'ane and their Language. 519 



I. 



Broadly speaking the tribe consists of four main divisions. To my 

 certain knowledge, its principal seat in the west is Thalhthan, a salmon 

 fishery at the confluence with the Stickeen of a river of the same name, 

 by about 58° 2' of latitude north. From the new village in the im- 

 mediate vicinity of that place, these aborigines radiate as far south as 

 the Iskoot River, taking in all its tributaries and some of the northern 

 sources of the Nass, and in the east to Dease Lake and part of the 

 Dease River, extending also to all the northern tributaries of the 

 Stickeen. Further north, we meet the Taku branch of the tribe, which 

 claims " the whole drainage basin of the Taku River, together with the 

 upper portions of the streams which flow northward to the Lewes, while 

 on the east their hunting grounds extend to the Upper Liard River and 

 include the valleys of the tributary streams which join that river from 

 the westward."^ 



The third division of the Nah'ane is the so-called Kaska, about 

 whom much misapprehension seems to exist among the whites I met in 

 the course of my journey, a misapprehension of which Dr. Dawson 

 constituted himself the echo when he wrote: "The name Kaska is 

 applied collectively to two tribes or bands occupying the country to the 

 eastward of the Tahl-tan. I was unable to learn that this name is 

 recognized by these Indians themselves, and it may be, as is often the 

 case with names adopted by the whites, merely that by which they are 

 known to some adjacent tribe. It is, however, a convenient designation 

 for the group having a common dialect. This dialect is different from 

 that of the Tahl-tan, but the two peoples are mutually intelligible, and 

 to some extent intermarried. "^ 



In the first place I must remark that Kaska is the name of no tribe 

 or sub-tribe, but McDane Creek is called by the Nah'ane KasHa — the H 

 representing a peculiar gutturalo-sibilant aspiration — and this is the 

 real word which, corrupted into Cassiar by the whites, has, since a score 

 of years or more, served to designate the whole mining region from the 

 Coast Range to the Rocky Mountains, along, and particularly to the 

 north of the Stickeen River. 



All the whites who mentioned the subject to me concurred in 

 Dawson's opinion that the so-called Kaskas form quite a different tribe, 

 and in a footnote to the latter's essay, a Mr. Campbell goes even so far 



1 Notes on the . . . northern portion ot British Columbia, p. 3. 



2 Ibid., p. g. 



