530 Transactions of the Canadian Institute. [Vol. VII. 



altered it into an n. Thus for gold, they say gon ; for silk, sink ; for 

 dollar, dana. The word kas for barrel they owe to the Tlhinket, who 

 had themselves borrowed it from the English speaking skippers and 

 traders {kas = ca-sk). 



Chinook has contributed masnias (a corruption of musmus), cattle, 

 and probably kimdan (for kiutan), horse. Following the example of the 

 coast Indians, the Nahane have likewise changed the Chinook for cat, 

 pus, into tuc. 



At times this propensity for appropriating foreign terms leads to 

 curiously hybrid compound words. For instance, the Nah'ane equivalent 

 of organ is half Tlhinket and half Dene. All the Dene call that instru- 

 ment a " paper that sings." As the Nah'ane had already borrowed the 

 Tlhinket work 'kilk for paper, and on the other hand, as they did not 

 know or could not use the Tlhinket synonym for " sings," they un- 

 scrupulously retained the first vocable to which they added their own 

 equivalent for the verb and said 'knk-etqine. 



The dictionary may be regarded as a thermometer which faithfully 

 registers a people's status and chief avocation. Its readings are seldom 

 at variance with fact, and when it records, for instance, a multitude of 

 fish names or, still better, when it possesses several names for the same 

 fish according to its age or condition, it will inevitably denote a nation 

 of fishermen. In like manner the sociological status of our Nah'ane is 

 betrayed by their vocabulary, which abounds in fine distinctions for the 

 names of the larger animals on which they mainly subsist. 



I will take but one example to illustrate my meaning. With them 

 the generic name of the marmot is tcetiye, and the female is called 

 hosthelh, while the name is known as oefqetha. A little marmot in 

 general is named oekane, or usthe-tsetle. But if it is only one year old 

 it goes as usaze ; the next year it will be known as oekhutze, and when 

 in its third year, it will be called toetiye-tucitze. And note that all of 

 those eight words apply to only one kind of animal, since there is 

 another term to denote the smaller variety of marmot {arctomys vionax). 



We have therefore our Nah'ane stamped by their very vocabulary 

 as a people of trappers and huntsmen, and the abundance of their terms 

 for a mountain animal furthermore sheds a good ray of light on the 

 topography of their country. 



Another reliable indicator of a primitive people's main occupations, 

 to which it adds a valuable hint at the nature and climate of its land, is 



