1914] Northwestern D6nes and Northeastern Asiatics 153 



in the country which they now inhabit. But, in addition to the fact 

 that such a contention is not altogether disinterested on their lips,^ 

 we find in an apparently unimportant declaration of theirs an implicit 

 admission that their present habitat is certainly not that of their an- 

 cestors. 



Their old men assert that "formerly days were exceedingly short; 

 so short indeed that all a woman could do between sunrise and sunset 

 was to hem a muskrat skin". This undoubtedly refers to the Arctic 

 or Subarctic regions as a previous home, or place of passage, for the 

 tribe. 



Another proof that those Indians came from the north I find in a 

 word of the dialect of the Tsilkotins, their immediate neighbours and 

 the southernmost Denes in Canada.^ They call the particular kind of 

 grass {Poa te?mifolia) known as bunch-grass, which is one of the most 

 valued possessions of their present country, CEnna-t'Jd, which means 

 "grass of the Foreigners", that is the Shushwaps. 



This shows, in the first place, that they now inhabit a stretch of 

 land formerly belonging to the latter tribe, and, secondly, that they 

 reached it by means of a southward migration. The Shushwaps live 

 immediately to the south of the Tsilkotins, and it is inconceivable that 

 the latter should have forced their way through the preserves of the 

 former to get at their present quarters, especially when we consider 

 that, to the north of these, there are none but congenerous tribes as 

 far as the territory of the Eskimos. 



Moreover, it is within the recollection of even living men that the 

 bulk of that tribe moved, some fifty or sixty years ago, from the north- 

 western forest, where bunch-grass is unknown, into the valley which 

 is to-day the home of most of them and the most noticeable particu- 

 larity of which is the luxuriant bunch-grass pastures on which feed 

 their numerous bands of horses. 



1 As may be gathered from the following case, which occurred among their immediate 

 neighbours in the north. "About 1820, an accident happened whereby the entire por- 

 tion of the Babine tribe living along the Bulkley was deprived of its fishing grounds 

 (See my "History of the Northern Interior of British Columbia", p. 8). These Indians 

 then took forcible possession of the fishery near the mouth of the river, which had 

 previously belonged to a Tsimpsian tribe, and have kept it ever since. Some difficulty 

 having lately arisen between the two races, the question of the right to the fishery was 

 brought to the attention of the Agent, when the Babines unblushingly and very loudly 

 protested that the disputed grounds had always been theirs. In the course of a genera- 

 tion or two, what is now known to be false will probably be regarded as the merest 

 expression of truth. 



2 With the exception of a band of the same tribe who, impelled by that instinctive 

 impulse which leads them southward, established themselves not very long ago in the 

 valley of the Nicola, within the same province of British Columbia. 



