154 Transactions of the Royal Canadian Institute [vol. x 



But we have a still clearer, if not stronger, evidence of the D6n6s 

 having migrated from the northwest, that is from Asia. In the basin 

 of Greater Bear Lake lies a large steppe, the southern end of which is 

 known to the present day Indians under a native name which means 

 "The Last Steppe", while there is in the same region a mountain called 

 "The Last Mountain" by the natives of the same country. This being 

 the southernmost of a group of mountains, it should have been named 

 "The First Mountain" if the Indians responsible for its designation 

 had followed a northerly direction in the course of their prehistoric 

 migrations.^ 



Then, as if to preclude the possibility of an error in this respect, 

 the northernmost mountain of the same group is called by a Den6 word 

 which means "The First Promontory ".- 



It is therefore evident that when those aborigines saw for the first 

 time that country, they were travelling from north to south. On the 

 other hand, as those who still live in a higher latitude claim that they 

 came from the west, and as almost all the D^n6s have a tradition of a 

 passage by water, I fail to see how we can escape the conclusion that 

 they reached America through Behring Strait or the Aleutian Islands, 

 and that such of them as crossed the Rockies took a southeastern direc- 

 tion, while the others made directly for the south. 



The strength of these conclusions becomes still greater by a con- 

 sideration of the unmistakable fact that the migrations of all the D§n6s 

 in America have invariably been southward. Several of the northern 

 tribes, such as the Sarcees, the Beavers and the Tsilkotins, had but 

 lately a more northern habitat. Instinctively, when not meeting with 

 resistance at the hands of a body of people already in possession of the 

 country, they have tended towards the more hospitable climes of the 

 south. 



The best proof I can adduce of this, in addition to the three above 

 mentioned instances, is that which we find in the presence in Arizona 

 and New Mexico of the Navahoes and the Apaches, the two foremost 

 Den6 tribes as far as population is concerned, as well as in the different 

 bodies of stragglers in the southward march whom we now call the 

 Kwalhioquas of the State of Washington, the Umpquas of Oregon, 

 and the Hupas and others of California. 



That the Navahoes come from the north there is not the shadow 

 of a doubt. True, the late Dr. D. G. Brinton wrote somewhere that 

 they "have no reminiscence of their ancestral home in the north".' 



* Exploration de la Region du Grand Lac des Ours, pp. 124 and 313; Paris, 1893. 

 ' Ibid., ibid. 



* "The American Race", p. 72; Philadelphia, 1901. 



