i8o Transactions of the Royal Canadian Institute [vol. x 



The same may be said of the way of naming children, or rather the 

 parents of children, which obtains among most of the northern Dene 

 tribes. With them it is just the reverse of v/hat we see amongst us; 

 instead of a son taking the name of his father, the latter takes that of the 

 former. For instance, a Sekanais hunter may have been known as 

 Nonnta, the Lynx, before his marriage: as soon as his tent is blessed 

 with the birth of a son, whom we will call for convenience's sake KarJi, 

 the Rabbit, Nonnta socially ceases to exist, and becomes instead 

 Karh-tha, or the Rabbit's Father. The same is customary among the 

 Babines who, in the present case, will call the new paterfamilias Kcerh- 

 php. 



Now here is what Waldemar Jochelson has to say in this connection 

 of the Yukaghirs of Siberia: "The custom still survives, by which the 

 parents, after the birth of the first child that has taken the name of 

 some deceased relative, abandon their own names, and call themselves 

 the father and mother of the first-born, son or daughter, so and so".^ 



Just as significant is the well-known point of American eti- 

 quette according to which one has to keep a prolonged silence when he 

 meets a stranger before delivering himself of any message or speech 

 that he may have in contemplation. But Wrangell thus describes the 

 meeting of his interpreter with two Tchuktchis: "When he came up 

 to them, they saluted him gravely, and sat down without speaking. 

 The interpreter then filled their pipes, still without a word being spoken, 

 and it was not until these had been smoked out that he began his dis- 

 course"." 



Another traveller, John Ledyard, further tells us that "the Tartars 

 here, when they smoke the pipe, give it round to every one in the com- 

 pany".^ 



Are not these two last distinctive customs sufficient by themselves 

 to create the illusion that we are transported into the boundless plains 

 or forests of North America, instead of roving in the company of the 

 natives of the tundras and morasses of Eastern Siberia? Any reader, 

 however so little conversant he may be with the sociology of aboriginal 

 Americans, will grasp at once the full significance of habits which cannot 

 in any way be put to the credit of the particular environment of the 

 tribes among which they prevail. 



There are other similar observances common to both Asia and North 

 America which I may now forbear detailing. The foregoing will, I hope, 

 suffice for my purpose. 



* W. Jochelson, op. cit., p. 105. 

 2 Op. cit., p. 347. 

 " Memoirs, p. 326, 



