220 ETHNOGRAPHY. 



confounded with the " Gros Ventres of the Missouri," properly 

 Minetari, who speak the Crow language. 



A few years since, the number and warlike spirit of the Blackfoot 

 tribes made them the terror of all the western Indians, on both sides 

 of the mountains. They were reckoned at not less than thirty thou- 

 sand souls, and it was not uncommon to hear of thirty or forty war- 

 parties out at once, against the Flathead (Salish), the Upsarokas (or 

 Crows), the Shoshonees, and the northern Crees. But in the year 

 1836, the small-pox carried off two-thirds of their whole number, and 

 at present they count not more than fifteen hundred tents, or about 

 ten thousand people. Their enemies are now recovering their spirit, 

 and retaliating upon the weakened tribes the ravages which they 

 formerly committed. 



NORTHERN TRIBES. 

 N O O T K A. 



A vocabulary is given of the language spoken at Newittee, a port 

 much frequented by fur-traders, at the northern extremity of Van- 

 couver's Island. It proves to be closely allied to the language of 

 Nootka, of which we have about a hundred words given in Jewitt's 

 narrative of his captivity among that people. Nootka is about a* 

 hundred miles southeast of Newittee. By Jewitt's account, it appears 

 that the same language is spoken to the southwest, through the whole 

 length of the island, and also by " the Kla-iz-zarts, a numerous and 

 powerful tribe, living nearly three hundred miles to the south." 

 These are probably the Classets, who reside on the south side of the 

 Straits of Fuca, near Cape Flattery. All that we could learn of 

 them, and of their eastern neighbors, the Clattems (Tpdalam) was 

 that they spoke a language different from those of the Chickailish 

 and Nisqually tribes. We might, perhaps, on this evidence, add to 

 the synopsis and map the Nootka Family, comprising the tribes of 

 Vancouver's Island, and those along the south side of Fuca's Strait. 



SUKWAMES, SUNAHUMES, HAILTS ETC. 



A Canadian trapper, who had travelled by land from Fort Nisqually 

 to the mouth of Frazer's River, gave me the names of the tribes that 

 he encountered on his way. They were, proceeding from the south, 



