OFTHEHUMANFAMILY. 233 



tionship, or a vocabulary of their language. It seems to be generally understood 

 that they belong to the Athapascan stock. 



The degree of dialectical variation in a stock language is chiefly important for the 

 bearing it may have upon the mutual relations of the people speaking these dia- 

 lects, and also upon the further question of the time necessary for their develop- 

 ment. But this is subordinate to those greater questions suggested by the existence 

 of these stock languages in certain relations to each other, as independent currents 

 or streams of a common original speech. Where the vocables of a language have 

 become so completely changed that neither its words nor roots are capable of identi- 

 fication with those of any other language, and several such languages are found to 

 exist, it implies centuries and decades of centuries of time, the lapse of which was 

 necessary to work such an extraordinary transformation of the materials of an origi- 

 nal speech. These stock languages, as they are designated for the want of a better 

 term, hold locked up in their time-worn forms the great problems of Indian eth- 

 nology. 



The locations of the principal Athapascan nations do not appear to have changed 

 materially since the authority of the Hudson's Bay Company became established over 

 them. Their ancient southern frontier was undoubtedly forced northward by the 

 western movement of the Crees, the advance northward of the Asiniboins, and the 

 growth of the Blackfoot nations upon their southern border ; but with the particulars 

 of these changes we are unacquainted. The nations above enumerated, as the Atha- 

 pascan, do not include all of those mentioned by Sir John Richardson, who passed 

 through this area in 1848; neither is it certain that all of them are nationally dis- 

 tinct from each other. Nearly all of these nations are found upon Mr. Gallatin's 

 Ethnographical map published in 1848. They are sufficiently certified for the 

 purpose of this work. 1 The author's materials are insufficient to trace the limits 

 of the several dialects. In addition to the Athapascan nations enumerated, there 

 are still others supposed by Richardson to be of the same lineage. From the infor- 

 mation which he obtained, he considers the Kenaiyer of Cook's Inlet the Ugalents 

 of King William's Sound, the Atnaer of Copper River, the Koltshaner and some 



1 From the work of Sir John Richardson, before referred to, the following condensed statement of 

 their respective areas has been made. The Chepewyans hold the regions around Athapasca Lake, 

 and range southward to the Churchill River ; the Sussees are near the mountains between the 

 sources of the Athapasca and Siskatchewan Rivers; the Hare Indians occupy the banks of the 

 Mackenzie River from Slave Lake downward to the Great Bear Lake ; the Dog Ribs inhabit the 

 inland country from Martin's Lake to the Coppermine River ; the Red Knives are east of the latter 

 people, and occupy a strip of country running northward from Great Slave Lake, and lying between 

 the Great Fish River and the Coppermine; the Beaver Indians hold the area between the Peace 

 River and the west branch of the Mackenzie ; the Noh'hannies occupy the angle between the west 

 branch and the great bend of the Mackenzie River; the Mountain Indians, or Strong Bows, and the 

 Brushwood people, are higher up, and range back to the Rocky Mountains ; the Sheep Indians 

 range from the Mackenzie to the mountains, near the 65th parallel ; the Kutchin or Louchieux con- 

 front the Eskimo on the north, and spread from the Mackenzie River westward to the Yukon, and 

 along this river until they meet the coast tribes of Behring's Sea. The Takuthe of Peel River affiliate 

 closely with the Kutchin ; Indians of the last stock are found on the Porcupine and Russian Rivers, 

 as well as upon the Yukon and Mackenzie, and are estimated by Mr. Murray to number five 

 thousand souls. 



30 March, 1870. 



