148 THE ARCTIC PRAIRIES 



suppressed this. Nevertheless, Chief Trader Anderson 

 tells me that the Mackenzie Valley tribes have fallen 

 to less than half their numbers during the last century. 



It is about ten years since they made the treaty 

 that surrendered their lands to the government. They 

 have no reserves, but are free to hunt as their fathers 

 did. 



I found several of the older men lamenting the 

 degeneracy of their people. "Our fathers were hunt- 

 ers and our mothers made good moccasins, but the 

 young men are lazy loafers around the trading posts, 

 and the women get money in bad ways to buy what 

 they should make with their hands." 



The Chipewyan dialects are peculiarly rasping, click- 

 ing, and guttural, especially when compared with Cree. 



Every man and woman and most of the children 

 among them smoke. They habitually appear with a 

 pipe in their mouth and speak without removing it, 

 so that the words gurgle out on each side of the pipe 

 while a thin stream goes sizzling through the stem. 

 This additional variant makes it hopeless to suggest on 

 paper any approach to their peculiar speech. 



The Jesuits tell me that it was more clicked and 

 guttural fifty years ago, but that they are successfully 

 weeding out many of the more unpleasant catarrhal 

 sounds. 



In noting down the names of animals, I was struck 

 by the fact that the more familiar the animal the 

 shorter its name. Thus the Beaver, Muskrat, Rabbit, 

 and Marten, on which they live, are respectively Tsa, 

 Dthen, Ka, and Tha. The less familiar (in a daily 



