PHILOLOGY OF THE OUANANICHE 45 



of course, Indian, but the various sounds of the spoken 

 language of the Montagnais and Nascapee tribes were 

 unrepresented in writing until the arrival of French 

 missionaries in Canada. These latter reduced the 

 spoken language of the Indians to writing, using for 

 the purpose their own French alphabet and system of 

 orthography. . They transferred to paper their ety- 

 mology of the sound of this fish's name, and their 

 pictorial representation of the spoken Indian word re- 

 mains to this day a perfect philological reflex of the 

 musical vibrations produced by its pronunciation. No 

 English spelling represents as faithfully the Indian 

 name as does the original French form " ouananiche." 

 The latter is the orthography employed by the present 

 French and Indian guides of Lake St. John. It is 

 found in both the best English and the best French 

 literature produced in the Province of Quebec, where 

 the name originated, as well as in the official reports 

 of the Crown Lands Department of the provincial gov- 

 ernment, in the officially promulgated game laws of 

 the Province of Quebec, and in the voluminous mass 

 of literature pertaining to the sporting resorts of this 

 Northern country issued by the Quebec and Lake St. 

 John Railway Company. Vandal linguists who have 

 attempted to anglicize phonetically the appropriate and 

 original orthography of the Indian sound have only 

 succeeded in creating confusion, as I am about to 

 show, by erecting a Babel composed of more than a 

 score of different spellings of the same word. Uni- 

 formity in the matter need never be looked for upon 

 the basis of any one of the many anglicized forms of 

 the word. In French-Canadian literature, as well as 



