414 THE TLINGIT INDIANS [eth. anx. 2G 



the GanAxte'di; Klukwan by the GanAxte'di, Ka'gwAntfui, Taqestina', 

 and DAqLlawe'di; Katkwaltu b^' the Nucekaii'yi; and Ycndestake by 

 the Luqa'xAdi. 



From this fragmentary account it woukl appear that the GiinAXA'di 

 or GanAxte'di and KiksA'di, and perhaps the Qfi'tcAdf. L!uk!naxA'di, 

 and Luqa'xAdi were clans of .something like national sigiiiticance on 

 the Raven side and the Te'qoedi, DAqLlawe'dT, Nanyaa'yi, Ka'gwAntan, 

 and perhaps Naste'di on the Wolf side. Native legend carries most 

 of these back to the Tsimshian coast, but it must be rcmember(>d that 

 new bodies of people might be taken into a clan at any time by simple 

 absorption without having any distinguishing marks attach to them. 



The aboriginal neighbors of the Tlingit were, in the interior beyond 

 the mountains, A-arious Athapascan tribes, to the southeast the Tsim- 

 .shian and Haida, and on the extreme northwest the Eskimo. 



With the Athajmscans, whom thej' called Go'nana (strange or differ- 

 ent nation), a lively trade was carried on along natural lines of inter- 

 conmiunication marked out by the Stikine, Taku, Chilkat, Alsek, and 

 Copper rivers. This trade was one of their greatest sources of wealth, 

 and is said to have lain at the basis of the power obtained by the 

 Nanj'aa'yi and Ka'gWAntiin. The Tsimshian. called by the Tlingit 

 Tslutsxa'n, the}' esteemed as people of high culture from whom new 

 ideas and new customs reached them, and seem to have thought much 

 more of them than of the Haida, although recognizing the superiority 

 of the latter in certain respects. Their own term for th6 Haida is Dekl' 

 na, "Nation-far-out [at sea]," and for the Queen Charlotte islands, Deki' 

 qoan fi'ni. "Town-of-the-peoide-far-out."' After the Haida reached 

 Alaska the relations between them and the Tlingit became very inti- 

 mate, and there was a great deal of intermarrying, facilitated no doubt 

 by a very similar social organization. They have had more to do with 

 the Tsimshian since New Metlakatla was founded l)y Duncan on An- 

 nette island. The Tlingit claim not to have known anciently of the far 

 southern people such as the Haida until they found a canoe, containing 

 bodies of strange people, which had drifted ashore, but latterly, at any 

 rate, thev waged war continually on the people of Nass and Skeena 

 and on the Haida. 



To Tlingit aggressions on the Eskimo allusion has already been made. 

 It seems probable that the Tlingit were slowly pushing westward when 

 the Russians appeared, and would ultimately have reached the Aleutian 

 chain or the Yukon delta. 



Russians are known to the Tlingit as Anu'ci. while other white peo- 

 ple are called Let (|oan (white or snow people) or Gu'tskli qoan (people 

 from the ))lace where the clouds reach down to the earth — i. e., horizon 

 people). The P^nglish they call Gi'ndjitcwiin, a corruption of the 

 " King George man " of the Chinook jargon. 



