STUDIES AMONG THE MONTAGNAIS-NASKAPI 



INDIANS OF THE NORTHERN SHORE OF 



THE ST. LAWRENCE RIVER 



By TRUMAN MICHELSON 

 Ethnologist, Bureau of American Ethnology 



Through a generous grant-in-aid made hy the American Council 

 of Learned Societies, the writer was enabled during the summer of 

 1937 to undertake field-work among the Montagnais-Naskapi Indians 

 in Canada. Early in July he went to Quebec and from there em- 

 barked on the steamship Sable I of the Clark Steamship Company 

 for Natashquan, where he stayed a little over 2 weeks. He spent 

 another 2 weeks at Seven Islands, and then went to Bersimis, where 

 he spent a few days. Owing to the migratory habits of the Indians, 

 however, he was able to get data on the Indians of a number of other 

 places in this region, including Mingan, Moisie, St. Margaret's River, 

 Godbout, Shelterbay, and Sheldrake. He was also able to check his 

 previous information on the Davis Inlet Indians of the Labrador 

 Coast, and by good fortune came in contact with an Indian of a band 

 from the northeast corner of Lake Kaniapiskau — a band barely known 

 to the scientific world. 



The principal object was to complete a linguistic map showing the 

 distribution and interrelations of the Cree and Montagnais-Naskapi 

 dialects, upon which the writer has worked for some years. The main 

 results of the expedition are that the extreme eastern dialects on the 

 north shore of the St. Lawrence River are rather sharply defined, and 

 the most western ones clearly " tie up with " the dialect of Lake 

 St. John, whereas the intervening dialects show a variety of mix- 

 tures ; the dialect at the northeastern end of Lake Kaniapiskau is 

 obviously closely related to the dialect of Rupert's House on James 

 Bay. The technical proofs of these assertions will be given in pro- 

 fessional journals. The accompanying map is based not only on two 

 seasons of field-work among the Indians of the area adjacent to James 

 and Hudson's Bays financed by the American Council of Learned 

 Societies, but also on data furnished by the post-managers of the 

 Hudson's Bay Company of Cumberland House, Oxford House, and 

 Norway House, as well as by some missionaries, and on certain docu- 

 mentary sources of information. The letters /, th, n, y } r, show the 

 treatment of original /. These transformations have taken place inde- 



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