A FIELD COMPARISON OF NORTHWESTERN WITH 

 SOUTHWESTERN INDIANS 



By JOHN P. HARRINGTON 



Senior Ethnologist, Bureau of American Ethnology 



At the beginning of the calendar year I was engaged in field work 

 on the Indians at Juneau, in southeastern Alaska, where the language 

 was found to be surprisingly similar to that spoken by the Navajos, 

 the largest tribe of Indians in the southwestern United States. The 

 closeness of the resemblance extended both to the vocabulary and 

 to the grammar, and is unique considering the great distance between 

 the two localities — -Juneau is 1,200 miles north of Seattle, Wash., 

 and the Navajo Indian Reservation is about as far south of Seattle. 

 The Navajos, or at least that section of their ancestors which imposed 

 the language on the rest, must have come from what is now Alaska 

 or the adjacent part of what is now Canada only a few centuries 

 ago ; otherwise there would be more difference in the Indian languages 

 spoken. The Indians of the entire archipelago of which southeastern 

 Alaska consists are known as "Tlingit." A hundred years ago they 

 numbered some 10,000 souls, occupying all the islands of southeastern 

 Alaska and subsisting largely on marine products, especially fish. 

 About 400 words were collected in Alaska, almost identical with 

 Navajo. 



It will be evident to the reader that Indians living in such very 

 different habitats and talking the same language must apply the same 

 words to different objects. This proved to be the case. The word 

 that among the Navajo means "cactus" means in Alaska "crab- 

 apple," a bush with spines about an inch long; the fundamental mean- 

 ing of the word is evidently "spiny." To the Navajo, living in the 

 desert, fish is little more than a word. In Alaska fish is the livelihood 

 and chief food of the Indians. The same word for fish is used in 

 both regions. 



The early spring proved to be the time when most animals and 

 plants are advantageously collected in Alaska, and long experience 

 has proved that the only safe way to get the Indian names of animals 

 and plants is to collect the specimens with the help and interest of 

 Indian informants and thus to get specimen and name at the same 

 time. Figure 91 shows the author collecting a sea worm ; the picture 

 does not show the Indian who was standing nearby and giving the 

 Indian name for a specimen collected in situ. 



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