22 
The same distinction holds between language and culture as 
between language and race. Beneath the diversity of the Pacific 
Coast languages there is the closest resemblance in customs and mode 
of life. The Sarcee, though but recently separated from their kins- 
men of the Mackenzie River valley, have yet so assimilated them- 
selves to the Blackfoot that they can be distinguished only by lan- 
guage. On the other hand, the scattered bands that use the Cree 
dialect of Algonkian differ widely in culture according as they have 
come into contact with the Athapaskan-speaking tribes of the Mac- 
kenzie river, the plains’ tribes, or the Indians of eastern Canada. 
Similarly, in the world at large, peoples of very different cultures 
often employ the English tongue, and contrariwise a generalized Euro- 
pean culture has permeated among many i>eoples who make use of 
diverse languages. Race, culture, and language, then, are distinct 
features, no one of which affords a certain guide to the others. Each 
can change independently, so that similarity of physical type may 
conceal radical differences of culture or of language; and community 
of language, or of culture, may indicate no more than close contact 
between two peoples of different racial stock. 
W e must guard, also, against another widely-spread error of a 
somewhat different nature. Simplicity of culture does not entail a 
simple language. The most primitive Indians in Canada, those of 
the Mackenzie River valley, possessed the most complex language; 
and English or French appears conpiaratively simple beside the 
intricacies of Eskimo. 
Indian languages seem esjiecially complex to a European because 
the words are often strangely difficult to pronounce. Theoretically, 
the number of sounds that can be ])roduced by the organs of human 
speech is almost unlimited; in practice, each language (or dialect) 
unconsciously makes its own selection of from fifteen to forty. The 
Indian languages have selected many sounds that are foreign to 
European ears. Thus most of them rlraw a different line of demarca- 
tion between the voiced and voiceless stops, which we write in Eng- 
lish k and g, t and d, p and h- It is as though in each of these groups 
there were four sounds, represented in the first group by kh, k, kg, 
and g, where k and g are pronounced as in English, kh denotes a 
k uttered with great stress and a noticeable emission of breath, and 
kg a sound intermediate between k and g. Certain Indian languages 
