117 
Beneath the multiplicity of distinct languages along the coast 
of British Columbia there was a remarkable uniformity in the mate- 
rial culture of the various tribes and in the main features of their 
social life. On the plains, too, the Blackfoot, Sarcee, and Assiniboine 
closely resembled one another, although their languages contained 
scarcely a single word in common. Evidently trade, combined with 
wars, was a powerful levelling influence, spreading the different 
elements of culture over wide geographical areas. The “ silent 
trade” so common in ancient times did not exist in Canada,^ diffi- 
culties caused by language being overcome in other ways. Many 
natives were bilingual; the Kutchin, for example, learned the 
language of the Eskimo, their enemies from time immemorial.- Most 
tribes contained a few representatives of neighbouring tribes, fugi- 
tives, prisoners of war, or women purchased in marriage, who could 
serve as interpreters in case of need. The plains’ Indians developed 
a complicated sign language that abolished the necessity of speech, 
and, after the beginning of the fur ti’ade, the Indians of the Pacific 
coast, from California to Alaska, used a common trade jai’gon of two 
or three hundred words derived from the vocabulary of the Chinook 
tribe at the moutli of the Columbia riv^er, with a few terms added 
from the Nootka and Salish. In northern Canada, and in eastern 
Canada outside the lowlands, language raised almost no barriers 
owing to the wide diffusion of the Athapaskan and Algonkian 
tongues. Ill those regions trade languished solely on account of the 
meagre resources, the isolation from centres of greater prosperity, and 
the scantiness of a po])ulation always in motion, and always fluctu- 
ating lietween abundance of food and starvation. 
1 C/. Grierson, P. J. H. : The Silent Trade. Edinhurph, 1903. Early white explorers occasionally 
used the ‘‘silent tiade ” method in dealing with tlu; Indians. Cf. Mackenzie: Op. cit., p. 217; 
Howley, J. P. : “Tlic Beothuks or Red Indians, the .'Aboriginal Inhabitants of Newfoundland,’* p, 18 
(Cambridge, 1915). 
2 Richardson: Op. cit., vol. i, p. 215. 
