22 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

And then we may as well confess that, with the importation of fire-
water and its unavoidable corollary, immorality, diseases have appeared
among them which, in too many cases, undermine the constitution even of
individuals who are not personally responsible for the saime, and propor-
tionately diminish the ratio of births by rendering some females sterile. Let
us hasten, however, to remark that such cases are not to be found in all
the tribes.

Even with their present thinned ranks, the Northern Dénés are still
divided into many tribes, differentiated usually more by linguistic, than by
sociological or other peculiarities. For the sake of clearness, we will class
them into five groups, namely, from north to south: the Alaskans of
Loucheux, the subarctic Dénés, the intermediate Dénés, and the western Dénes.

The Loucheux and their Name.

By Loucheux is meant here that important division of the family better
known in certain quarters by the name of Kutchin. To the world at large
they might be chiefly remarkable as being the original possessors of the
region where the gold mines of the Klondike have been discovered. They
are the Quarrellers of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, and the name which I have
myself constantly applied to them is that given them by the French Canadians
and early fur traders. It means “cross-eyed”, and refers to the many cases of
strabism noticed among those who frequent the lower Mackenzie. As such it
is a translation of the Chippewayan Dekege or Dakage, by which they are
known in the northeast?.

This is evidently the epithet which Sir John Franklin aimed at rendering
when he called them Tykothe-Dinneh?, thinking perhaps that he was thereby
improving on the Deguthee Denees of Mackenzie?. The modern Tukudh of
the Protestant missionaries, Bishop W. Bompas and the Rev. R. McDonald?,
no less than W. H. Dall’s own Tukkuth®, are nothing else than other trans-
formations of the same aboriginal term by people whose mother tongue is
chiefly remarkable for the vagueness and lack of precision of its phonetics.

As to Kutchin — the Kutshin of Latham, and the Kootchi of Richardson
— that vocable is open to the same objections as -¢inne. In the first place,
it should be written Kut’gin, or in such a way as to express that lingual
explosion which we have seen to be indispensable to the proper pronunciation
of the would-be word ~’tinne. To be consequent with themselves, those who

1 Etymology: da or de, eyes; kag or kez, crooked .. The suffix e or @ is merely
expletive, its réle being to cement into one, as it were, the two compounding parts of the
word. Latham calls the same Digothi (“The Ethnology of the British Colonies”, p. 241).

2 «Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea”, vol. Ill, p. 52.

3 “Voyages to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans”, vol. I, p. 254, Toronto reprint.

* «Bibliography of the Athapaskan Languages”, passim.

5 “Tribes of the Extreme Northwest”, p. 31. Contr. Am. Ethnol., vol. 1.