DISTRIBUTION AND POPULATION OF THE NORTHERN DENES. 23

speak of the Kutchin should call the Dénés, not Tinne or Athapaskans, but
Kwotin, Hwoten or Hwotchen. These are, in the dialects wherefrom ~’tinne
has been borrowed, the exact equivalents of the verbal desinence -kutchin,
all of which should be spelt with diacritical marks or the apostrophe denotive
of the all-important “click”.

The “exploded” ¢ of most of the dialects is convertible into ¢’g! in
the idioms of several tribes. For instance, where the Carrier Indians say
-hwo'tenne, the Sékanais have it -hwot’genne. The syllables -hwo-, -kwo- and
-ku- simply intimate that some reference is intended to space or a particular
place. An example taken from home will render my meaning clearer. As
there is no common or latin r in the quasi totality of the Déné dialects,
Paris is to our people Palis. Therefore Paris-ian will be Palis-hwo’ten to
a Carrier, Palis-hwo’tin to a Babine, Palis-kwo’tin to a Chilcotin, Palis-
hwo ‘gen to a Sékanais,.and Palis-kut’gin to a Loucheux. All these pretended
nouns, if used separately, are simply as many verbs meaning exactly: “he
inhabits”, and nothing more.

Habitat of the Loucheux.

Coming now to the habitat of the Loucheux, we may state that, after
the Eskimos, they are the most northerly people in America. Their territory
extends from Anderson River, in the east, to the western extremity of Alaska,
leaving always, as we have seen, the coast to the Eskimos. The whole interior
of that immense peninsula, as well as much of what is now called the Yukon
Territory, belongs to them. Their southern frontier east of the Rocky Mountains
is now the 67th degree of latitude or thereabouts, as they have long ceased
to trade at Fort Good Hope?, slightly north of 66° lat., which is still locally
known as the Fort des Loucheux. They now resort to Fort McPherson, on
Peel River, instead. West of the Rockies their hunting grounds extend
somewhat more to the south, as we shall see presently.

It is certainly no easy task to unravel the maze of inaccuracies and
contradictions which ignorance or carelessness has woven around the entire

" Here is the value of the letters such as used to express native words in the course
of the present work. The vowels are as in Italian; @ has the sound of e in the French mets
and é that of e in the English “ten”, while @ corresponds to the e of such French words
as je, te, le. W is always a consonant. Except in the following cases, the consonants have
invariably the continental sounds: — H is strongly aspirated; # represents the nasal sound;
# is a lingualo-sibilant /; r is the result of uvular vibrations, the r grasséyé of southern
Frenchmen; kh and rh are strongly guttural; ¢h is simply ¢ plus A; § represents the English
consonant sh; q nearly equals ty, both letters being sounded simultaneously as so many
consonants; s and z are intermediate between s and the hard English th, and z and the soft
English th respectively. The apostrophe denotes the lingual explosion, which one must hear
to understand properly; and the upper period (-) represents the hiatus.

? As they did in Franklin’s time, op. supra cit., vol. Ill, p. 53.