2 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

student of anthropological lore, inasmuch as the unavoidable evolution
operated by time and the influence of environment in their lives, manners
and customs, or even languages, cannot but be fruitful of portentous results.

Geographically speaking and from the viewpoint of ethnographical
researches, the northern half of the western hemisphere is undoubtedly the
most important, and, among the fifty-eight odd native stocks, all distinct from
one another, which originally peopled ‘t north of Mexico, I know of none which,
at the present day, could be of such paramount interest to scientists as that
which is to be the subject of the present work. One, the Algonquin family,
could lay claim to a slightly vaster patrimonial domain, and the Iroquois can
also boast a more thrilling history. But, compared to the Déné, both, especially
the latter, can almost be represented as races which had their day, but whose
stars are now eclipsed by the brighter light of modern civilization.

Not so, however, with the great Déné family. Its geographical position
in the frozen north, the compactness of its immense territory within British
America and Alaska, its remoteness from disintegrating influences, and its
relative nearness to the continent which was evidently its cradle, cannot fail
to commend it most strongly to the lover of things primitive and the in-
vestigator of the original condition of mankind.

Improper Names of the Stock.

That race may already be known to some readers under the now anti-
quated name 7inné or Tinneh. Father Petitot called it by the compound word
Déné-Dindjié, and such writers as follow the lead of the Smithsonian Insti-
tution, at Washington, now designate it as Athapaskan.

The first denomination is not a noun, or a verb or any other part of

speech, and there is no tribal division of the family calling itself thereby.

It is, when properly spelt, a mere verbal desinence, such as the Latin -enses,
-ani, or -colee in the locative or descriptive nouns Lugdun-enses, Rom-ant,
sylvi-cole, and their modern French and English counterparts -ens, -ans, in
Parisi-ens, Parisi-ans; Londoni-ens, Londoni-ans, &c.

Moreover the exceedingly delicate phonetics of the Dené languages
demand that the initial ¢ of those would-be words should be accompanied by
what American philologists call a “click”, a sort of lingual explosion which
totally modifies the value of the letter and the sense of the word in the
composition of which it enters. This is utterly unpronounceable to the majority
even of students, not to speak of common readers. But we need not tarry
any longer on this particular point. The question has lost its actuality, as
that appellation is now becoming obsolete.

As to Petitot’s Déné-Dindjié, it was intended to give expression to the
names of the two remotest tribal divisions of the stock, as he conceived its
extent and distribution when he wrote, thirty years ago; namely the Chippe-
wayans (Déné) and the Loucheux (Dindjie). But, as we shall see further on,