DISTRIBUTION AND POPULATION OF THE NORTHERN DENES. 25

the country. We have therefore no alternative left us but to classify the
Alaskan tribes mostiy after Dall and Whymper, leaving it to Petitot to complete
the description by his enumeration of the Canadian Loucheux.

Distribution of the Loucheux Tribes.

This gives us the following results:

Ist. ’Kaiyuh-kho-’tenne, “people of the Willow River”, which name Dail
translates, perhaps from a surmise based on the nature of their habitat, “people
of the lowlands’2, They are the westernmost representatives of the Déné
race, and there is a strong presumption that especially among those in touch
with the Eskimos of Norton Sound, there is more or less alien blood in
their veins. Dall calls them Ingalik, Whymper Ingelete, and Latham Ankalit,
different spellings which are as inany attempts at rendering the Eskimo name
they bear on Norton Sound. They are represented as an indolent set of
people living mostly on fish, which they procure with a minimum of exertion.
In 1876 their numbers were estimated at about 2000.

According to Dall, they extend “from near Kollmakoff Redoubt on the
Kuskokwim River to its headwaters, on the Yukon above the mission on
the left and above the Anvil River on the tight bank, west to the Anvil
River and Iktig‘alik on the Ulikak River, north to Nulato, and east to the
mountains or the Kuskokwim River’. In a word, they are the natives of
the Lower Yukon. Away on the left bank of that stream and opposite to
the land of the lower “Ingalit”, are what Whymper’s map calls the T’kitske
Indians, perhaps the Tset'qie-zidie (people sitting in the water) of Petitot.
But their tribal autonomy is more than doubtful, and they are probably
merely a branch of the ’Kaiyuh-kho-’tenne.

2nd. Further up the river, mostly on its northern bank and on the
Koyukuk River, are the Koyukons of Dall (Koya-kitkh-ota'na of his later
works), whom his English companion calls Co-Yukons, a more manly and
rather turbulent tribe whose bloody deeds we shall have to record. In his
first work on the Yukon, Dall says unblushingly that disease and the scarcity
of food having “fortunately” reduced their numbers, they could, in 1868,
hardly muster more than two hundred families*, which would mean some
900 souls. But in 1876 the same author estimated them at only 500°.

"For the sake of clearness and uniformity, I have followed in the transcription of
the following and all other aboriginal terms the rules proper to my own graphic system.
See p. 23, note 1.

* “Travels on the Yukon”, p. 28.

° “Tribes of the Extreme Northwest”, p. 26.

* “Travels on the Yukon”, p. 28.

* “Tribes of the Extreme Northwest”, p. 39.