THE GREAT DENE RACE.

Within central and western British Columbia a smaller representative of
the deer family, the mule deer (Cariacus macrotis), has also its economic
importance, of which, however, the Chilcotins are almost the only beneficiaries.
On their bunch-grass covered plateaus these are very numerous, though, within
ihe last fifteen years, they seem to have constantly tended northwards. When
I first went to Stuart Lake, in the heart of the Carrier country (1885), they
were hardly known there. Since, their numbers have constantly, if slowly,
increased. They are now found as far as twenty miles north of the south end
of Babine Lake. They were such a novelty there that my Babine companions
who first saw a small herd of five did not know to what king of game they
belonged.

Other Species of Game.

The above are the principal venison game, in fact the alimentary mainstay
of the modern Déné of the north. But his forefathers had two other large
mammals which are now practically, if not totally, extinct within his patri-
monial domains. These are the buffalo and the elk. The latter (Cervus
canadensis) has been declared to be none other than moose, an evident
mistake. Mr. Malcolm McLeod is certainly astray when he claims‘ that
Mackenzie confounds both animals in his journal. The moose and the elk are
two very distinct animals. The former (¢eeni in Carrier) is still to be found
in the territory of the western Dénés, while the latter (yezih in the same
dialect) was either seen or head of west of the Rocky Mountains by the oldest
extant aborigines. That this kind of deer did really exist at one time within
reach of their arrows is shown by the fact that, when they first saw a horse,
they called it a domestic elk (yezih-ti, elk-dog), a name it has retained to
this day. :

As to the buffalo (Bos americanus), that quondam king of the plains
of which science now deplores the almost complete extermination, it is too
well known to require a description. To us the most remarkable peculiarity
in connection therewith is the fact that, of all the game animals so far
mentioned, it was the only one which was common to the habitats of both
northern and southern Dénés. As early as 1710 the English Captain Woodes
Rogers, writing of New Mexico and its aborigines, says that “leurs boeuts et
leurs vaches sont tres gros, avec de petites cornes, le poil presque comme
de la laine, long devant et court derriére, un (sic) bosse sur le dos, de grandes
barbes comme les chévres et les jambes de devant trés courtes. Quoique tres
laids de figure, leur force les en dédommage; et ils sont la principale richesse
des habitants, qui se nourrissent de leur chair, font de leur peau des habits
et des toits pour leurs maisons; filent leur bourre; font des cordes d’arc avec
leurs nerfs, divers ustensiles de leurs os et des trompettes de leurs cornes?.”

* «Peace River’, p. 79.
2 Histoire des Découvertes faites par les Européens, vol. X, pp. 239—90.