138 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

CHAPTER IX.

Habitations.

The Dénés nomadic.

“The term nomadic is not, in fact, properly applicable to any Indian
tribe” 1. That this pronouncement of the able ethnographer H. W. Henshaw,
in an article on the popular fallacies concerning the American aborigines, is
far wide of the mark I think there cannot be much doubt. For my own
part I will make bold to say: all the Dénés were originally nomadic, and the
great majority of them have remained so. All the northeastern and inter-
mediate tribes, from the Rocky Mountains to Hudson Bay, are nomadic?;
some of the Alaskan Dénés are still nomadic, as well as the whole Chilcotin
tribe down to a late date; the Apaches when in their normal state were
typical nomads, and even to-day the great Navaho tribe may be classed among
those who lead a similar kind of life.

For, what is the signification of that word? The Standard Dictionary
gives it as “pertaining to or characteristic of nomads; hence having no fixed
abodes”, and the same authority defines a nomad “a member of a tribe that
roves from place to place, seeking pasture’. The last definition is applicable
almost to the letter even to the modern Navahoes, while none of the above
mentioned tribes can be said to have any fixed abode. They form no villages,
not any more than the Navahoes of to-day, among whom “places where two
or more hogans or huts are within speaking distance, or even within sight
of each other, are rare and far between... As a rule, the next hogan or hut
may be one mile, perhaps two, five or ten miles away’®. And then, as we
shall see further on, several of those huts are owned by a single person, who
may occupy two or three of them in succession — though they may stand
far apart — as he moves about, leading his flock to fresh pastures.

In the north, east of the Rockies, not a sign of a village: mere camps
shifted from place to place as the exigencies of the chase may demand.

To be clear and to the point, the Sékanais of northeastern British
Columbia constitute an Indian tribe. If, therefore, Henshaw is right in claiming
that “the term nomadic is not applicable to any Indian tribe’, those abori-

+ American Anthropologist, vol. VII, pp. 105—06.

2 As quaint old A. Dobbs has it, “living an erratick Life... they seldom stay above
a Fortnight in a Place, unless they find plenty of Game” (“An Account of the Countries
adjoining to H. B’”, p. 41. London, 1744).

° Fr. Leopold in “Catholic Pioneer”, April, 1906, p. 10.