28 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

kiit-chin' of Dall, according to whom they muster 1000 souls. This figure
probably includes the coterminous coast people, whom the American writer
believes to be Déné.

12th. In the east are, on Peel River, the Thét’tét-kut’gin, about whom
little seems to be known; and still further east

13th. The Nakotso-ondjig-kut’gin, or people of the Mackenzie. Their
name connotes their habitat. They are the tribe met by Mackenzie, and nick-
named by him Quarrellers, because of their differences with their northern
neighbours, the Eskimos.

14th. Finally, we have, according to Petitot, the Kwit’qa-kut’gin', who
inhabit the dreary steppes of the Arctic Ocean, minus a natrow strip of land
along the coast, betwen the Mackenzie and the Anderson Rivers.

The total population of the Loucheux group must be very nearly
5.500 souls. In 1851 Richardson reported it as containing about 1.000 hunters,
though his informants were not acquainted with the tribes on the lower
Yukon, which, as we have seen, are the most populous of all the Alaskan
divisions.

Sir A. Mackenzie is the first author who ever mentioned them. Through
he castern tribes he heard of the Yukon, which he took for Cook’s River.
He was told of their kinsmen in the far west who were, the natives assured
him, of a gigantic stature, very wicked and visited by “canoes of very large
dimensions”2, manifestly Russian, English and French vessels in search
of furs.

The Subarctic Dénés.

The group of the Subarctic Dénés is composed of the following tribes:

15th. The Hares (Déné), whom the French call Peaux-de-Liévre, a name
which J. McLean translates literally Rabbitskins. They share with the Lou-
cheux the distinction of being the northernmost Indians in America. They are
arctic as well as subarctic aborigines, their habitat extending from Fort Nor-
man on the Mackenzie, west of Great Bear Lake, to the confines of the
Eskimos, not far from the frozen ocean. According to Petitot®, they are divided
into five bands or subtribes, namely: the Nui-o’tinne, or people of the moss,
who dwell on the outlet of Great Bear Lake; the Kra-tha-go’tinne, people
among the hares, who roam along the same stream, the Kra-tso-go tinne,
people of the big hares, whose hunting grounds are inland, between the

1 This name is evidently the same as that of tribe No. 5; but, while the same tribal
division is often known by different names according to the location or the relation of the
speaker thereto, it also happens that two tribes are called alike by outsiders, owing to the
analogy of the particularities responsible for the name of either. Petitot is too familiar with
the eastern tribes to have erred in this case.

2 “Voyages from Montreal’, vol. J, p. 297.

3 Monographie des Déné-Dindjié, p. XX.