HUNTING, 165

CHAPTER XI.
Hunting.
A Criterion of Tribal Status.

The vocabulary of a people may be regarded as a safe guide to its social
status and the nature of its chief pursuit. It is a sort of registering instrument
whose readings are seldom at variance with fact. When it records, for instance,
a multitude of fish names, or, better still, when it possesses several names
for the same fish according to its age or condition, it will infallibly denote
a nation of fishermen.

In like manner, a supérabundance of words expressive of fine distinctions
in the classification of the larger land animals will inevitably betray a race of
hunters. This is so true that, for instance, the semi-sedentary Carriers, whose
staple food is salmon, have to borrow from the vocabulary of the nomadic
Sékanais several of their terms to designate the various stages in the growth
of cariboo, while their dialect is exceedingly rich in words denotive of salmon
under all possible aspectst.

Even the western Nahanais are more hunters than fishermen, and their
habitat is, moreover, remarkably high and mountainous. No wonder, then, if
they differentiate with such scrupulous precision the representatives of such
an apparently insignificant rodent as the marmot. With them the generic name
of that animal is teetiyé. The female is called hosthel, while the male is known
as cetgé-tha. A little marmot in general is named c’kane, or usthé-tsétle ;
but if it is one year old, it goes as usaze. The next year it will be known
as wkhutze, and when in its third year, it will be called tetiyé-tucitze. And
note that all of those eight words apply to only one kind of animal, since
there is another term to denote the smaller variety of marmot (Arctomys monax).

The Nahanais are therefore stamped by their very vocabulary as a horde
of trappers and huntsmen, and the abundance of their terms for a mountain
animal furthermore throws a significant light on the topography of their country.

So is it with their eastern congeners, the Hares, Dog-Ribs and other
Barren Grounds Dénés. We know already that reindeer is their staff of lite.
Let us now see how their dialects are affected by that circumstance.

In the vicinity of Great Bear Lake the natives call that animal etie, food,
or natle, the swift-footed one; but large migrating herds of the same receive
the name of nonteli, the vagabunds, the nomads. When of an abnormally
small size and with a whitish coat, that game is called yarikai, the little white
one. The male in general is known as detsd, and the female as bedzi. But

* See beginning of next chapter.