NAME OF THE DENES AND THEIR HABITAT IN THE NORTH. 9

habitat is fairly well explained on their map, considering, especially, the carly date of its publication. Nay, the southeastern limits of their territory are thereon more accurately delineated than on Powell’s map.

We will have occasion to point out its failings as regards some of the tribal divisions of the stock. Suffice it for the present to remark that the compilers sinned by extending the area occupied by that family down to the American boundary within what is now British Columbia, thereby englobing within one denomination, not only the Salish, but even such an evidently heterogeneous race as the Kutenay. The ethnic status of the native stocks west of the coast range of mountains — which, as usual at the time, was drawn too far inland — seems also more or less of a mystery to ihe carto- grapher. With the exception of the narrow strip of land projecting south of the main body of what was then Russian America, which is given to the Eskimos instead of the Tlinget or Kolloosh, all that region is represented as inhabited by people of Kollooshian parentage!, that is, from Vancouver Island inclusive, right to the delta of the Mackenzie. The southern Dénés, Navahoes and Apaches, are also sadly neglected in that work, though it locates the Comanches, which it calis Cumanchees.

Other maps, which, owing to their limitations, are only possessed of partial importance, are Fred. Whymper’s (1868), E. Petitot’s (1876), Tolmie and Dawson’s (1884) and my own (1892) which point out the habitats respec- tively of the Yukon tribes, of those within the basin of the Mackenzie, of those throughout British Columbia and of the western Dénés.

Powell’s Map.

We now come to J. W. Powell’s exhaustive monograph on the “Indian Linguistic Families of America north of Mexico” and accompanying map, which appeared in 1891 as part of the Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, of Washington, D. C. From the responsible position of the author of both works, no less than his own personal qualifications therefor and the very tone of his paper, it is evident that it was intended that report and map should be regarded as authoritative and final.

This object has, to a great extent, been accomplished. The thoroughness of the monograph and the minuteness of the information contained in the map certainly warranted a complete success. That very same year, the late Dr. D. G. Brinton did indeed publish a still more comprehensive work on “The American Race’, which essayed a classification and description of all

* At that time the ethnic kinship of the Loucheux of Alaska with the Déné race had not been established. On the other hand, Fr. Petitot unaccountably confounds (Monographie, p. XIX) the Kolloosh or Tlinget with the Dénés.

* Who was then at the head of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington.

* New York, 1891.