8 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

boundaries. A reference to the few maps which bear on the subject will facilitate a clear understanding of the same.

The very first in chronological order to attempt an ethnographical survey of the Déné tribes is that of the explorer Sir A. Mackenzie, which was ori- ginally published in 1801. Though primarily intended to illustrate his dis- coveries along the noble stream which now bears his name, it shews with their proper habitats as many as seven distinct tribes, exclusive of the Chippe- wayans, among whom he had already resided for some time. Its counterpart, which accompanies the relation of his voyage to ihe Pacific Ocean in 1793, gives three more tribes, one of which, however, the so-called Nagailer, is not Déné. The two others, in common with another on the Mackenzie, he ex- pressly designates by the generic name Denee added to the specific, or particular, cognomen of the tribe.

In 1820, Daniel W. Harmon, a trader in the employ of the fur company which first pushed its way to the west of the Rocky Mountains within British territory, published a valuable Journal of Voyages’ wherein he detailed his own experiences among the western Dénés and other aborigines. To the volume he added a map of the best part of Canada from ocean to ocean, whereon he gives the habitat of five Déné tribes.

But these geographical sketches, which are little more than track surveys, do not pretend to delineate the limits of the entire stock as such. This was reserved for A. Gallatin. In 1836 he published the first map which ever aimed at representing the tribal subdivisions of all the then known linguistic families north of Mexico. The scantiness of ihe material then available, how- ever, prevented him from furnishing us with more than mere outlines.

The same cannot be said of the beautiful work lithographed by J. Arrow- smith, which bears the title “Aboriginal Map of North America, denoting the Boundaries and the Locations of Various Indian Tribes’. This illustrates the “Report from the Select Committee on the Hudson’s Bay Company” published at London in the course of 1857. In view of its paramount importance to the ethnologist, I fail to understand why Maj. John W. Powell should have passed it unnoticed in his own invaluable paper, which was to establish the most authoritative classification of the aboriginal stocks within British North America and the United States. Not only does the Hudson’s Bay Company map shew by special colourings the various linguistic families in common with Powell’s work, but it improves on the latter by giving in their proper places the tribal divisions thereof.

It stands to reason, however, that ethnographical perfection is not to be expected from a class of people who were better acquainted with the differ- ences between prime and common fur-skins than with the niceties of com- parative philology. Yet, as far as the northern Dénés are concerned, their

1 A reprint of which was issued in New York three years ago.