[68] Dr. Dieffenbach's work on New Zealand is the repertory of details here—a valuable and standard book.
[69] The collation of these may be seen in the Appendix to Mr. Jukes' "Voyage of the Fly."
[70] In the Appendix to Jukes' "Voyage of the Fly," and in "Man and his Migrations."
CHAPTER VI.
DEPENDENCIES IN AMERICA.
THE ATHABASKANS OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COUNTRY.—THE ALGONKIN STOCK.—THE IROQUOIS.—THE SIOUX.—ASSINEBOINS.—THE ESKIMO.—THE KOLÚCH.—THE NEHANNI.—DIGOTHI.—THE ATSINA.—INDIANS OF BRITISH OREGON, QUADRA'S AND VANCOUVER'S ISLAND.—HAIDAH.—CHIMSHEYAN.—BILLICHULA.—HAILTSA.—NUTKA.—ATNA.—KITUNAHA INDIANS.—PARTICULAR ALGONKIN TRIBES.—THE NASCOPI.—THE BETHUCK.—NUMERALS FROM FITZ-HUGH SOUND.—THE MOSKITO INDIANS.—SOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS OF BRITISH GUIANA.—CARIBS.—WAROWS.—WAPISIANAS.—TARUMAS.—CARIBS OF ST. VINCENT.—TRINIDAD.
The Athabaskans.—The best starting-point for the ethnology of the British dependencies in America is the water-system of the largest of the rivers which empty themselves into the Polar Sea, a system which comprises the Rivers Peel, Dahodinni, and the Rivière aux Liards, tributaries to the McKenzie, as well as the Great Bear Lake, the Great Slave Lake, and Lake Athabaska; a vast tract, and one which is almost wholly occupied by a population belonging to one and[225] the same class; a class sometimes known under the name Chepewyan, or Chepeyan, sometimes under that of Athabaskan.
The water-system in question forms the centre of the great Athabaskan area—the centre, but not the whole. Eastward, there are Athabaskan tribes as far as the coasts of Hudson's Bay; westwards as far as the immediate neighbourhood of the Pacific; and southwards as far as the head-waters of the Saskatchewan. Full nineteen-twentieths of the Athabaskan population, in respect to its political relations, is British; all that is not British being either Russian or American. To this we may add, that it is the Hudson's Bay territory rather than Canada to which the British Athabaskans belong.