Page:Algonquian Indian names of places in Northern Canada.djvu/4

214 canoemen, etc., on my geological parties, and if these Indians were familiar with the country being explored, many of the names in use among the local tribes were obtained from them. Where such names did not conflict with similar names in use elsewhere, they were generally adopted in my reports and on my maps. When no local or native Indian names were obtainable, I made use of such names of persons or things as seemed appropriate to me at the time.

The names of places recorded in the following pages are those that have been in use from time immemorial by the Indians who live in the immediate vicinity of the places referred to. Some of these names are evidently contractions or corruptions, and their original meanings have been obscured or lost. In most cases, however, the meanings of the names have been determined and are given. In the next column the names in use on the latest Canadian maps are given, after which the approximate positions of the places are designated in terms of North latitude, and longitude West of Greenwich.

These names were collected during the last few years spent by me on the Geological Survey of Canada, mostly in 1896, 1897 and 1898; and afterwards in 1912, when I conducted an expedition through Manitoba to York Factory on Hudson Bay, and thence eastward and southward along the shore of the Bay, up Severn river to its source, down the upper part of the Albany river, and through some of the Upper Waters of the English River to Sioux Lookout on the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway.

In my Reports published by the Geological Survey of Canada, on Northern Alberta and the Doobaunt, Kazan and Ferguson Rivers lists of Indian names used in the countries reported on have already been published. In my Reports on Manitoba and adjoining countries, also published by the Geological Survey of Canada, many Indian names were used, and in the maps accompanying those reports the positions of most of those places were given, but no definite Lists of names were published. With the abundance of work which I had to attend to while travelling through Northern Canada, I had neither the opportunity nor the time to become proficient in any of the Indian languages, but I acquired a familiarity with some of the more common words and phrases of the Cree language, since that was the language talked by most of my Indian canoemen. This assisted me in obtaining the correct names of the places visited and here recorded, but nevertheless these names were always confirmed by an interpreter if one was available. While, therefore, these place names have not the merit of having been obtained by a linguist thoroughly familiar with the Algonquian tongue, they have the merit of having been obtained on the spot from Indians or half-breeds