Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/47

 SECT. I.] TRIBES NORTH OF THE UNITED STATES. 11 The dividing line between the eastern and western Eskimaux has been ascertained with considerable precision by Captain Franklin. It is found, on the Arctic Ocean, at the northern termination of the Rocky or Stony Mountains, in about 140° of west longitude, where the western resort annually, for the purpose of bartering with the eastern Eskimaux iron tools and other articles of Russian manufacture, for seal skins, oil, and furs. That intercourse is of recent date, and the western speak a dialect so different from that of the eastern, that at first they had great difficulty in understanding each other. The dialects of the several tribes of the western division, though obviously belonging to the same stock, differ also more from each other than those of the eastern Eskimaux. The actual identity of dialect amongst these, and between very distant tribes which have no communication together, is aston- ishing. Augustus, a Hudson-Bay Eskimaux, of the vicinity of Churchill, (latitude 59°, longitude 95°,) who was the inter- preter of Captain Franklin, could converse with all the Eski- maux met with during his two expeditions. Of those found west of Mackenzie's River in 137^° west longitude, Captain Franklin observes, that '.' their habits were similar in every re- spect to those of the tribes described by Captain Parry," (north parts of Hudson's Bay,) " and their dialects differed so little from that used by Augustus, that he had no difficulty in understanding them." The distance, in that case was in a straight line twelve hundred miles, and more than twenty -five hundred around the seashore. As now informed, we may distinguish at least three dialects or languages amongst those eastern Eskimaux, viz. 1. that of the inhabitants of the northern and western shores of Hudson's Bay, which dialect extends w T estwardly beyond Mackenzie's River, as has been just now stated ; 2. that of Greenland, respecting which it must be observed, that the inhabitants of the western have no intercourse with those lately discovered on the eastern coast, and that these may have a different dialect ; 3. that of the coast of Labrador, to which it is not improbable that the language of the Eskimaux of Hudson's Straits may be nearly allied. Captain Parry's vocabulary, taken at Winter Island in lati- tude 67, is the most recent, complete, and authentic we have of the language of the Eskimaux of Hudson's Bay, and has accordingly been selected in preference (o those of Dobbs and of John Lons:.