Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/60

 24 A SYNOPSIS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES. [iNTROD. special tribes. Thus the true name of the Monsonies or Swamp Indians, who inhabit Moose River, is Mongsoa Eithyn- yook } or, " Moosedeer men." The same author says, that the name Knistinaux was originally applied to the tribe of Lake Winnipek, called Muskegons. The name has now be- come generic, and the variations in the first syllable are only an instance of the frequent transmutations, amongst adjacent tribes speaking the same language, of the letters /, r, and n. There are, however, several varieties amongst the dialects of the Knistinaux ; the natural result of an unwritten language, spoken, through a territory so extensive, by tribes indepen- dent of each other and not united by any regular alliance. Amongst these varieties are mentioned the Muskegons and the Monsonies, of whose dialects we have no vocabularies. That of Harmon is most to be relied on. His wife, as he informs us, was a native of the Snare nation, living near the Rocky Moun- tains. Yet, allowing for differences in orthography, it does not differ materially from that of Mackenzie's, which must have been taken from the Knistinaux who traded between Lakes Winnipek and Athapasca. It is difficult to ascertain whether the name of Algoumekins, or Algonkins, did belong to any particular tribe, or was used as a generic appellation. At the first settlement of Canada, all the St. Lawrence Indians living below and some distance above Quebec were designated by the name of Montagnars or Mon- tagues. This appellation was derived from a range of hills or mountains, which, extending northwesterly from Cape Tour- mente (five miles below Quebec), divides the rivers that fall above that Cape into the St. Lawrence, the Ottowa, and Lake Superior, from those, first of the Saguenay, and afterwards of Hudson's Bay. The chain, or rather height of land, intersect- ed by many small lakes, may be traced according to Macken- zie, as far as lake Winnipek, of which it forms the eastern shore. It turns thence westwardly, and is crossed at Por- tage Methye, (latitude 56° 40', longitude 109°,) between the sources of the Missinipi and a branch of the River Athapasca, where the elevation above the sea has been roughly estimated at two thousand four hundred feet. The great trading-place of the Montagnars was Tadoussac, at the mouth of the River Saguenay, where several inland tribes and others living lower down the St. Lawrence and speaking the same language, met annually. In the most ancient speci- men we have of the Algonkin tongue, which is found at