Page:Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society V.djvu/31

Rh Old World. The dialects of the Tinneh language are by no means confined within the limits of the hyperborean division. Stretching from the northern interior of Alaska down into Sonora and Chihuahua, we have here a linguistic line of more than four thousand miles in length, extending diagonally over forty-two degrees of latitude, like a great tree whose trunk is the Rocky Mountain range, whose roots encompass the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, and whose branches touch the borders of Hudson Bay and of the Arctic and Pacific Oceans." But the Origin Legend declares it is a mixed language (par. 395), and it is but reasonable to suppose that such a composite race cannot possess a very pure language.



The various accessions to the tribe from other stocks have probably added many words of alien origin. What these additions are is not now known, and will not be known until all the languages of the Southwest have been thoroughly studied.

20. The habitations of the Navahoes are usually of a very simple character. The most common form consists of a conical frame, made by setting up a number of sticks at an angle of about forty-five degrees. An opening is left on one side of the cone to