this writ. Witness George Duncan Ludlow Esquire at Fredericton the sixteenth day of July in the thirty ninth year of our reign.

Signed ODELL Junr.

Caleb Jones within named in obedience to the within writ of the Lord the King brings here into Court the body of the within-named Ann or Nancy a black woman and hereunto certifies that the cause of detaining the said Ann or Nancy, appears in the schedule to this writ annexed.

Signed CALEB JONES.

Caleb Jones of the Parish of Saint Marys in the County of York Esquire in obedience to the King's writ of "Habeas Corpus" to him directed and hereunto annexed humbly shows cause to the Court of the Lord the King why the said Caleb Jones detains the Negro a black woman Ann otherwise called Nancy in the same writ, named as follows. That long before the coming of the King's writ aforesaid to him, the said Caleb Jones there were and still are slaves to a great number in Africa and the trade in them between the Africa Coast and the Colonies plantations and islands now and heretofore belonging to the Crown of Great Britain was and is authorized and sanctioned by a variety of statutes of the Kingdom of Great Britain in that case made and provided That the said Caleb Jones formerly and before and during and after the war between Great Britain and the thirteen United Colonies, which terminated in the seperation of the same Colonies from the Mother Country the said Caleb Jones was an inhabitant and freeholder of and in the late Province, now State of Mary Land, then one of the Colonies belonging to the Crown of Great Britain aforesaid. That the said Ann or Nancy was, at the time of her birth and ever since hath been a female Negro slave or servant for life born of an African Negro slave, and before the removal of the said Caleb Jones from Mary Land to New Brunswick was and became by purchase the lawful and proper Negro slave or servant for life of him the said Caleb Jones and so being by the laws of Maryland, and consistently with the laws of all his Majesty's Colonies and plantations in America the proper Negro slave or servant for life of him the said Caleb Jones. That the said Caleb Jones, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty five brought and imported the said Ann or Nancy his Negro slave or servant for life into the Province of New Brunswick as it was lawful for him to do and has always hitherto held the said Ann or Nancy as his proper Negro slave or servant for life in the said Province of New Brunswick as by law he has good right and authority to do and the said Caleb Jones now renders her the said Ann or Nancy to the orders of the Court, as by the said writ he is commanded.

Signed CALEB JONES.

X.-Oceanic Origin of the Kwakiutl-Nootka and Salish Stocks of British Columbia and Fundamental Unity of Same, with Additional Notes on the Déné.

By CHARLES HILL-TOUT,

Buckland College, Vancouver, B.C.

(Communicated by Sir J. Bourinot and read May 25th, 1898.)

1

The classification of the aboriginal tribes of this continent on linguistic lines has resulted in giving us, according to Dr. Brinton, some 160, more or less, distinct stocks or families. Fifty-eight of these, according to Major Powell are found north of Mexico, of which no less extraordinary number than 39 are found clustered along the western littoral between Alaska and Lower California. That is to say, that more than two-thirds of all the linguistic stocks in North America are found in the comparatively restricted portion of land lying between the Rockies and the Coast. Various theories have been offered by ethnologists to account for this singular bunching of stocks in this limited territory, the most plausible of which is that put forward by the late Horatio Hale. This, briefly, supposes these isolated idioms to have had their origin in the natural language-making faculty of young children; that is to say, the author thinks that in former days when the country was less densely populated than at present, and families and settlements were separated by wider intervals from one another, that cases would occur where two or more young children of different sexes, left by the death of their parents to grow up secluded from all other society, would be compelled to frame a language of their own, which language would in course of time become the mother-tongue of a new linguistic stock. But while this view, coming as it does from such a veteran as Mr. Hale, deserves the most careful consideration at our hands, and while it may very possibly account for the origin of some of these diverse stocks, it has, I think, been felt by most students of American origins that it does not adequately account for the origin of all. For while the genial climate and the spontaneous fruitfulness of the soil in California render it possible for isolated groups of orphans to grow into strong and extensive stocks, a more rigorous climate and a less bountiful nature such as are found north of this favoured region scarcely permit of such origin for the stocks which lie beyond the 40th or 45th parallel of latitude. Ten years' residence in British Columbia leads me to believe that such a solution of the problem is wholly inadmis1" Proceedings" of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1886.

sible under the climatal conditions characteristic of this region. Prior to the advent of the whites scarcity of food and winter famines were by no means uncommon incidents in the life of the aborigines, as we learn both from themselves and from their traditional histories; and if adults and experienced foragers found a difficulty in procuring winter supplies small chance would there be for lost or abandoned children of tender years to do so. It is true that where these diverse stocks attain their maximum density the conditions required by Mr. Hale's theory are found to obtain, but the number of stocks north of this favoured region is yet sufficiently great to preclude the possibility of their having sprung into existence in this manner. In the comparatively limited area of British Columbia alone we have, according to the received classification, seven. distinct stocks to account for; that is, twice the number that is found elsewhere throughout those thousands of broad miles that make up the rest of British North America, and about the same number as are found scattered over that vast region which stretches on the one hand from the eastern slopes of the Rockies to the Atlantic seaboard and on the other from the 30th parallel north to the frozen waters of the Arctic ocean. It remains then to account for the presence of these numerous northern stocks by some other hypothesis than that suggested by Mr. Hale, and the following linguistic notes on some of the stocks of this region are offered in the belief that the evidence they furnish of the extra-American affinities of our coast tribes yield us a less conjectural solution of this interesting problem.

And I cannot help here in the first place pointing out that, apart from the positive evidence of the fact which I have to offer, there is nothing antecedently impossible or even improbable in the hypothesis of an extra-American origin for our west coast tribes; and the disfavour with which this view is held by some of our eastern Americanists has long been a matter of astonishment to me. That wide-spread Oceanic race which has spread itself from Madagascar on the west to Hawaii on the east, and from Formosa on the north to Easter Island on the south, may well have made some settlements on our western shores which are but 1800 miles from their present easternmost colony; which distance is but a little more than one-tenth of the interval between the most remote divisions of this stock; and less than one-fourth of the distance the ancestors of the Easter Islanders themselves passed over in sailing thither, if we bring them from the common centre and original home of their race. Thirty-four generations ago the great Polynesian navigator Maui was sailing far and wide. over the Pacific waters in his great double canoes each of which was capable of carrying from 200 to 300 people. We know he reached the Fijian group and from thence sailed away and discovered Ata and the other islands of the Tongan group; from whence he sailed to New Zealand, left a portion of his people there, and returned to Tonga again; and

making this his headquarters undertook and accomplished two more long voyages. Might not he or some of his companions have visited our shores at this time? At all events while Polynesian migrants were navigating the waters of the Pacific and covering thousands of miles in their course the probability that some of them touched upon our shores and effected settlements there was strong enough to make the matter worthy of investigation and save it from the contempt it has met with at the hands of some Americanists. And again, why so much objection to an Asian origin for some of our northwestern stocks on the part of eastern investigators, who have never studied our western tribes in their own home and who have to rely upon the labours of others for their information concerning them? Major Conder has recently stated in his articles on Central America that hundreds of words in the Central American language are identical in sound and significance with those of Eastern Asia, and has convinced himself of the truth of the Chinese and Japanese accounts in their histories of their voyages in former times to Western America. However this may be, no one can study the Déné language of British Columbia and compare its radicals with those of archaic Chinese and cognate tongues, and not feel a conviction growing in his mind that it is to East Asia that we must look for the origin of some at least of our West American stocks; and when he perceives the marked facial and other physical and psychical resemblances between some of the coast Indians and the Chinese and Japanese resident in our province, he cannot resist the belief that these resemblances are something more than fortuitous accidents. One of the commonest remarks one hears from travellers from the Orient as they pass through our midst is that our Indians are astonishingly like the Asiatics they have left behind; and the observant Kennan in his account of his journey through Siberia' has expressed himself thus on this head: "It will be seen from the illustrations that the Káchinski feminine type is distinctly Indian. . . All of the Káchinski

Tatárs that we saw in the Minusinsk district if they were dressed in American fashion would be taken in any western State for Indians without hesitation or doubt." If, as we know, the Eskimo have passed from America to Asia along that natural bridge which every year unites Cape Prince of Wales to East Cape, or along that other old-time inter-ethnic highway, the Aleutian Isles, why may not Asian hordes have passed in former times from Asia to this continent by the same lines of travel? That they really did so the marked mongoloid features which characterize so many of our west coast Indians and the linguistic evidence from the Déné and other sources leave no room for doubt.

In treating of the physical characteristics of the British Columbia coast tribes in his second report to the British Association on the Indians of this region, Dr. Boas writes thus: "The habitus of the northern tribes 1 Siberia and the Exile System, p. 400, Vol. II. George Kennan.