Tagish
The Tagish ("the ice (of spring) breaks", their name for the Tagish Lake) are an Indian First Nation of the Northern Athabasques , whose traditional settlement area in the region around the Tagish Lake and the Marsh Lake in the Yukon Territory in the northwest of Canada lay. They referred to themselves therefore simply as Tā̀gish kotʼīnèʼ ("People of Tagish Lake"), but later under the influence of the culturally and politically more powerful Tlingit (Lingit) ( Linget - "People of the tides") as Tagish Ḵwáan .
Names
Together with the culturally and linguistically closely related Kaska Dena and Tahltan who lived between the Yukon River and Mackenzie River as well as in the valley of the Liard River , the Tagish were formerly often referred to as Nahanni or Nahani ("People Over There Far Away").
However, since such diverse peoples as the T'aaku Kwáan the Tlingit (Lingit) , the Pelly River Northern Tutchone , the Tsetsaut (Wetaɬ) and the Sekani (Tsek'ene) and Daneẕaa were called Nahanni , it is often difficult in the historical sources distinguish the individual tribes from one another. The confusion was also caused by the fact that the Gitxsan , Tsimshian and Nisga'a several bands of the Northern Athabasques - among them the Tagish - as T'set'sa'ut , Ts'a̱ts'aaw or Jits'aawit (“People in the interior “) Designated.
Sometimes they are referred to together with the Kaska Dena as (Mackenzie) Mountain Peoples - but here mostly the Mountain Dene (Shihgot'ine) of the North Slavey (Sahtu Dene) and the South Slavey (Deh Cho) were meant.
history
In the 19th and 20th centuries more attracted Tlingit (Lingít) -families from the Pacific Coast and Taku (T'aaku Ḵwáan) from the Taku River and Auke (Aak'w Ḵwáan) from the Alexander Archipelago and the Alaska Panhandle from the vicinity of today's city Juneau to Tagish. The Tlingit settled among the Tagish around Carcross , which were already heavily decimated by disease and wars , married into the local families and since they soon dominated the group culturally and linguistically, they and the Tagish later called themselves Tagish Ḵwáan ; Ḵwáan means in the Tlingit (Lingit or Łingít) roughly "regional tribal group", so that they now regarded themselves as a subgroup of the Tlingit in (former) Tagish territory. Today you can find their descendants in the Carcross / Tagish First Nation around Carcross.
Other Tagish lived mostly with Southern Tutchone from the upper reaches of the Alsek River and Yukon River , as well as some Tlingit. Just as the Tagish around Carcross had adopted the Lingit, they adopted the culture and language of the largest population group here - the Southern Tutchone . Their descendants can now be found around Whitehorse as members of the Ta'an Kwach'an Council and the Kwanlin Dun First Nation .
Tagish tribesmen were involved in the discovery of gold that led to the Klondike River gold rush in the late 19th century: Keish (Skookum Jim Mason), Shaaw Tláa (Kate Carmack) and Káa goox (Dawson Charlie).
language
Their language, the Tagish (Tā̀gish or Den k'e) , is one of the northern Athapaskan languages in northwest Canada and is linguistically so close to the neighboring Tahltan (Tāłtān or Dahdzege) and Kaska (Dene Zágéʼ) that some linguists claim Tahltan is a language with three divergent, but mutually understandable dialects (Mithun 1999).
Today there are only two native speakers among the 400 or so Tagish, a deaf speaker and a tribe member who is only partially able to speak Tagish, as most speak either Tlingit (Lingit), Southern Tutchone or today mostly Canadian English - the language is extremely endangered and threatened with extinction.
See also
Web links
- Kwanlin Dün First Nation (English)
- Carcross / Tagish First Nation (English)
- Ta'an Kwäch'än Council (English)
- Map of the First Nations of the northwest coast (including Tagish)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sekani Indians of Canada
- ^ Canada's First People - Subarctic People
- ^ First Peoples Language Map of British Columbia - Den k'e (Tagish)
- ↑ Kaska Language Website ( Memento of the original from February 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Ethnologue Languages of the World - Tagish
