Etchareottine
('people dwelling in the shelter'). An
Athapascan tribe occupying the country of Great Slave lake and upper Mackenzie river to the Rocky
mountains,
including the lower Liard valley, British America. Their range extends from Hay
river to Ft Good Hope, and they once lived on the shores of Lake Athabasca and in the
forests stretching northward to Great Slave lake. They were a timid, pacific
people, called 'the people sheltered by willows' by the Chipewyan, indicating a
riparian fisher folk. Their Cree neighbors, who harried and plundered them and
carried them off into bondage, called them Awokanak, 'slaves,' an epithet which
in its French and English forms came to be the name under which they are best
known. Early in the 18th century they were dispossessed of their home, rich in
fish and game, and driven northward to Great Slave lake whither they were still
followed by the Cree, known only as Enna, 'the enemy,' a name still mentioned
with horror as far as Great Bear lake. On the islands where they took refuge a
fresh carnage took place. The Thlingchadinneh and
Kawchodinneh, who speak the
same dialect with them and bear a like reputation for timidity, probably comprehended under the
name Awokanak by the Cree, began their northerly migration at the same time,
probably under the same impulsion (Petitot, La Mer Glaciale, 292, 1887). Petitot
found among them a variety of physiognomy that he ascribed to a mixture of
races. Many of the males are circumcised in infancy; those who are not are
called dogs, not opprobriously, but rather affectionately. The bands or
divisions are:
Eleidlinottine, Etchaottine, Etcheridiegottine, Etechesottine,
Klodesseottine, and Desnedeyarelottine (Petitot, Autour du lac des Esclaves,
363, 1891). In his monograph on the Done-Dindjid, Petitot restricted the term to
the Etcheridiegottine, whom he distinguished from the Slaves proper, making the
latter a separate tribe with divisions at Hay river, Great Slave lake, Horn
mountains, the
fork of the Mackenzie, and Ft Norman.
