Next must be mentioned the very important and widespread ATHAPASKAN or Dene (Tinne) group, named after Lake Athapaska (or Athabaska), because that sheet of water became a great rallying place for these northern tribes.  The Athapaskan group of Indians indeed represents the “Northern Indians” of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s reports and explorers.  They drew a great distinction between the Northern Indians (the Athapaskan tribes) and the Southern Indians, which included all the other Amerindian groups dwelling to the south of the Athapaskan domain.  But although nowadays so much associated with the far north and north-west of America, the Athabaskan group evidently came from a region much farther south, and has been cut in half by other tribal movements, wars, and migrations; for the Athapaskan family also includes the Apaches and the Navaho of the south-western portions of the United States and the adjoining territories of Mexico.  The northern and southern divisions of the Athapaskan group are separated by something like twelve hundred miles.  The following are the principal tribes into which the Northern ATHAPASKAN group was divided at the time of the first explorations of the north-west.  There were the Chippewayan Indians[8] round about Lake Athapaska, and the Caribou Eaters or Ethen-eldeli between Lake Athapaska and Reindeer Lake.  The “Slaves”, or Slave Indians of the Great Slave Lake and the upper Mackenzie River; the Beaver and Sarsi Indians (known also as the Tsekehn), about the Peace River and the northern part of Alberta province; and the Yellow Knives, or Totsan-ottine (so called from their being found with light-coloured copper knives when first discovered by Europeans), north-east of the Great Slave Lake and along the Coppermine River:  the Dogribs between the Great Slave Lake and Great Bear Lake, perhaps (except in Alaska) the most northern extension of the Amerindian type towards the Arctic regions.  West of the Dogribs dwelt—­and still dwell—­the interesting tribe of Hare Indians, or Kawcho-Tinne.  They extend northwards to the Anderson River, on the verge of the Arctic Ocean.  West of the lower Mackenzie River, and stretching thence to the Porcupine or Yukon Rivers, are the Squinting Indians ("Loucheux”, or Kuchin), who in former times were met with much farther to the south-east than at the present day.  Finally, there are the Nahani Indians, who have penetrated through the Rocky Mountains to the Stikine River, reaching thus quite close to the Pacific Ocean.  This penetration northwards of groups of Athapaskan Indians into districts inhabited for the most part by Amerindian tribes differing widely in language and customs from all those east of the Rocky Mountains, explains the way in which stories of the great western sea—­the Pacific—­reached, by means of trading intercourse, those Amerindian tribes of the middle-west and upper Canada, and so stirred up the French and English explorers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to make the marvellous journeys which are recounted in this book.