Little is known of the tribe, the language of which forms the basis of the present family. The sole knowledge possessed by Gallatin was derived from a vocabulary and some scanty information furnished by Dr. John Sibley, who collected his material in the year 1805. Gallatin states that the tribe was reduced to 50 men. According to Dr. Sibley the Attacapa language was spoken also by another tribe, the “Carankouas,” who lived on the coast of Texas, and who conversed in their own language besides. In 1885 Mr. Gatschet visited the section formerly inhabited by the Attacapa and after much search discovered one man and two women at Lake Charles, Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, and another woman living 10 miles to the south; he also heard of five other women then scattered in western Texas; these are thought to be the only survivors of the tribe. Mr. Gatschet collected some two thousand words and a considerable body of text. His vocabulary differs considerably from the one furnished by Dr. Sibley and published by Gallatin, and indicates that the language of the western branch of the tribe was dialectically distinct from that of their brethren farther to the east. The above material seems to show that the Attacapa language is distinct from all others, except possibly the Chitimachan. BEOTHUKAN FAMILY. = Bethuck, Latham in Trans. Philolog. Soc. Lond., 58, 1856 (stated to be “Algonkin rather than aught else”). Latham, Opuscula, 327, 1860. Latham, El. Comp. Phil., 453, 1862. = Beothuk, Gatschet in Proc. Am. Philosoph. Soc., 408, Oct., 1885. Gatschet, ibid., 411, July, 1886 (language affirmed to represent a distinct linguistic family). Gatschet, ibid., 1, Jan-June, 1890. Derivation: Beothuk signifies “Indian” or “red Indian.” The position of the language spoken by the aborigines of Newfoundland must be considered to be doubtful. In 1846 Latham examined the material then accessible, and was led to the somewhat ambiguous statement that the language “was akin to those of the ordinary American Indians rather than to the Eskimo; further investigation showing that, of the ordinary American languages, it was Algonkin rather than aught else.” Since then Mr. Gatschet has been able to examine a much larger and more satisfactory body of material, and although neither in amount nor quality is the material sufficient to permit final and satisfactory deductions, yet so far as it goes it shows that the language is quite distinct from any of the Algonquian dialects, and in fact from any other American tongue. GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION. It seems highly probable that the whole of Newfoundland at the time of its discovery by Cabot in 1497 was inhabited by Beothuk Indians.