Kutchin

[kooch-in]

noun

plural

Kutchins ,

plural

Kutchin .

1. a member of a group of North American Indians who live in the region of the lower Mackenzie River in northwestern Canada and the Yukon and Porcupine rivers of northeastern Alaska.

2. the Athabascan language of the Kutchin.

Word History and Origins

Origin of Kutchin¹

First recorded in 1930–35; from Kutchin gwičin “people of, dwellers at (the place specified),” occurring as the final element in the names of local bands, and misunderstood as a designation for all Kutchin

Example Sentences

To the west are the Déné tribes, who are believed to fall into three culture groups, an eastern group, Yellow Knives, Dog Rib, Hares, Slavey, Chipewyan and Beaver; a south-western group, Nahane, Sekani, Babine and Carrier; and a north-western group, comprising the Kutchin, Loucheux, Ahtena and Khotana.

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Did any of your readers ever amuse themselves, as children, by performing the dance known as kutchin kutchu-ing; which consists in jumping about with the legs bent in a sitting posture?

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The Kutchin make pretty pipe-stems out of goose-quills wound about with porcupine-quills.

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The Kutchin and Eastern Finneh were modeled after the clay pipes of the Hudson Bay Company, but they also carve very pretty ones out of birch knots and the root of the wild rose-bush.

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Kutchin I. A communication, received in 1881, from Mr. Ivan Petroff, special agent United States census, transmitting a dialogue, taken down by himself in 1866, between the Kenaitze Indians on the lower Kinnik River, in Alaska, and some natives of the interior who called themselves Tennanah or Mountain-River-Men, belonging to the Tinne Kutchin tribe.

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