The Dene Tribe Known as The Slaves

The Loucheux of Peel River, in relating their tradition, Krwan-atan, Man Without Fire, said categorically, "The Slaves are not of our People" ¹. At any time up to 1227 A.D., the native people, i.e., the old population of the Tarim and Kan-su Oases, would have said, "The Tu-ku-hun (Ha-za) are not of our People".

During his years in the lower McKenzie Valley 1860-75, Father Emil Petitot of the Catholic Mission at Fort Good Hope, gave the names of the Slaves as 'Atchen, Hatchen, Etcha-ottin, Kfwi, Thi' ². These names were transcribed from sound. They are names that native Central Asians had for the Tu-ku-hun who came into Kan-su and the Tarim as invaders 250-325 A.D.

The Tu-ku-hun were of the Hsien-pi race who came from the region of the Liao River into the Koko-nor region. From there, they expanded into the Sa-cu (Tun-houang) area and then farther west to Na-fo-po and Cherchen in the Southern Tarim Basin to establish the Tu-ku-hun as a hybridization of Mongol and Tibetan with a slight Turkish admixture³.

Southern Tarim Basin

Peel-Mackenzie River Valley

Shortly after 650 A.D., the Tibetans invaded the Southern Tarim and drove the Tu-ku-hun royalty and their entourage back into the Koko-nor region. From there, the T'ang Emperor of China settled them near Liang-chou, the Kha-ba of the Tang-hsiang Hsi-Hsia. Many Tu-ku-hun remained in the Southern Tarim and in the Tun-houang (Sa-cu) area. The Tibetans went on to conquer all of the Tarim Oases, Kan-su and part of Shensi before they were halted.

Not until 1000 A.D. was their expulsion from all of that area completed, when the Qara-Khanid Turks conquered Kashgar and Khotan. These centuries had the effect of Tibetanizing the language and dialects of the Tarim, which, from the second century B.C., had already been under strong Chinese influence. In addition, there were the linguistic influences of all the world's great religions and the multi-ethnic impact of the traders of the Silk Road with its Northern and Southern branches.

This is why Edward Sapir of the National Museum of Canada and later of Yale University could write that the Dene dialets were related to the Sino-Tibetan-Siamese group. This is why Robert McDonald, Anglican Missionary to Fort McPherson, NWT, could write that the Dene had no language of their own but made up of borrowings from a number of languages. This is why the German expedition to the Northern Tarim in the first years of the 20th century could bring back documents written in 17 languages and 24 scripts -- including Greek language and script dating from the 9th century A.D. The number may have been higher⁴.

The Chinese called the Tu-ku-hun A-tch'ai barbarians. A-Tch'ai passed into Tibetan as Ha-za, A-za⁵. These are not names that the Tu-ku-hun had for themselves, but those by which the mixed tribes of Shan-shan designated them. In the Wei-lo, the Tu-ku-hun are called Tseu-lu -- Tseu barbarians. Tseu is the Hiung-nu word for Slave. Chinese transcriptions often suppress the initial a. Without that initial a, there is a marked resemblance between Tchi'ai and Tseu. At the end of the eighth century, the Tong-tien wrote A-tseu-lu -- A-tseu barbarians -- in place of A-tch'ai barbarians, for the name of the Tu-ku-hun⁶. From this evidence and that of Dene names, A-tch'ai, A-tseu, Ha-za, 'A-Za, Hatchen, 'A-tchen, Etcha-Ottine, all mean Slave. These names illustrate what F.W. Thomas called the complex nature of Tarim dialects. This is the origin of the names of the Dene tribe known as the Slaves ⁷. They are descendants of the Hsien-pi, Tu-ku-hun who, anciently, were slaves of the Hiung-nu.

Among the Hares, the Chipewyan, and in Nestorian magic rites practised by the Dene and witnessed by Father Petitot who did not recognize them as such, the words Kfwi and Thi occur. Both names mean Head, and Kfwi-detele meant Bald Heads. When the Dene used Kfwi, or Thi in descriptive names, detele was dropped, and Kfwi and Thi alone, could have the meaning Bald Heads. Thi-Cane -- Of the Can Clan of the Bald Heads, and Kfwi-tro-go-tine -- Place of the People of the Caravans of the Bald Heads -- are examples⁹. Bald Heads is an ancient nickname for the Toba Hsien-pi to whom Tu-ku-hun belonged¹⁰. Dene tribal bands bearing the name Kfwi, or Thi, belong to the Slave tribe of the Dene.

In 840 A.D., the great Uighur Empire north of the Gobi was destroyed in a war between the Manichaean Uighurs and the Buddhist Uighers allied with the Khirghiz. The Dene tradition, Krwan-atan, basically, is an account of the difficulity the Uighur ancestors of the Dene had in expelling the Tibetans from the Tarim Oases. Before 1211 A.D., the Nestorian Church had become second to Mahayana Buddhism in Central Asia. The biblical lore of the Nestorian Church and the Gesar legend of the eighth century had similarities to the course of events in the fall of the Uighur Empire. As the centuries passed in the new land, memory and understanding faded and dwindled in Dene isolation from the roots of their ancestors, and thus the Dene combined those similar events from three sources in the tradition, Krwan-atan, Man With Fire.

In the Tibetan army opposing the incoming Uighurs were regiment of Tu-ku-hun (Hatchen) and Hor (Turks). The former were descendants of Tu-ku-hun who remained in the Southern Tarim after their royal family fled from the Tibetan invaders to the Koko-nor circa 660 A.D., and subsequently, with the help of the T'ang, settled near Liang-chou. The latter, the Hor, were descended from Hiung-nu tribes that dropped off from the main body of the migration westward in 175 B.C. and were scattered across the Southern Tarim from the Bulugir (Hor) River to Yarkand. In the Central Asian epic, Gesar of Ling, the enemies of the incoming Uighurs were the Hatchen Hor regiments of the Tibetan army. As Dene tradition tells us, so accurately, the ancestors of the Slaves were the Hatchen of the South¹¹.

The Slaves of McKenzie River attributed their origin to the union of a Dene woman with a Black Dog. For nearly a thousand years, the Tu-ku-hun of the Southern Tarim and Kan-su Oases intermarried with the native population of Yueh-che Tokharians, Sacas and Sogdians. By that time, the Celtic strain of the Yueh-che had become widely diffused throughout the Oasis of Central Asia. In the view of the Chinese-influenced Central Desert Asias, Tu-ku-hun, who had come from north of the Gobi Desert, were Black Dogs. Black meant uncivilized, and Dog was a common Chinese epithet for barbarians. No stigma was attached to these unions, for they took place according to customary law. Family organization was matriarchal and children belonged to the Mother's clan. For these reasons, the Slaves looked upon themselves as Dene, while retaining the ancient Hiung-nu designation, Tseu - Slaves, the name used for them by their Yuch-che and Hiung-nu subjects in Shan-shan circa 300-1227 A.D.

The Tu-ku-hun (Slaves) lived on the Southern rim of the Liu-sha Desert from the western end of Lop-nor to Sacu. This is why their descendants at Fort Norman, NWT, spoke of themselves to Alexander McKenzie and Sir John Franklin as Loucheux, i.e., Liu-sha¹². Their ancestors, like those of the Kutchin of Qara-Khodja, had to "keep a lookout on both sides" -- on the route across the Liu-sha Desert and alternative routes into the Southern Tarim to guard against surprise attacks from enemies.

The origin of the Dene tradition, Krwan-atan, Man Without Fire, and that of the Slaves is clear. The former is a much reduced and confused history of the break-up of the Uighur Empire, 840 A.D., and the migration of some of the Uighur tribes into the Tarin Oases, where, for a time, they warred with the Tu-ku-hun (Slave) regiments in the Tibetian army. The Slave tribe of the McKenzie River are descended from the Hsien-pi Tu-ku-hun whom the earlier Yueh-che and Hor (Hiung-nu) called Tseu -- Slaves. Their ancestors, anciently, until the second century B.C., were Slaves of the Hiung-nu.

1. Simon, Sarah & James, Fort McPherson, 1951
2. Petitot,E., Quinze Ans sous le Cercle Poaire, pp. 183-184
3. Eberhard, W., History of China, p. 130
4. Jenness, D., Indians of the Canada, p. 377; Heeney, W.B., Leaders of the Canadian Church, 1943, pp. 116 ff; Le Coq, Albert von, Sand Buried Treasures of Chinese Turkestan, pp. 27, 100
5. Pelliot, P., "Notes sur les T'ou-yu-houen",T.P., Vol. 20, pp. 323-325
6. Ibid.
7. Op. cit., Nos. 2 & 5.
8. Pelliot, E., "Le Grand Lac des Esclaves", pp. 362-363; in Monograph....Brymner trans., pp. 12 & 22
9. Ibid.
10. Parker, E.H., A Thousand Years of the Tartarsm, pp. 99-107; Howorth, H.H., "Origin of the Mongols", JRAS, V. 7, pp. 221 ff
11. David-Neel, A., The Superhuman Life of Gesar of Ling, p. 83. Hatchen appears to be the Uighur form for Atch'ai, or the Tibetan Ha-za. Tokharian had no final n, but n, in old Turkish, was an archaic plural.
12. Franklin, Sir John, Narrative of a Second Expedition to the Shores of the Polar Sea, 1828, p. 40.

THE SLAVES AND THE TU-KU-HUN

by John White, MES Journal Editor

[Abridged] The principal location of the Dene people in North America is the Mackenzie River Valley that drains northwest Canada into the Beafort Sea. The primary path of Asian migrants was a portage eastward from the ultra-long Yukon River. There are three large lakes in northwest Canada: the Winnipeg, which is quite shallow and drains into Hudson Bay via the Nelson River, and Great Slave, and Great Bear Lakes, which are very deep and drain into the Mackenzie River. It is likely that Great Slave Lake was named for the "Dene Slaves".

I am intrigued that the Tocharian languages had an I-E (Indo-European) development and with it some influences of old EMSL (Earth Mother Sacred Language) that I find plentiful in many European I-E languages. Ms Stewart discuses the Dene expression "Kfwi-detele", explaining that it means Bald Heads and refers to the Tu-ku-hun masters called the Toba Hsien-pi. I think this expression could be an example of Tocharian B that survived in isolation for 100 year or more.

I view the name "Kfwi-de-tele" in this way, meaning The-head-(of)- The-Sun. The "kfwi" is an unusual spelling of the old I-E root "capo" for head, which means Earth-Father in EMSL. Thus I see the word as "k(a)vi", where the "fw" is a double consonant with the Asiatic w-sound that occurs in modern Welsh. Next I poiint out that "Tele" is like the Tribal-name of the Kuna Inidans of Panama, which is "Tule" and means The-Sun. So I am prepared to argue that "Tele" probably means The-Sun.

In English we use the Belgae/Welsh word "bald", which means The-Father-Sun in EMSL and echoes the word "ball", which means Father-Sun. Note that the Belgae worshiped "Beli", Father-Sun, and surely are the people who brought the Asiatic w-sound to English with the ancient meaning of the v-sound. Thus, I think that "Tele" could be a Tocharian B word for "bald".