The Dhoen - on

The Dene names for their enemies who drove their ancestors out of their ancient homeland "across the sea but very far in the West" were: Men-Dogs, Bald Heads, Public Women, Dhoen-on, and the leader of these enemies were ‘The Crow Who Runs’ and ‘Ta-tsan-eko’.

These are names for the Mongols and Genghis Khan, and therefore the Dene migration was much later than the anthropological establishment would like to believe. It is not in line with their "scientific" methods - faulty carbon-dating, blood groups based upon present day populations which are not at all what they were in the days of Genghis Khan, and theories of Independent Invention. I need hardly say that I am a diffusionist.

The male ancestors of the Dene tribes were remnants of the shattered Hsi-Hsia army. With the help of the reincarnated Buddha King of Hsi-Hsia they escaped from Chung-hsing in 1227 A.D. Their escape to the rebel Khitan and to Jurchen ports on the Liao-tung was facilitated by the timely death of Genghis Khan in mid-August of 1227.

From more than 35 years of study of Dene lore collected mainly by explorers, traders and missionaries of the 19th century, the writings of scholars like Sapir, Jenness, Barbeau, Hodge, Hyde, and Osgood, and very extensive study of the peoples of Central East Asia from the second century B.C. to the Mongol invasions under Genghis Khan, I believe that there is no doubt whatsoever that the male ancestors of the Dene tribes were remnants of the shattered Hsi-Hsia army. With the help of the reincarnated Buddha King of Hsi-Hsia they escaped from the besieged capital, Chung-hsing, in the summer of 1227 A.D. by using the Hsi-Hsia river fleet which could carry both men and horses. Their escape to the rebel Khitan and to Jurchen ports on the Liao-tung was facilitated by the timely death of Genghis Khan in mid-August of 1227 and the return of the Mongol army to the Orkhon for the funeral of their leader and the election of a new Khan. However, knowing of these circumstances, the men dallied enroute to the Liao-tung and also at the port until they realized that the Mongol army was returning. The tradition records their great anxiety to be on the way to the destination they had in mind, and also their route via a chain of islands. It was, therefore, about seven or eight years after they left Chung-hsing before they reached this continent - about 1235 A.D.

Let us examine the names the Dene had for the Mongols and Genghis Khan.

MEN-DOGS - This nickname is based upon the Turco-Tungus origin of the Hsien-pi, who after the fall of the second Han, 220 A.D., established several dynasties in North China and a kingdom in Central Asia that stretched from Na-fo-po to Tun-houang to Koko-nor. With their superior cultural development, the Chinese looked upon all non-Chinese people as uncivilized barbarians. The most common epithet they used for them was Dog. Indeed, the Chinese still use that epithet for non-Chinese, e.g., for the Americans, as Running Dogs. The Dene use this epithet for the Eskimos, the result of more than 1000 years of Chinese influence before they came to this continent. However, the non-Chinese people of Central Asia had well developed cultures and empires that challenged Chinese power. This was especially true of the Turks and their various empires. Naturally, they considered themselves Men, but they shared the Chinese attitude towards lesser peoples, in particular towards the disunited, weak, filthy, illiterate, uncivilized Mongols of 1200 A.D. To the Chinese, the Turks, and the Central Asian Hsi-Hsia and Tarim kingdoms, the Mongols were Dogs. However, all those more cultured peoples recognized the half Turkish origin of the Mongols. Being half Turk, half Tungus, they were half man, half dog. They were Men-Dogs.

Since Orientalists have been uncertain of the ethnic origins of the Hsien-pi and the Mongols, the perception of the ancestors of the Dene in 1200 A.D. should settle that long-discussed question.

BALD HEADS - This is an old nickname for the Toba Hsien-pi. E.H. Parker concluded that this Toba name probably was derived from an eponymous Chief's name. In the dialects of the McKenzie River Kutchin, fkwi, or kfwi means head and Kfwi-detele, Bald Head. One of the early Hsien-pi Toba chiefs had the name Shi-kfwi. Discarding syllables in names appears to have been a Central Asian custom.

PUBLIC WOMEN - The English-Mongol Dictionary in the Room of the New York Public Library gives Public Women as the Mongol name for brothel. During the Mongol invasions, those brothels were filled with such of the women of the conquered tribes as were not selected for the harems of the Mongol elite. In those rude establishments, the inmates were at the disposal of the common soldiery. It is a measure of the contempt and the impotence of the Naiman Turkish ancestors of the Tukkudh and Vanta Kutchin that they should have dubbed their barbarous enemies by the name of those notorious public brothels.

Before examining the reasons for the Dene use of the name, Dhoen-on, for the Mongols, The Crow Who Runs and Ta-tsan-eko for their leader, we need to know the meaning of those names.

Several years after beginning my investigation of Dene origins, I read in Henry Serruys’ Sino-Jurchid Relations of the Yung-lo Period, that ca 14-00 A.D., Do'en/To’en was the name of a Mongol tribe living in the domain of the descendants of Genghis Khan's son, Juchi. This name does not appear in H.D. Martin's list of Mongol tribes of 1200 A.D. Since Father Petitot transcribed Dhoen from sound, it is impossible to know whether the dh of Dhoen is d followed by the heavy throat sound that A.H.Murray described as characteristic of Kutchin speech, or whether it is the ancient Chinese sound dh for t. However, Henry Serruys wrote that the meaning of Do'en, or Dhoen has been forgotten and I left it at that until two years ago. In 1986, I attended the Tenth Congress of the Turkish Historical Society in Ankara and as a result, I heard from a Turkish scholar that Dhoen is the Turkish word for falcon. On is the Turkish numeral adjective, ten, according to Bretschneider. Dhoen-on means Ten Falcons.

Dhoen-on means Ten Falcons

No doubt the name had been used by the Northern Turks after 1207 A.D. With them, the adjective preceded the noun, and Ten Falcons would have been On-Dhoen. But in Tibetan and the old Tokharian of the Oasis kingdoms, the adjective followed the noun and Ten Falcons was Dhoen-on.

CROW WHO WALKS. In 1198, the Jurchen Emperor of North China bestowed upon his lowly vassal, the Khan of the weak, despised Mongols, a minor title which entitled him to wear the Blue Plume, or Crow Feather. Such men were called Crow. The qualification, Who Runs, was a derisive addition referring to the Mongol leader's habit, during his dangerous circumstances in youth and during his rise to power, of beating a hasty retreat to the safety of the forests and mountains of his own territory whenever the issue of encounters with the Turks seemed in doubt. Such conduct was unacceptable to the Turks, and to them, the Mongol leader was The Crow Who Runs. As we shall see, there were Naiman Turks from the Altai among the Kutchin tribes.

TA-TSAN-EKO.Ta-tsan-eko is a Central Asian name for Genghis Khan which illustrates the very mixed nature of the spoken dialects of Central Asia. When Albert von Le Coq, the German archaeologist could write that documents brought back to Berlin from Qara-Khodja were in 17 different languages and 24 scripts, the mixed nature of the spoken language should occasion no surprise. In Ta-tsan-eko, Ta is Chinese for great, as in Ta-Yueh-che, Great Yueh-che; tsan is a Tibetan word that found its way into the Tarim during the Tibetan period. It means hero, leader, and it was always appended to the names of Tibetan kings; eko is the Qara-Khitan demonstrative adjective, this. Ta-tsan-eko means This Great Leader. It could have been used for the Mongol leader only after the great Kurilitai of 1206 A.D., when he took for himself the title, Genghis Khan. In Central Asian terms, Ta-tsan-eko approximates the meaning of Genghis Khan.

The use of falcon as a designation for fighting power goes back to the days of the great Uighur Empire north of the Gobi when the T'ang had cause to fear Uighur power. The Chinese name for the Uighurs was Hui-ho. In 788 A.D., the Uighur Khan asked the T'ang Emperor to change that name to Hui-hu as being more suited to their warlike nature. In Chinese, hu means falcon, or swooping hawk. In the period of their empire, Uighur tribes living in the area watered by the ten affluents of the Onon, Selenga, Orkhon and Kerulen Rivers were known as the On-Uighurs, the Ten Uighurs. In 1200 A.D., this region was the home of the Mongol tribes of Genghis Khan. It seems unlikely that the Turks ever applied the complimentary name, falcon to the despised Mongols until sometime after 1207 A.D. By that time, the despised Mongols had swooped down upon the Turkish tribes north of the desert and conquered them all. The survivors were incorporated into the Mongol tumans. In 1206 A.D., Genghis Khan had taken for himself, the title, Genghis Khan. The warriors of Genghis Khan, living in the region of the Ten Rivers, once the home of the Ten Uighurs, were now, indisputably, the most formidable of all the warlike tribes of Asia. They were now the On-Dhoen, the Ten Dhoen, the Swooping Hawks of the Ten Rivers, and the derisive title, The Crow Who Runs, though not forgotten, later became the Ta-tsan-eko of the Kutchin tribes whose Tukkudh and Vanta were descendants of the fugitive Naiman who had escaped to the protection of the King of Hsi-Hsia early in 1218 A.D.

Before the end of 1210 A.D., Genghis Khan had reduced the kingdom of Hsi-Hsia to vassalage; by 1215, he had shattered the Jurchen Empire of North China and overrun the Khitan and the Korean lands; by 1218 A.D. he had absorbed the vast Qara-Khitan Empire of Central Asia with its Oasis kingdoms. Very early in 1218, a small band of Naiman Turks from the Altai had escaped from Genghis Khan when he invaded Hsi-Hsia to bring his unruly vassal to heel. They were received with honour by the King of Hsi-Hsia. Later that year, fugitives from the Southern Tarim, mainly men of the mounted regiments guarding the trading towns, fled east into Hsi-Hsia before Jebe's Mongols advancing from Sarigh-kol into Khotan. Late in the year when the Uighur Khan of Turfan suppressed a rebellion of ten thousand of his troops in Qara-Khodja who were displeased with his submission to Genghis Khan, those who escaped crossed the nearby Hsi-Hsia border and took refuge with the King of Hsi-Hsia.

The Mongol script was invented by Uighur scholars captured at Chakirmaut in 1204 AD

The Naiman Khan who sought the protection of the King of Hsi-Hsia in 1218 A.D., became the leader of the Dene migration. One of the many names the Dene had for their leader was Etsiege, transcribed from sound by Father Petitot. This is a Central Asian pronunciation of the Mongol word for father, brought into Hsi-Hsia by Naiman fugitives who had been prisoners of the Mongols for more than ten years. Ts, in Central Asia, had the sound ch, and there was often a superfluous y vocalized as i before the vowel. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Mongols were illiterate and had no written language. The Mongol script was invented by Uighur scholars captured at Chakirmaut in 1204 A.D. According to Louis Hambis, the first sample of that script appeared in 1227 A.D. In that script, the word, father, was e&ctilde;ige, a form that cannot be transmitted by sound. The Dene tradition, Etsiege, appears only in Kutchin lore. It tells of the Mongol battles with the Altai Naiman and of their experiences at the Mongol Ordu and in the North China campaigns. By 1227, with the population of Hsi-Hsia almost completely exterminated and all North, East, and Central Asia in Mongol hands, the ancestors of the Dene had even more reason to apply the name Dhoen-on, The Ten Falcons, to their terrible enemies, the Mongols of Genghis Khan.

ATHAPASKANIt is appropriate to end this discussion of the Dhoen-on with an examination of the name, Athapaskan, which anthropologists use-for the Dene tribes. Around 1800 A.D., the men of the Northwest Fur Company, heard from the Dene of Fort Chipewyan, a phrase which they transcribed as Athabaska. It is composed of a noun and a verb, Atha, and bskyan. Atha begins with the Tibetan noun prefix, a, also used in the Tarim, and tha is the Hsi-Hsia word for Buddha; -baska is a transcription from sound of bskyan, a N.E. Tibetan verb meaning protect. In the old Tokharian, there was no final n, and it appears that language habits in the Tarim survived in spoken dialects. Atha-bskyan was Atha -bskya. and with the conjecture that is necessary in arriving at the meaning in Tibetan, Atha-bskya(n) means Protected by Buddha. From 1218 - 1227 A.D., fugitives from the Altai and the Tarim, and the people of Hsi-Hsia for a much longer period, had been protected by the Kings of Hsi-Hsia who were looked upon as reincarnated Buddhas. What the Dene of Fort Chipewyan were telling the men of the Northwest Trading Company was that their ancestors had been protected from the Dhoen-on by the Buddha King of Hsi-Hsia.

Note: November 1988 - received a letter from a man in Orono, Maine who had talked to the Uighurs of Urumtsi who told him that the escape of those regiments was among their oldest traditions.

[Editor’s Note: As evident from the date of the endnote, this manuscript is a later version of the author’s writing on the specific subject. I suspect this presentation was prepared for her magnum opus The Dene and the Na-Dene Indian Migration – 1233 AD: Escape from Genghis Khan to America, ISAC Press, Columbus, GA, 1991, 566p. The earlier version appears to be “The Ferocious Enemies of the Northern Dene”, Anthropologi-cal Journal of Canada 19(1), 18-23 (1981), published nearly a decade before the book. Ms Stewart completed much of her research in the 1950s and 1960s. Due primarily to discouraging advice from Queen’s University, she set the work aside and turned to the study of the Stewart Family Tree. Then in the late 1970s she began to write about the culture of the Dene people. “Ferocious Enemies” was her eighth article, and it clearly showed the diffusionist basis for the great book in the making.]