In Merriam's notes there is no general statement on the Bahneko or North Fork Wailaki; he was evidently somewhat undecided whether they were truly a distinct group. However, he comments on the Tsennahkennes, or Eel River Wailaki, as follows.
[Illustration: Map 5. Villages and tribelets of the Eel Wailaki and the North Fork Wailaki. Roman numerals indicate tribelets, arabic numerals village sites.]
Tsennahkennes ... A Nung-gah^{ hl} Athabascan tribe in north-central Mendocino County, California, occupying the greater part of the mountainous country on both sides of main Eel River from Red Mountain and the upper waters of East Branch South Fork Eel easterly to Salt Creek, and from a few miles south of Harris southerly to Rattlesnake Creek. Their territory thus includes the major part of Elkhorn Creek, the headwaters of East Branch South Fork Eel, Milk Ranch Creek, and Red Mountain Creek, practically all of Cedar Creek, and the whole of Bell Springs and Blue Rock Creeks. The old stage road from Cummings north to Harris, passing Blue Rock and Bell Springs, traverses their territory.
It is clear that in recording Wailaki words Merriam followed the same principles that guided him in his published works on other Californian languages. In transcribing the Achomawi language he said (1928, p. vi), "All Indian words are written in simple phonetic English, the vowels having their normal alphabetic sounds." For a more precise determination I have made a comparison of words recorded by both Merriam and Goddard. The values of the symbols used by Goddard are taken from a list he gives in his Wailaki Texts (1923_b_, p. 77) together with Phonetic Transcription of American Indian Languages (Amer. Anthro. Assoc., 1916), a report which Goddard helped prepare.
A total of twenty-eight words recorded by both Merriam and Goddard were found. Although the discrepancies seem great, this is because Merriam used Webster's English orthography whereas Goddard used a technical one modified from the old Smithsonian system. Whatever the limitations of Merriam's orthography for considerations of grammar (which he did not try to obtain), his recordings consistently check Goddard's independent information and serve as complete identifications of places and ethnographic facts.