 Index Page
Introduction
Contact
Alqonquian
~ Abenaki
~ Blackfoot
~ Gros Ventre
~ Cheyenne
~ Arapaho
~ Plains Cree
~ Plains Ojibwa
Caddoan
~ Arikara
~ Pawnee
~ Wichita
Shoshonean
~ Comanche
~ The Kansa (Kaws)
~ Kiowa
~ Shoshone
Siouian
~ Dhegiha
~ Hidatsa
~ Mandan
~ Hidatsa
~ Santee / Dakota
~ Teton / Lakota
~ Yankton / Nakota
And More
~ Crazy Horse
~ Red Cloud
~ Sitting Bull
~ Legends & Stories
~ George Catlin
Sites Of Interest
 River-Styx.net
Gimme Sweeps!
Idiotslist
Balko Photo
German Tribes org
Zeitlerweb.com
Haplogroup-I.com
ClassicFilmStars
132am Web Design
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The Algonquian (also Algonkian) languages are a subfamily of Native American languages that includes most of the languages in the Algic language family (the two Algic languages that are not Algonquian are Wiyot and Yurok of northwestern California). The language family was named for the Algonquin language, from which it should be carefully distinguished. The term "Algonquin" derives from the Maliseet word elakómkwik: "they are our relatives/allies".
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| Pre-contact distribution of Algonquian languages |
It is the largest native language group in North America. It is also a tribe (Algonkin), but not all Algonquian belong to the same tribe. Algonquian is a family of related languages, but it has many dialects, and not all of the speakers could understand each other.Their range extended from Hudson Bay southward along the Atlantic coast to North Carolina and west to the Mississippi River. On the Great Plains, Algonquian-speakers would include Cheyenne, Arapaho, Gros Ventres, Blackfoot, Cree, Menominee, and Ojibwe, and some have even suggested that the Wiyot and Yurok in northern California speak a distant form of Algonquian. The dialect of the Algonkin themselves is closely related to that of the Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Potawatomi making the Algonkin the easternmost speakers of this group.
This large family of about 27 languages are generally divided roughly into three major groupings — Central, Plains, and Eastern Algonquian, primarily out of convenience. Only Eastern Algonquian constitutes a true genetic subgroup. The languages are listed below. This classification follows Goddard (1996) and Mithun (1999).
A. Central and Plains
(also known as Blackfeet) : Blackfoot is the name of any of the Algonquian languages spoken by the Blackfoot tribe of Native Americans, who currently live in the northwestern plains of North America. Like the other Plains Algonquian languages, Blackfoot is often said to have diverged a great deal from Proto-Algonquian. It is significantly different both phonologically and, especially, lexically from the other languages in the family.
(also known as Arapaho-Atsina) : The Arapaho language (also Arapahoe) language is a Plains Algonquian language (an areal rather than genetic grouping) spoken almost entirely by elders in Wyoming. The language, which is in great danger of becoming extinct, has diverged very significantly phonologically from its posited proto-language.
: The Cheyenne language (Tsėhesenėstsestotse or, in easier spelling, Tsisinstsistots) is a Native American language spoken in present-day Montana and Oklahoma. Specifically, it is a Plains Algonquian language. However, Plains Algonquian, which also includes Arapaho and Blackfoot, is an areal rather than genetic subgrouping.
: Cree is the name for a group of closely-related Algonquian languages spoken by approximately 50,000 speakers across Canada, from Alberta to Labrador.
(also known as Menomini) : The Menominee language (also spelled Menomini) is an Algonquian language spoken on the Menominee Nation lands in Northern Wisconsin in the United States.
Menominee is a highly endangered language, with only a handful of elderly speakers left. According to a 1997 report by the Menominee Historic Preservation Office, 39 people speak Menominee as their first language, 26 as their second language, and 65 others have learned some of it for the purpose of understanding the language and/or teaching it to others.
--I. Eastern Great Lakes (also known as Core Central)
---a. Ojibwe-Potawatomi (also known as Ojibwe-Potawatomi-Ottawa, Anishinaabemowin, or the Anishinaabe language)
: (also known as Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Ojibway, or the Anishinaabe language) : The Anishinaabe language or the Ojibwe group of languages or Anishinaabemowin is the second most commonly spoken Native language in Canada (after Cree), and the third most spoken in North America (behind Navajo and Cree). It is spoken by the Anishinaabeg who are the Algonquin, Nipissing, Ojibwa (Chippewa), Saulteaux, Mississaugas and Odawa (Ottawa). Very closely related to Anishinaabemowin and often included in this group are the Anishinini language and the Potawatomi language. As their fur trading with the French increased the Ojibwas’ power, the Anishinaabe language became the trade language of the Great Lakes region, and was for hundreds of years an extremely significant presence in the northern United States.
: Potawatomi (also spelled Pottawatomie; in Potawatomi Bodéwadmimwen or Bodéwadmi Zheshmowen or Neshnabémwen) is a Central Algonquian language and is spoken around the Great Lakes in Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as in Kansas in the United States, and in southern Ontario in Canada, by fewer than 50 Potawatomi people, all elderly. There is currently an effort underway to revive the language.
(also known as Fox-Sauk-Kickapoo or Mesquakie-Sauk-Kickapoo)
: The Shawnee language is a Central Algonquian language spoken in parts of central and northeastern Oklahoma by only around 200 Shawnee, making it very endangered. It was originally spoken in Ohio, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. It is closely related to the other Algonquian languages Mesquakie-Sauk (Sac and Fox) and Kickapoo.
: The Miami-Illinois language was a Native American language formerly spoken in the United States, primarily in Illinois and adjacent areas along the Mississippi River by several tribes and subtribes, among them the Illinois, Miami, Kaskaskia, Peoria, Wea, and Tamaroa. Later, its speakers were forcibly removed from that state, eventually settling in northeastern Oklahoma. The language was extensively documented in written materials for over 200 years.
B. Eastern
(also known as Micmac, Mi’kmaq, Mi’gmaq, or Mi’kmaw) : The Mi'kmaq language (also spelled Míkmaq, Mi’gmaq, and Micmac) is an Eastern Algonquian language spoken by around 7,300 Míkmaq in Canada, and another 1,200 in United States, out of a total ethnic Míkmaq population of roughly 20,000. The word Míkmaq is a plural word meaning 'my friends' (singular Míkm); the adjectival form is Míkmaw.
---I. : Abenaki (also Abnaki) is the cover term for a complex of dialects of one of the Eastern Algonquian languages, originally spoken in what is now Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Modern Western Abenaki is currently spoken by a very small handful of Abenaki elders in Odanak, Quebec. Eastern Abenaki was until quite recently spoken by elders of the Penobscot tribe in eastern Maine, although it is now extinct. Other dialects of Eastern Abenaki, such as Caniba and Aroosagunticook, now extinct, are documented in French-language materials from the colonial period.
(also known as Abenaki or Abenaki-Penobscot) : Eastern Abnaki is an extinct language once spoken by the Penobscot in the coastal area of the state of Maine, United States. The last speaker died in the 1990's in Penobscot, Maine.
(also known as Abnaki, St. Francis, Abenaki, or Abenaki-Penobscot): Western Abnaki is an indigenous language spoken by around 20 individuals along the St. Lawrence River between Montreal and Quebec City. It is being supplanted by French and is considered nearly extinct.
(also known as Maliseet-Passamquoddy or Malecite-Passamquoddy)
(perhaps): Etchemin was a language of the Algonquian language family, spoken in early colonial times on the coast of Maine. The word Etchemin is a French alteration of an Algonquian word for canoe. The only known record of the Etchemin language is a list of the numbers from one to ten taken down by Marc Lescarbot in the early 17th century and published in his book the History of New France.
---II. Southern New England
(also known as Massachusett-Narragansett) : The Massachusett language was a Native American language, a member of the Algonquian language family. It is also known as the Wampanoag, Natick, or Pokanoket language. The now-extinct Narragansett language, spoken in Rhode Island, was a dialect of Massachusett.
17. Loup A (probably Nipmuck): Some of the attested Loup vocabulary can be identified with different eastern Algonquian communities, including the Mahican, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy and other groups. Loup A and Loup B refer to two vocabulary lists which cannot be conclusively identified with another known community.
18. Loup B: seems like a composite of different dialects. It is closest to Mahican and Western Abenaki.
19. Mohegan-Pequot
---III. Delawarean
(also known as Mohican) : The Mahicans (also Mohicans) are a Native American tribe who have moved mostly to northeastern Wisconsin, U.S., but who came from the Hudson River Valley (around Albany, NY), many then moving to Stockbridge, Massachusetts after 1780, before the remaining descendants moved to Wisconsin during the 1820s and 1830s. Though similar in name, the Mahicans were not Mohegans, a different Algonquian-speaking tribe living in eastern (upper Thames valley) Connecticut (who were jointly ruled by the Pequot tribe until 1637.
--i. Lenape (also known as Delaware)
22. Munsee
23. Unami
24. Nanticoke (also known as Nanticoke-Conoy)
(also known as Carolina Algonquian, Pamtico, Pampticough, Christianna Algonquian) : They spoke an Algonquian language also known as Pamlico or Carolina Algonquian.
(also known as Virginia Algonquian) : The Powhatan language, also known as Virginia Algonquian, is an extinct language spoken by the Powhatan people of tidewater Virginia in the late 16th and early 17th century. It was the first language of Wahunsonacock and Pocahontas. What little is known of it is by way of word-lists recorded by William Strachey and Captain John Smith.
27. Shinnecock (uncertain)
Genetic and Areal Relationships
It is important to note that only Eastern Algonquian is a true genetic subgrouping. The Plains Algonquian and the Central Algonquian groups are not genetic groupings but rather areal groupings. This means that Blackfoot is no more closely related to Cheyenne than it is to Menominee. However, these areal groups often do have certain shared linguistic features, but the features in question are attributed to language contact.
Beside a common language, most Algonquian-speaking tribes shared comparable creation stories and religious beliefs: a great spirit or supreme creator; lessor spirits who controlled the elements; a hero figure who taught their people the skills they needed to survive; evil spirits who caused mischief, misfortune, or illness; and good spirits who helped the worthy and punished wrongdoers. There was also a shared belief in a life after death where the spirits of dead men pursued the spirits of dead animals. However, in contrast to Christian beliefs, the Algonkin had no concept of a hell or place of eternal punishment. Dreams were of particular importance to the Algonquian peoples, and proper interpretation was an important responsibility of their shamans whose other duties included communication with the spirit world, guiding men's lives, and healing the sick. On the dark side, there was an almost universal fear of witchcraft, and Algonquian peoples, the Algonkin included, were very reluctant to mention their real names to prevent possible misuse by enemies with spiritual power and evil intent. In various degrees, these beliefs were shared by most native peoples in North America.
The Algonkin were patrilineal with the right to use specific hunting territories being passed from father to son, but some Algonquian tribes used matrilineal descent in determining kinship. The Iroquois to the west and south of the Algonkin were matrilineal and differed from the Algonkin in several important ways. The most obvious being that the Iroquois relied heavily on agriculture and lived in large fortified villages. The Iroquois also had a highly developed central political organization, while the Algonkin did not. Despite this, the Algonkin were formidable warriors who used their advantages in transportation and woodland skills to dominate the Iroquois before the formation of the Iroquian confederacies.
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