Algonquian Language Family

Culture area: Northeast

Tribes affected: Abenaki, Algonquin, Arapaho, Atsina, Blackfoot, Blood, Cheyenne, Cree, Fox, Illinois, Kickapoo, Lenni Lenape, Maliseet, Menominee, Micmac, Montagnais, Naskapi, Narragansett, Natick, Ojibwa, Passamaquoddy, Piegan, Potawatomi, Sauk, Saulteaux, Shawnee, Wampanoag, Wappinger

Proto-Algonquian is probably the best-known proto-language of the North American Indian languages north of Mexico, most likely because of the wide geographic spread of Algonquian tribes and the large number of researchers studying this family.

The Algonquian language family may be divided into three major groups: central, eastern, and western. The central languages are Cree, Montagnais, Naskapi, Menominee, Fox, Sauk, Kickapoo, Shawnee, Peoria, Miami, Illinois, Potawatomi, Ojibwa, Ottawa, Algonquin, Saulteaux, Delaware (Lenni Lenape), and Powhatan. The eastern group includes Natick, Narragansett, Wampanoag, Pennacook, Mohegan, Pequot, Wappinger, Montauk, Penobscot, Abenaki, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, and Micmac. The western section consists of Blackfoot, Piegan, Blood, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Atsina, and Nawathinehena. It must be noted that scholars are not always in agreement about which ones are languages and which are dialects or subgroupings.

Culture Area

Among North American Indian groups, the tribes that speak Algonquian languages cover the largest area: They can be found from Vancouver Island and through Canada to Newfoundland, and in areas along the Atlantic Coast as far down as North Carolina. Since the time of white occupation in the United States, many changes in location and status have taken place. For example, Kickapoo, at one time contiguous with Fox and Sauk in the area of present Illinois, would later be spoken in Oklahoma and in Mexico. By the 1960’s, the Arapaho were living principally in Oklahoma and Wyoming. Some five to six thousand Blackfoot were settled in Montana, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. Cheyenne had three to four thousand speakers in various states, but they were concentrated in Montana and Oklahoma. Cree also had thirty to forty thousand speakers, most of whom were in various parts of Canada; some were also in Montana. The Fox-Sauk were numerous in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Kickapoo speakers were scattered among the central states, but some were also in Mexico, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Most of the Micmac settled in various provinces of Canada, as did the Montagnais-Naskapi. The Ojibwa (Chippewa) had a population of some forty to fifty thousand scattered across several Canadian provinces and in most of the states bordering Canada.

Status of Spoken and Written Languages

Karl V. Teeter and Wallace Chafe are but two of a number of scholars who have studied various Algonquian languages and have provided information about their status as languages still spoken by Indians of all ages. As of the mid-1970’s, these were Arapaho, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Cree, Fox-Sauk, Kickapoo, Micmac, Montagnais-Naskapi, and Ojibwa-Algonquin-Ottawa.

Nine Algonquian languages are no longer spoken: Carolina Algonquian, Connecticut-Unquachog-Shinnecock, Illinois-Peoria-Miami, Loup, Mahican, Massachusett, Mohegan-Pequot-Montauk, Nanticoke-Conoy, and Powhatan. The rest are either of questionable status—that is, as of the 1970’s they were spoken only by an elderly generation—or are languages for which there is not a clear indication of status with regard to near-extinction. In the first category are Eastern and Western Abenaki, Delaware, and Menominee; in the latter are Maliseet-Passamaquoddy, Potawatomi, and Shawnee. Not surprisingly, the eastern group fares the worst, while the western languages remain the least threatened by extinction.

The most enduring Algonquian language is Ojibwa (Chippewa), which at mid-twentieth century had more than forty thousand speakers. It has a larger territorial range than any other Indian tribal language in North America. The territory extends roughly from the eastern end of Lake Ontario westward to the area around Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba and southward to the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota. The Ojibwas in Michigan have a printing of their original hymnal, which was translated by a missionary, Peter Jones, in the 1930’s. Several midwest colleges and universities offer basic courses in Ojibwa.

The Cree and Ojibwa have written languages, as do the Delaware and Fox. The Cheyenne were particularly noted for the grace and fluency of their sign language.

Language Characteristics

While the Algonquian languages which survived into the 1900’s obviously differ one from the other, it is nevertheless possible to make some general statements about the languages based on certain kinds of similarities. The sound systems of Algonquian languages are relatively simple, although features such as tone, accent, and voicing may cause difficulty for the non-native speaker. Proto-Algonquian has four basic vowel sounds, with a long and short version of each. Consonant clusters are subject to changes of various kinds in the modern languages. The syntax of an Algonquian word, on the other hand, is generally complex. Nouns are differentiated according to such elements as whether a thing is animate or inanimate, singular or plural, and present or absent. The verb is central in a sentence and virtually amounts to a sentence in microcosm. The Algonquian languages are polysynthetic; that is, meaningful units are strung together so that a single word may often correspond to an entire English sentence.

Bibliography

Bloomfield, Leonard. Eastern Ojibwa: Grammatical Sketch, Texts, and Word List. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1957.

Bright, William, et al., eds. Linguistics in North America. Vol. 10 in Current Trends in Linguistics, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok. The Hague: Mouton, 1973.

Grinnell, George Bird. The Cheyenne Indians: Their History and Ways of Life. 2 vols. 1923. Reprint. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971.

Muller, Siegfried H. The World’s Living Languages: Basic Facts of Their Structure, Kinship, Location, and Number of Speakers. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1964.

Petter, Rodolphe. English-Cheyenne Dictionary. Kettle Falls, Wash.: Valdo Petter, 1915.

Voegelin, Charles F. “The Lenape and Munsee Dialects of Delaware: An Algonquian Language.” Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science 49 (1940): 34-47.

Weslager, C. A. The Delawares: A Critical Bibliography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978.