198 ASIATIC TRIBES OF NORTH AMERICA. 
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dialects, the Dacotah is peculiarly rich. So complete is the compen- 
sation made by the Dacotah dialects for Wyandot shortcomings in 
this respect, that labials utterly unknown to the original root start 
up everywhere, as terminal, medial, and even initial sounds. On 
the other hand, the strong Mohawk r is almost absent in Dacotah ; 
the Upsarokas, Minetarees and Mandans, who sometimes employ 
this letter, being very sparing in its use. Nor, can it be said, save 
as a rare exception, that there is an/ in Dacotah to atone for the 
comparative absence of r, with. which, in the Iroquois dialects, it is . 
at times interchanged. The general vocabulary has miscellaneous 
Siberian affinities, largely with the Samoied, and many with the 
Ugrian languages. (I may say that I use the word Ugrian to denote 
the Finnic-Magyar family of languages as opposed to the Altaic, 
which includes the Tartar, Mongol and Tungus, since I cannot see the 
propriety of extending it, as has often been done, to the whole Ural- 
Altaic division). I was thus upon the point of making the Dacotahs 
a Samoied colony, and had, indeed, communicated the likelihood of 
such a relationship to correspondents. interested in American philo- 
logy, when light broke upon the subject in connection with the 
terminations of verbal forms, which, being followed up by other 
coincidences, settled the matter in favour of a Peninsular origin for 
the Dacotahs, as well as for the Iroquois and Choctaws. The Hon. 
Lewis H. Morgan has shown that the Dacotah and Iroquois dialects 
are allied, and that the latter separated from the parent stock at a 
much earlier period than the former. 
The Dacotahs, better known as the Sioux, and the Nadowessies of 
Carver and other older writers, are a warlike, intrusive people, of 
good stature, and generally pleasing appearance, with capabilities of 
no mean order, and exhibiting, as in the case of the Mandans, a con- 
siderable advance in culture beyond the neighbouring tribes. They 
occupy a great portion of the centre of the continent, being essenti- 
ally an inland people like the Wyandots and Choctaws. Their 
hunting-grounds extend from the Red River to the Saskatchewan 
southwards to the Arkansas, and are chiefly found between the Mis- 
sissippi on the east and the Rocky Mountains on the west. They 
are thus the neighbours of many Algonquin tribes, with which they 
are more or less intermixed. The principal tribes of this family are 
the Sioux or Dacotahs proper, the Yanktons, Winnebagoes, Assine- 
boins, whose name is Algonquin, Mandans, Upsarokas or Crows, 
