STUDIES OF THE CHEYENNE, KICKAPOO, AND 



FOX 



By TRUMAN MICHELSON, 

 Ethnologist, Bureau of American Ethnology 



The Cheyenne and Kickapoo tribes of Oklahoma and the Fox of 

 Iowa formed the subjects of my field-studies during the summer of 

 1930. I left Washington for Oklahoma early in June, and first spent 

 a week of intensive study of Cheyenne linguistics, general ethnology, 

 and physical anthropology. The results of this may be briefly sum- 

 marized as follows: The statement made by me in 1912 in the 28th 

 Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, that Cheyenne 

 is a major group of the Algonquian stock, is valid. The diesis stated 

 by Sapir (J. des Americanistes de Paris, 1923, p. 46, footnote 1) that 

 Arapaho and Cheyenne should be grouped together in a single major 

 division of the Algonquian stock, is untenable. The phonetic shifts 

 of the two are too divergent, and their grammatical specializations 

 too great to permit such a view. Owing to the complex phonetic shifts 

 which exist, only a small percentage of the Cheyenne vocabulary thus 

 far can be rigorously proved to be Algonquian, but it is always pos- 

 sible that a larger percent actually is. Without a knowledge of the 

 shifts who would suspect that Fox poni " cessation," Arapaho tern 

 (same meaning), and Cheyenne en (same meaning) all go back to the 

 same archetype? So with discovery of more such shifts, more lexical 

 material may fall in line. It may be added that I discovered some 

 Algonquian grammatical traits hitherto unrecognized. The results of 

 the work in physical anthropology are rather interesting. The cephalic 

 index of 17 adult males averaged 82.55 which is rather higher than that 

 given by Boas (Z. f. Ethnologic 1895), namely, 80.3 (57 subjects 

 being measured). I have nevertheless found out by calculation that the 

 difference is one which may be entirely due to random sampling. The 

 stature of 18 adult males, deducting 3.5 cm. for shoes, averages 

 170 cm. which is much lower than the average given by Boas. If, 

 however, a veritable giant, whom I suspected of having a little white 

 blood, had been included in my series, it would have raised the average. 

 Also a couple who were found to have other Indian blood than 

 Cheyenne, were excluded : had they been included, as both were 

 taller than 170 cm., the average would have raised. The auricular 



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