LANOUAOES OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS 50S 



Indians, as a class, not being in any way related in speech to the Uto- 

 Aztekan family. It accordingly follows that the popular identification 

 of Cliff Dwellers and Aztecs is based only on ignorance or imagination, 

 and that the weight of historical evidence is adverse to this view. 



The historic development of the great Uto-Aztekan family has been 

 determined still farther. One branch comprises a number of tribes in 

 California. Until recently all these tribes were believed to have been 

 the result of a single immigration into the state. It is now clear that 

 they represent three distinct strata. One mass of them has been resi- 

 dent in southern California for a very long time, long enough for the 

 originally uniform language to divide into several dialects. Another 

 body came at a different time, or by a different route, into the Sierra 

 Nevada Mountains of central California. "Whether this movement was 

 earlier or later than the first mentioned we can not yet tell, but it is 

 certain that it was distinct. The third stratum is represented by a 

 recent movement from Nevada westward into the eastern parts of 

 California ; but even this was entirely prehistoric. 



The Algonkin Family on the Atlantic 



Another of the great linguistic families of North America is the 

 Algonkin, one of the first to be known. To this large stock belonged 

 Powhatan, Pocahontas and the other Indians among whom the English 

 settlers of Virginia formed their colonies. Other Indians of the same 

 family formed their treaty with William Penn, sold Manhattan Island 

 to the Dutch, met the Pilgrims from the Mayflower, and learned to 

 read Eliot's bible. Most of eastern Canada, the Ohio Valley, the Great 

 Lake region and the country north to Hudson Bay, were also occupied 

 by Algonkin tribes. Separated from all these, and far to the west of 

 the Mississippi in the great plains at the base of the Rockies, lived three 

 groups of Algonkins that at one time or another had evidently made 

 their way there from the original eastern home. These were the Black- 

 feet, Arapaho and Cheyenne. 



In historic times the Cheyenne and Arapaho have usually been 

 allies and closely associated. They are to-day on the same reservation. 

 But all the inferences made as to a joint migration of the two tribes 

 from their original eastern home have proved mistaken. The Cheyenne 

 language is closely similar to the dialect of the Ojibway and other 

 tribes of the Great Lake region. The Arapaho is more different 

 — so much so, in fact, that when vocabularies of it were first re- 

 corded, its essentially Algonkin character was not recognized. It 

 follows that the Arapaho represent an ancient and the Cheyenne a 

 recent separation from the tribes farther east. The third group in the 

 plains, the Blackfeet, have specialized their dialect to about the same 

 extent as the Arapaho, but in different ways. While they, therefore. 



