ON THE NORTH-WESTERN TRIBES OF THE DOMINION OF CANADA. 703 
No one who examines this list will wonder that the connection between 
he Blackfoot and the other Algonkin tongues was not apparent to those 
who had to judge from brief and rude vocabularies of the former language. 
ut it will be noticed that the possessive pronoun ‘my’ is evidently 
expressed by the same prefix wi (or m’) in all three languages. Pursuing 
his trace we compare the personal pronouns, and find a close resemblance, 
the difference being mainly in the terminations :— 
i _ee-———— 
Blackfoot Cree Ojibway 
I nistowa niya nin 
thou kistowa kiya kin 
he oustoye wiya win 
we nistoninan niyanan ninawind 
ye kistowawa kiyawa kinawa 
they oustowawa wiyawa winawa 
In the possessive prefixes the resemblance is still more notable. Thus 
in the Blackfoot language n’ofas means ‘my horse, or dog’ (the same 
word, oddly enough, applying in this form to both animals); and in 
Cree w’t’em has the same meaning. These words are thus varied with 
the possessive pronouns and in the two numbers :— 
i 
le 
| 
4 
. Blackfoot Cree 
My horse (or dog) n’otas n’t’em 
jin er sit k’otas kit’em 
his PA Fe otas otema 
our’’"";, Fs n’otasinan n’t’eminan 
your ,, +f: k’otasinan kitemiwaw 
their ,, PP otasiwaw otemiwawa 
my horses (or dogs) n’otasiks n’t’emak 
thy ,, ¥, k’otasiks kit’emak 
7 his “ps =p otasiks otema 
our 4; as notasinaniks n’t’eminanak 
your ,, A kotasiwaweks kitemiwawok 
their ,, xf otasiwaweks otemiwawa 
So we may compare n’inna, my father, in Blackfoot, with n’oss, my 
father, in Ojibway. 
Blackfoot Ojibway 
My father n’inna n’oss 
hy D,; inna k’oss 
his ‘is ounni ossan 
DUT. 45 n’innan n’ossinan 
your ,, kinnawaw k’ossiwa 
their ,, onniwaw ossiwan 
my fathers n’innaeks nossag 
thy kinnaeks kossag 
DiS,, ee i55 ounnieks ossan 
0) ninnaniks n’ossinanig: 
your -,, kinnaweks Fk’ossiwag 
their ,, ounniwaweks ossiwan 
__ It will be seen that the close resemblance in grammar is as striking as 
the wide difference in the vocabulary. These facts admit of but one 
explanation. They are the precise phenomena to which we are accus- 
tomed in the case of mixed languages. In such languages—of which our 
English speech is a notable example—we expect the grammar to be derived 
entirely from one source, while the words will be drawn from two or 
more. Furthermore, wherever we find a mixed language we infer a 
conquest of one people by another. In the present instance we may well 
suppose that when the Blackfoot tribes were forced westward from the 
oY 
