198 ASIATIC TRIBES OF NORTH AMERICA. 



dialects, the Dacotali 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 Upsai'okas, 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 I 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 

 TJgrian 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 vei'bal 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 .Ii'oquois 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, 



