4 Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. [Vol- XVIH. 



by the present writer. Other accounts of the Arapaho, as by 

 Hayden and Clark, are brief and sometimes vague. 



One portion of the Arapaho is now settled in Oklahoma; 

 the other part, on a reservation in Wyoming. The Gros 

 Ventres, who form an independent tribal community, but are 

 so closely akin in language and customs that they may be 

 regarded as a subtribe of the Arapaho, are in northern Mon- 

 tana. 



Nothing is known of the origin, history, or migrations of 

 the Arapaho. A little light is thrown on their past by their 

 linguistic relations. 



Apart from the Cree, the western Algonkin languages belong 

 to four groups, — the Ojibway, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Black- 

 foot. 



Of these, the Blackfoot is the most isolated, and the most 

 differentiated from the typical Algonkin. Grammatically it 

 is normal: the methods of inflection and the forms of 

 pronominal affixes resemble those of Ojibway, Cree, and more 

 eastern dialects; but etymologically it seems to differ con- 

 siderably more from all other Algonkin languages than these 

 vary from each other. 



Cheyenne and Arapaho are quite distinct, in spite of the 

 identity of habitation of the two tribes. Cheyenne, Arapaho, 

 and Ojibway are all about equally different one from another. 

 Arapaho and Ojibway seem to differ a little more from each 

 other than each varies from Cheyenne; but Cheyenne is by 

 no means a connecting link between them. 



Superficially, Arapaho appears to be very much changed 

 from the average Algonkin, etymologically as well as gram- 

 matically ; but its words vary from those of Ojibway, Cheyenne, 

 and eastern languages largely on account of regular and con- 

 sistent phonetic changes. When once the rules governing 

 these changes are known, and the phonetic substitutions are 

 made, the vocabulary of the Arapaho is seen to correspond 

 closely to those of kindred languages. This does not seem 

 to be the case with the Blackfoot, which gives the impression 

 of being corrupted, or irregularly modified lexically. 



Grammatically, Arapaho is more specialized. It possesses 



