Amerind Linguistic Map.

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After Bu. of Eth. Seventh An. Rep.

It so happened that the Wilderness possessed a greater variety of these stock groups than any other part of the continent, one portion, that lying west of the Sierra Nevada, containing an astonishing number of small groups living contiguously, yet each speaking a totally distinct language. It was therefore often difficult for the early invaders to make themselves understood, as well as to understand. Among the Amerinds themselves a "sign" language existed which was of remote origin and which was convenient and expressive for intercourse between tribes speaking radically different tongues. Sometimes a third language served to convey ideas between tribes or between them and white men, this third language being one belonging to some widely diffused stock of the region. Still another language was one which grew up spontaneously, composed of words from two or more languages as well as of a lot of words which in one way or another originated themselves, a mongrel language perfectly understandable but made up of flotsam and jetsam. Of this class the most widely used and best known was that called Chinook jargon, originating in the Columbia river region and composed of words from many different languages, including those of the white man, as well as words that never existed anywhere else.

Taking language as a basis, we find the Wilderness divided mainly between two great families, or stocks, which had grown numerous and were able to spread over a vast extent of country, though each contained a large number of separate tribes often at war with each other, at least after the arrival of the whites. These two stocks were the Siouan and the Shoshonean. Of the first, some leading members were mentioned above; of the second, the Shoshone, Comanche, Ute, and Moki (or Shinumo) were representative, in fact comprised almost the entire stock. The Siouan division, or family, ranged from the banks of the Mississippi westward, with its lower border stretching diagonally from south-eastern Arkansas as far as our present Yellowstone Park, north to the upper boundary of the United States and beyond. They were flanked above by tribes of another stock, widespread and powerful, north to Hudson Bay and east of the Mississippi, the Algonquian, represented by the Blackfeet,[22] Chippewa, Knisteneau (or Cree), and others. South of the Siouan range came that of the Caddoan, in south-western Arkansas, the eastern half of Texas, and in Louisiana with a central group in the midst of the Siouan range, in southern Nebraska, and a northern one also surrounded by the Siouan people, in North Dakota. The northern was the Arikara (or Ree), the middle the several sub-tribes of Pawnee, and the southern the Caddo, Wichita, Kichai, and others. Adjacent to the central Caddoan group, on the west, was another section of Algonquian stock, the Cheyenne and Arapaho, and just north of this came the Kiowan, represented by the tribe from which the stock name comes, the Kiowa. This tribe was intimately associated with the Comanche, and there was a strong similarity in language.

A Puebloan Farmhouse.

Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Geol. Survey.