Indian Linguistic Families of America, North of Mexico / Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1885-1886, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891, pages 1-142

by John Wesley Powell

[GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION.]

The pristine territory of this family was mainly in one body, the only exceptions being the habitats of the Biloxi, the Tutelo, the Catawba and Woccon.

Contrary to the popular opinion of the present day, the general trend of Siouan migration has been westward. In comparatively late prehistoric times, probably most of the Siouan tribes dwelt east of the Mississippi River.

The main Siouan territory extended from about 53° north in the Hudson Bay Company Territory, to about 33°, including a considerable part of the watershed of the Missouri River and that of the Upper Mississippi. It was bounded on the northwest, north, northeast, and for some distance on the east by Algonquian territory. South of 45° north the line ran eastward to Lake Michigan, as the Green Bay region belonged to the Winnebago.[86]

It extended westward from Lake Michigan through Illinois, crossing the Mississippi River at Prairie du Chien. At this point began the Algonquian territory (Sac, etc.) on the west side of the Mississippi, extending southward to the Missouri, and crossing that river it returned to the Mississippi at St. Louis. The Siouan tribes claimed all of the present States of Iowa and Missouri, except the parts occupied by Algonquian tribes. The dividing line between the two for a short distance below St. Louis was the Mississippi River. The line then ran west of Dunklin, New Madrid, and Pemiscot Counties, in Missouri, and Mississippi County and those parts of Craighead and Poinsett Counties, Arkansas, lying east of the St. Francis River. Once more the Mississippi became the eastern boundary, but in this case separating the Siouan from the Muskhogean territory. The Quapaw or Akansa were the most southerly tribe in the main Siouan territory. In 1673[87] they were east of the Mississippi. Joutel (1687) located two of their villages on the Arkansas and two on the Mississippi one of the latter being on the east bank, in our present State of Mississippi, and the other being on the opposite side, in Arkansas. Shea says[88] that the Kaskaskias were found by De Soto in 1540 in latitude 36°, and that the Quapaw were higher up the Mississippi. But we know that the southeast corner of Missouri and the northeast corner of Arkansas, east of the St. Francis River, belonged to Algonquian tribes. A study of the map of Arkansas shows reason for believing that there may have been a slight overlapping of habitats, or a sort of debatable ground. At any rate it seems advisable to compromise, and assign the Quapaw and Osage (Siouan tribes) all of Arkansas up to about 36° north.

On the southwest of the Siouan family was the Southern Caddoan group, the boundary extending from the west side of the Mississippi River in Louisiana, nearly opposite Vicksburg, Mississippi, and running northwestwardly to the bend of Red River between Arkansas and Louisiana; thence northwest along the divide between the watersheds of the Arkansas and Red Rivers. In the northwest corner of Indian Territory the Osages came in contact with the Comanche (Shoshonean), and near the western boundary of Kansas the Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Arapaho (the two latter being recent Algonquian intruders?) barred the westward march of the Kansa or Kaw.

The Pawnee group of the Caddoan family in western Nebraska and northwestern Kansas separated the Ponka and Dakota on the north from the Kansa on the south, and the Omaha and other Siouan tribes on the east from Kiowa and other tribes on the west. The Omaha and cognate peoples occupied in Nebraska the lower part of the Platte River, most of the Elkhorn Valley, and the Ponka claimed the region watered by the Niobrara in northern Nebraska.

There seems to be sufficient evidence for assigning to the Crows (Siouan) the northwest corner of Nebraska (i.e., that part north of the Kiowan and Caddoan habitats) and the southwest part of South Dakota (not claimed by Cheyenne[89]), as well as the northern part of Wyoming and the southern part of Montana, where they met the Shoshonean stock.[90]

The Biloxi habitat in 1699 was on the Pascogoula river,[91] in the southeast corner of the present State of Mississippi. The Biloxi subsequently removed to Louisiana, where a few survivors were found by Mr. Gatschet in 1886.

The Tutelo habitat in 1671 was in Brunswick County, southern Virginia, and it probably included Lunenburgh and Mecklenburg Counties.[92] The Earl of Bellomont (1699) says[93] that the Shateras were “supposed to be the Toteros, on Big Sandy River, Virginia,” and Pownall, in his map of North America (1776), gives the Totteroy (i.e., Big Sandy) River. Subsequently to 1671 the Tutelo left Virginia and moved to North Carolina.[94] They returned to Virginia (with the Sapona), joined the Nottaway and Meherrin, whom they and the Tuscarora followed into Pennsylvania in the last century; thence they went to New York, where they joined the Six Nations, with whom they removed to Grand River Reservation, Ontario, Canada, after the Revolutionary war. The last full-blood Tutelo died in 1870. For the important discovery of the Siouan affinity of the Tutelo language we are indebted to Mr. Hale.