The Shyenne.—A second addition of the Algonkin class was that of the Shyenne language—a language suspected to be Algonkin at the publication of the Archæologia Americana. In a treaty made between the United States and the Shyenne Indians in 1825, the names of the chiefs who signed were Sioux, or significant in the Sioux language. It was not unreasonable to consider this a primâ-facie evidence of the Shyenne tongue itself being Sioux. Nevertheless, there were some decided statements in the way of external evidence in another direction. There was the special evidence of a gentleman well-acquainted with the fact, that the names of the treaty, so significant in the Sioux language, were only translations from the proper Shyenne, there having been no Shyenne interpreter at the drawing-up of the document. What then was the true Shyenne? A vocabulary of Lieut. Abert's settled this. The numerals of this were published earlier than the other words, and on these the present writer remarked that they were Algonkin (Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1847,—Transactions of the Sections, p. 123). Meanwhile, the full vocabulary, which was in the hands of Gallatin, and collated by him, gave the contemplated result:—"Out of forty-seven Shyenne words for which we have equivalents in other languages, there are thirteen which are indubitably Algonkin, and twenty-five which have affinities more or less remote with some of the languages of that family." (Transactions of the American Ethnological Society, vol. ii. p. cxi. 1848.)

The Blackfoot.—In the same volume (p. cxiii), and by the same author, we find a table showing the Blackfoot to be Algonkin; a fact that must now be generally recognized, having been confirmed by later data. The probability of this affinity was surmised in a paper in the 28th Number of the Proceedings of the present Society.