HISTORY OF FAMILIES, TRIBES, AND INDIVIDUALS.
I. ALGONKINS.
Early in the seventeenth century, the Algonkins were the largest family of North American Indians within the present limits of the United States, extending from Newfoundland to the Mississippi, and from the waters of the Ohio to Hudson's Bay and Lake Winnipeg. Northeast and northwest of them were the Eskimos and the Athabascas; the Dakotas bounded them on the west, and the Mobilian tribes, Catawbas, Natchez, &c., on the south. Within this region also dwelt the Iroquois and many detached tribes from other families. All the tribes of the Algonkins were nomadic, shifting from place to place as the fishing and hunting upon which they depended required. There has been some difficulty in properly locating the tribe from which the family has taken its name, but it is generally believed they lived on the Ottawa River, in Canada, where they were nearly exterminated by their enemies, the Iroquois. The only remnant of the tribe at this time is at the Lake of the Two Mountains.
Of the large number of tribes forming this family, many are now extinct, others so reduced and merged into neighboring tribes as to be lost, while nearly all of the rest have been removed far from their original hunting-grounds. The Lenni Lenape, from the Delaware, are now leading a civilized life far out on the great plains west of the Missouri, and with them are the Shawnees from the south and the once powerful Pottawatamies, Ottawas, and Miamis from the Ohio Valley. Of the many nations forming this great family, we have a very full representation in the following catalogue, about equally divided between the wild hunters and the civilized agriculturists.
1. CHEYENNES.
"This nation has received a variety of names from travellers and the neighboring tribes, as Shyennes, Shiennes, Cheyennes, Chayennes, Sharas, Shawhays, Sharshas, and by the different bands of Dakotas, Shaí-en-a or Shai-é-la. With the Blackfeet, they are the most western branch of the great Algonkin family. When first known, they were living on the Chayenne or Cayenne River, a branch of the Red River of the North, but were driven west of the Mississippi by the Sioux, and about the close of the last century still farther west across the Missouri, where they were found by those enterprising travelers Lewis and Clark in 1803. On their map attached to their report they locate them near the eastern face of the Black Hills, in the valley of the great Sheyenne River, and state their number at 1,500 souls." Their first treaty with the United States was made in 1825, at the mouth of the Teton River. They were then at peace with the Dakotas, but warring against the Pawnees and others. Were then estimated, by Drake, to number 3,250.