Shoshone Indian Tribes, Language and Distribution

SHOSHONE INDIAN FAMILY.

In his synopsis of the Indian tribes78 Gallatin’s reference to this great family is of the most vague and unsatisfactory sort. He speaks of “some bands of Snake Indians or Shoshone, living on the waters of the river Columbia” (p. 120), which is almost the only allusion to them to be found. The only real claim he possesses to the authorship of the family name is to be found on page 306, where, in his list 

9of tribes and vocabularies, he places “Shoshonees” among his other families, which is sufficient to show that he regarded them as a distinct linguistic group. The vocabulary he possessed was by Say.

Buschmann, as above cited, classes the Shoshone languages as a northern branch of his Nahuatl or Aztec family, but the evidence presented for this connection is deemed to be insufficient.

GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION.

This important family occupied a large part of the great interior basin of the United States. Upon the north Shoshonean tribes extended far into Oregon, meeting Shahaptian territory on about the forty-fourth parallel or along the Blue Mountains. Upon the northeast the eastern limits of the pristine habitat of the Shoshonean tribes are unknown. The narrative of Lewis and Clarke79 contains the explicit statement that the Shoshoni bands encountered upon the Jefferson River, whose summer home was upon the head waters of the Columbia, formerly lived within their own recollection in the plains to the east of the Rocky Mountains, whence they were driven to their mountain retreats by the Minnetaree (Atsina), who had obtained firearms. Their former habitat thus given is indicated upon the map, although the eastern limit is of course quite indeterminate. Very likely much of the area occupied by the Atsina was formerly Shoshonean territory. Later a division of the Bannock held the finest portion of southwestern Montana,80 whence apparently they were being pushed westward across the mountains by Blackfeet.81 Upon the east the Tukuarika or Sheepeaters held the Yellowstone Park country, where they were bordered by Siouan territory, while the Washaki occupied southwestern Wyoming.

 Nearly the entire mountainous part of Colorado was held by the several bands of the Ute, the eastern and southeastern parts of the State being held respectively by the Arapaho and Cheyenne (Algonquian), and the Kaiowe (Kiowan). To the southeast the Ute country included the northern drainage of the San Juan, extending farther east a short distance into New Mexico. The Comanche division of the family extended farther east than any other. According to Crow tradition the Comanche formerly lived northward in the Snake River region. Omaha tradition avers that the Comanche were on the Middle Loup River, probably within the present century. Bourgemont found a Comanche tribe on the upper Kansas River in 1724.82 According to Pike the Comanche territory bordered the Kaiowe on the north, the former occupying the head waters of the upper Red River, Arkansas, and Rio Grande.83 How 0far to the southward Shoshonean tribes extended at this early period is not known, though the evidence tends to show that they raided far down into Texas to the territory they have occupied in more recent years, viz, the extensive plains from the Rocky Mountains eastward into Indian Territory and Texas to about 97°. Upon the south Shoshonean territory was limited generally by the Colorado River. The Chemehuevi lived on both banks of the river between the Mohave on the north and the Cuchan on the south, above and below Bill Williams Fork.

The Kwaiantikwoket also lived to the east of the river in Arizona about Navajo Mountain, while the Tusayan (Moki) had established their seven pueblos, including one founded by people of Tañoan stock, to the east of the Colorado Chiquito. In the southwest Shoshonean tribes had pushed across California, occupying a wide band of country to the Pacific. In their extension northward they had reached as far as Tulare Lake, from which territory apparently they had dispossessed the Mariposan tribes, leaving a small remnant of that linguistic family near Fort Tejon.

A little farther north they had crossed the Sierras and occupied the heads of San Joaquin and Kings Rivers. Northward they occupied nearly the whole of Nevada, being limited on the west by the Sierra Nevada. The entire southeastern part of Oregon was occupied by tribes of Shoshoni extraction.

Muskhogee Indian Tribes and Language

MUSKHOGEE INDIAN FAMILY.

Derivation: From the name of the principal tribe of the Creek Confederacy.

In the Muskhogee family Gallatin includes the Muskhogees proper, who lived on the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers; the Hitchittees, living on the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers; and the Seminoles of the peninsula of Florida. It was his opinion, formed by a comparison of vocabularies, that the Choctaws and Chickasaws should also be classed under this family. In fact, he called the family Choctaw Muskhogee. In deference, however, to established usage, the two tribes were kept separate in his table and upon the colored map. In 1848 he appears to be fully convinced of the soundness of the view doubtfully expressed in 1836, and calls the family the Chocta-Muskhog.

GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION.

The area occupied by this family was very extensive. It may be described in a general way as extending from the Savannah River and the Atlantic west to the Mississippi, and from the Gulf of Mexico north to the Tennessee River. All of this territory was held by Muskhogean tribes except the small areas occupied by the Yuchi, Ná’htchi, and some small settlements of Shawni.

9Upon the northeast Muskhogean limits are indeterminate. The Creek claimed only to the Savannah River; but upon its lower course the Yamasi are believed to have extended east of that river in the sixteenth to the eighteenth century The territorial line between the Muskhogean family and the Catawba tribe in South Carolina can only be conjectured.

It seems probable that the whole peninsula of Florida was at one time held by tribes of Timuquanan connection; but from 1702 to 1708, when the Apalachi were driven out, the tribes of northern Florida also were forced away by the English. After that time the Seminole and the Yamasi were the only Indians that held possession of the Floridian peninsula.

MUSKOGEE INDIANS PRINCIPAL TRIBES.

Alibamu. Apalachi. Chicasa. Choctaw. Creek or Maskoki proper. Koasáti. Seminole. Yamacraw. Yamasi.

Population.—There is an Alibamu town on Deep Creek, Indian Territory, an affluent of the Canadian, Indian Territory. Most of the inhabitants are of this tribe. There are Alibamu about 20 miles south of Alexandria, Louisiana, and over one hundred in Polk County, Texas.

So far as known only three women of the Apalachi survived in 1886, and they lived at the Alibamu town above referred to. The United States Census bulletin for 1890 gives the total number of pureblood Choctaw at 9,996, these being principally at Union Agency, Indian Territory. Of the Chicasa there are 3,464 at the same agency; Creek 9,291; Seminole 2,539; of the latter there are still about 200 left in southern Florida.

There are four families of Koasáti, about twenty-five individuals, near the town of Shepherd, San Jacinto County, Texas. Of the Yamasi none are known to survive.

Iroquois and Cherokee Tribes, Distribution, Language

IROQUOIAN FAMILY OF TRIBES

Derivation: French, adaptation of the Iroquois word hiro, used to conclude a speech, and koué, an exclamation (Charlevoix). Hale gives as possible derivations ierokwa, the indeterminate form of the verb to smoke, signifying “they who smoke;” also the Cayuga form of bear, iakwai. Mr. Hewitt suggests the Algonkin words īrīn, true, or real; ako, snake; with the French termination ois, the word becomes Irinakois.

With reference to this family it is of interest to note that as early as 1798 Barton compared the Cherokee language with that of the Iroquois and stated his belief that there was a connection between them. Gallatin, in the Archæologia Americana, refers to the opinion expressed by Barton, and although he states that he is inclined to agree with that author, yet he does not formally refer Cheroki to that family, concluding that “We have not a sufficient knowledge of the grammar, and generally of the language of the Five Nations, or of the Wyandots, to decide that question.”

Mr. Hale was the first to give formal expression to his belief in the affinity of the Cheroki to Iroquois. Recently extensive Cheroki vocabularies have come into possession of the Bureau of Ethnology, and a careful comparison of them with ample Iroquois material has been made by Mr. Hewitt. The result is convincing proof of the relationship of the two languages as affirmed by Barton so long ago.

GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION.

Unlike most linguistic stocks, the Iroquoian tribes did not occupy a continuous area, but when first known to Europeans were settled in three distinct regions, separated from each other by tribes of other lineage. The northern group was surrounded by tribes of Algonquian stock, while the more southern groups bordered upon the Catawba and Maskoki.

A tradition of the Iroquois points to the St. Lawrence region as the early home of the Iroquoian tribes, whence they gradually moved down to the southwest along the shores of the Great Lakes.

When Cartier, in 1534, first explored the bays and inlets of the Gulf of St. Lawrence he met a Huron-Iroquoian people on the shores of the Bay of Gaspé, who also visited the northern coast of the gulf. In the following year when he sailed up the St. Lawrence River he 78found the banks of the river from Quebec to Montreal occupied by an Iroquoian people. From statements of Champlain and other early explorers it seems probable that the Wyandot once occupied the country along the northern shore of Lake Ontario.

The Conestoga, and perhaps some allied tribes, occupied the country about the Lower Susquehanna, in Pennsylvania and Maryland, and have commonly been regarded as an isolated body, but it seems probable that their territory was contiguous to that of the Five Nations on the north before the Delaware began their westward movement.

As the Cherokee were the principal tribe on the borders of the southern colonies and occupied the leading place in all the treaty negotiations, they came to be considered as the owners of a large territory to which they had no real claim. Their first sale, in 1721, embraced a tract in South Carolina, between the Congaree and the South Fork of the Edisto,but about one-half of this tract, forming the present Lexington County, belonging to the Congaree. In 1755 they sold a second tract above the first and extending across South Carolina from the Savannah to the Catawba (or Wateree), but all of this tract east of Broad River belonged to other tribes. The lower part, between the Congaree and the Wateree, had been sold 20 years before, and in the upper part the Broad River was acknowledged as the western Catawba boundary. In 1770 they sold a tract, principally in Virginia and West Virginia, bounded east by the Great Kanawha,but the Iroquois claimed by conquest all of this tract northwest of the main ridge of the Alleghany and Cumberland Mountains, and extending at least to the Kentucky River, and two years previously they had made a treaty with Sir William Johnson by which they were recognized as the owners of all between Cumberland Mountains and the Ohio down to the Tennessee. The Cumberland River basin was the only part of this tract to which the Cherokee had any real title, having driven out the former occupants, the Shawnee, about 1721. The Cherokee had no villages north of the Tennessee (this probably includes the Holston as its upper part), and at a conference at Albany the Cherokee delegates presented to the Iroquois the skin of a deer, which they said belonged to the Iroquois, as the animal had been killed north of the Tennessee. In 1805, 1806, and 1817 they sold several tracts, mainly in 79middle Tennessee, north of the Tennessee River and extending to the Cumberland River watershed, but this territory was claimed and had been occupied by the Chickasaw, and at one conference the Cherokee admitted their claim. The adjacent tract in northern Alabama and Georgia, on the headwaters of the Coosa, was not permanently occupied by the Cherokee until they began to move westward, about 1770.

The whole region of West Virginia, Kentucky, and the Cumberland River region of Tennessee was claimed by the Iroquois and Cherokee, but the Iroquois never occupied any of it and the Cherokee could not be said to occupy any beyond the Cumberland Mountains. The Cumberland River was originally held by the Shawnee, and the rest was occupied, so far as it was occupied at all, by the Shawnee, Delaware, and occasionally by the Wyandot and Mingo (Iroquoian), who made regular excursions southward across the Ohio every year to hunt and to make salt at the licks. Most of the temporary camps or villages in Kentucky and West Virginia were built by the Shawnee and Delaware. The Shawnee and Delaware were the principal barrier to the settlement of Kentucky and West Virginia for a period of 20 years, while in all that time neither the Cherokee nor the Iroquois offered any resistance or checked the opposition of the Ohio tribes.

The Cherokee bounds in Virginia should be extended along the mountain region as far at least as the James River, as they claim to have lived at the Peaks of Otter,54 and seem to be identical with the Rickohockan or Rechahecrian of the early Virginia writers, who lived in the mountains beyond the Monacan, and in 1656 ravaged the lowland country as far as the site of Richmond and defeated the English and the Powhatan Indians in a pitched battle at that place.55

The language of the Tuscarora, formerly of northeastern North Carolina, connect them directly with the northern Iroquois. The Chowanoc and Nottoway and other cognate tribes adjoining the Tuscarora may have been offshoots from that tribe.

PRINCIPAL TRIBES.

Cayuga. Cherokee. Conestoga. Erie. Mohawk. Neuter. Nottoway.

Oneida. Onondaga. Seneca. Tionontate. Tuscarora. Wyandot.

Population.—The present number of the Iroquoian stock is about 43,000, of whom over 34,000 (including the Cherokees) are in the United States while nearly 9,000 are in Canada. Below is given the population of the different tribes, compiled chiefly from the 80Canadian Indian Report for 1888, and the United States Census Bulletin for 1890:

Cherokee:
Cherokee and Choctaw Nations, Indian Territory (exclusive of adopted Indians, negroes, and whites)	25,557
Eastern Band, Qualla Reservation, Cheowah, etc., North Carolina (exclusive of those practically white)	1,500?
Lawrence school, Kansas	6
	27,063?
Caughnawaga:
Caughnawaga, Quebec	1,673
Cayuga:
Grand River, Ontario	972?
With Seneca, Quapaw Agency, Indian Territory (total 255)	128?
Cattaraugus Reserve, New York	165
Other Reserves in New York	36
	1,301?
“Iroquois”:
Of Lake of Two Mountains, Quebec, mainly Mohawk (with Algonquin)	345
With Algonquin at Gibson, Ontario (total 131)	31?
	376?
Mohawk:
Quinte Bay, Ontario	1,050
Grand River, Ontario	1,302
Tonawanda, Onondaga, and Cattaraugus Reserves, New York	6
	2,358
Oneida:
Oneida and other Reserves, New York	295
Green Bay Agency, Wisconsin (“including homeless Indians”)	1,716
Carlisle and Hampton schools	104
Thames River, Ontario	778
Grand River, Ontario	236
	3,129
Onondaga:
Onondaga Reserve, New York	380
Allegany Reserve, New York	77
Cattaraugus Reserve, New York	38
Tuscarora (41) and Tonawanda (4) Reserves, New York	45
Carlisle and Hampton schools	4
Grand River, Ontario	346
	890
Seneca:
With Cayuga, Quapaw Agency, Indian Territory (total 255)	127?
Allegany Reserve, New York	862
Cattaraugus Reserve, New York	1,318
Tonawanda Reserve, New York	517
Tusarora and Onondaga Reserves, New York	12
Lawrence, Hampton, and Carlisle schools	13
Grand River, Ontario	206
	3,055?
81St. Regis:
St. Regis Reserve, New York	1,053
Onondaga and other Reserves, New York	17
St. Regis Reserve, Quebec	1,179
	2,249
Tuscarora:
Tuscarora Reserve, New York	398
Cattaraugus and Tonawanda Reserves, New York	6
Grand River, Ontario	329
	733
Wyandot:
Quapaw Agency, Indian Territory	288
Lawrence, Hampton, and Carlisle schools	18
“Hurons” of Lorette, Quebec	279
“Wyandots” of Anderdon, Ontario	98
	683

The Iroquois of St. Regis, Caughnawaga, Lake of Two Mountains (Oka), and Gibson speak a dialect mainly Mohawk and Oneida, but are a mixture of all the tribes of the original Five Nations.

Caddoan Indian Tribes and Language. Includes the Pawnee, Arikara, Wichita

CADDOAN INDIAN FAMILY.  

Includes the Pawnee, Arikara, Wichita

The Pawnee and Caddo, now known to be of the same linguistic family, were supposed by Gallatin and by many later writers to be distinct, and accordingly both names appear in the Archæologia Americana as family designations. Both names are unobjectionable, but as the term Caddo has priority by a few pages preference is given to it.

Gallatin states “that the Caddoes formerly lived 300 miles up Red River but have now moved to a branch of Red River.” He refers to the Nandakoes, the Inies or Tachies, and the Nabedaches as speaking dialects of the Caddo language.

Under Pawnee two tribes were included by Gallatin: The Pawnees proper and the Ricaras. The Pawnee tribes occupied the country on the Platte River adjoining the Loup Fork. The Ricara towns were on the upper Missouri in latitude 46° 30'. 60The boundaries of the Caddoan family, as at present understood, can best be given under three primary groups, Northern, Middle, and Southern.

Northern group.—This comprises the Arikara or Ree, now confined to a small village (on Fort Berthold Reservation, North Dakota,) which they share with the Mandan and Hidatsa tribes of the Siouan family. The Arikara are the remains of ten different tribes of “Paneas,” who had been driven from their country lower down the Missouri River (near the Ponka habitat in northern Nebraska) by the Dakota. In 1804 they were in three villages, nearer their present location.

According to Omaha tradition, the Arikara were their allies when these two tribes and several others were east of the Mississippi River. Fort Berthold Reservation, their present abode, is in the northwest corner of North Dakota.

Middle group.—This includes the four tribes or villages of Pawnee, the Grand, Republican, Tapage, and Skidi. Dunbar says: “The original hunting ground of the Pawnee extended from the Niobrara,” in Nebraska, “south to the Arkansas, but no definite boundaries can be fixed.” In modern times their villages have been on the Platte River west of Columbus, Nebraska. The Omaha and Oto were sometimes southeast of them near the mouth of the Platte, and the Comanche were northwest of them on the upper part of one of the branches of the Loup Fork.The Pawnee were removed to Indian Territory in 1876. The Grand Pawnee and Tapage did not wander far from their habitat on the Platte. The Republican Pawnee separated from the Grand about the year 1796, and made a village on a “large northwardly branch of the Kansas River, to which they have given their name; afterwards they subdivided, and lived in different parts of the country on the waters of Kansas River. In 1805 they  rejoined the Grand Pawnee.” The Skidi (Panimaha, or Pawnee Loup), according to Omaha tradition,formerly dwelt east of the Mississippi River, where they were the allies of the Arikara, Omaha, Ponka, etc. After their passage of the Missouri they were conquered by the Grand Pawnee, Tapage, and Republican tribes, with whom they have remained to this day. De L’Isle gives twelve Panimaha villages on the Missouri River north of the Pani villages on the Kansas River.

Southern group.—This includes the Caddo, Wichita, Kichai, and other tribes or villages which were formerly in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Indian Territory.

61

The Caddo and Kichai have undoubtedly been removed from their priscan habitats, but the Wichita, judging from the survival of local names (Washita River, Indian Territory, Wichita Falls, Texas) and the statement of La Harpe, are now in or near one of their early abodes. Dr. Sibley locates the Caddo habitat 35 miles west of the main branch of Red River, being 120 miles by land from Natchitoches, and they formerly lived 375 miles higher up. Cornell’s Atlas (1870) places Caddo Lake in the northwest corner of Louisiana, in Caddo County. It also gives both Washita and Witchita as the name of a tributary of Red River of Louisiana. This duplication of names seems to show that the Wichita migrated from northwestern Louisiana and southwestern Arkansas to the Indian Territory. After comparing the statements of Dr. Sibley (as above) respecting the habitats of the Anadarko, loni, Nabadache, and Eyish with those of Schermerhorn respecting the Kädo hadatco, of Le Page Du Pratz (1758) concerning the Natchitoches, of Tonti and La Harpe about the Yatasi, of La Harpe (as above) about the Wichita, and of Sibley concerning the Kichai, we are led to fix upon the following as the approximate boundaries of the habitat of the southern group of the Caddoan family: Beginning on the northwest with that part of Indian Territory now occupied by the Wichita, Chickasaw, and Kiowa and Comanche Reservations, and running along the southern border of the Choctaw Reservation to the Arkansas line; thence due east to the headwaters of Washita or Witchita River, Polk County, Arkansas; thence through Arkansas and Louisiana along the western bank of that river to its mouth; thence southwest through Louisiana striking the Sabine River near Salem and Belgrade; thence southwest through Texas to Tawakonay Creek, and along that stream to the Brazos River; thence following that stream to Palo Pinto, Texas; thence northwest to the mouth of the North Fork of Red River; and thence to the beginning.

PRINCIPAL TRIBES.

A. Pawnee.

Grand Pawnee. Tappas. Republican Pawnee. Skidi.

B. Arikara.

C. Wichita.

(Ki-¢i´-tcac, Omaha pronunciation of the name of a Pawnee tribe, Ki-dhi´-chash or Ki-ri´-chash).

62D. Kichai.

E. Caddo (Kä´-do).

Population.—The present number of the Caddoan stock is 2,259, of whom 447 are on the Fort Berthold Reservation, North Dakota, and the rest in the Indian Territory, some on the Ponca, Pawnee, and Otoe Reservation, the others on the Kiowa, Comanche, and Wichita Reservation. Below is given the population of the tribes officially recognized, compiled chiefly from the Indian Report for 1889:

Arikara		448
Pawnee		824
Wichita	176
Towakarehu	145
Waco	64
		385
Kichai		63
Caddo		539
Total		2,259