IX.

Language Families in the United States and Canada

As we move from east to west in North America, the number of Native American language families increases. Three major families exist in the East, whereas 20 are found in California alone.

The first Native American languages Europeans encountered and recorded in North America were the Algonquian languages, and they are among the better-known native languages. The Algonquian languages belong to the Algic family, which stretches from Labrador in eastern Canada to North Carolina in the south and westward across the Plains to California. Among the languages in this group are Abenaki, Massachuset, Narragansett, and Mohegan in the East and Shawnee, Fox-Sac-Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Ojibwa, Cree, Menominee, and Cheyenne on the Plains. Iroquoian, another major language family in the Northeast, includes Mohawk, Oneida, and Onondaga, as well as Cherokee in the South. The Muskogean family in the Southeast includes Choctaw-Chickasaw and Creek.

Two major language families on the prairies are Siouan and Caddo. Siouan languages, which include Assiniboine, Crow, Sioux (also known as Dakota, Nakota, or Lakota), and Winnebago, extend from the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan south through Montana and the Dakotas into Arkansas and Mississippi, with some members in the Carolinas. Caddoan includes Caddo, Pawnee, and Wichita.

The Uto-Aztecan language family spans a wide area from Oregon to Central America. Languages in this family include Northern Paiute in the northwest, Comanche in Oklahoma, and Ute, Hopi, and Nahuatl in Mexico. See also Aztec Empire.

The Eskimo-Aleut family stretches from Greenland across northern Canada, into Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, and finally to Siberia in eastern Russia. The Athapaskan-Eyak-Tlingit family, which extends from Alaska to New Mexico, includes Eyak and Tlingit in Alaska and Athapaskan languages in western Canada, northern California, and the Southwest. The Apachean branch of this family, in the Southwest, includes Navajo and Apache.

Other major families of the northwest coastal region are Tsimshian, Salishan, and Chinookan. A number of additional families are found in California.