ALGONKIN, a tribe, group and family of American Indians. The tribe lived on Gatineau river east of Ottawa. The name came gradually to include related tribes or bands in Quebec and Ontario, where they now number between 3,00o and 4,000. They were friends of the French, foes of the Iroquois and British. The name was finally applied to the whole of the linguistic family of which these tribes are part. This is one of the great stocks of native North America, perhaps the largest on the continent in point of area occupied, extending around latitude 55° continuously from the Atlantic ocean to the Rocky mountains, and to the south less regularly as far as Cape Hatteras and Ohio' river. This is essentially the natural region of northern woodland, whose conifer ous forests the Algonkin tribes occupied almost exclusively and the deciduous ones largely.
Culturally the Algonkin lagged behind the Muskogi and Iroquois families of peoples. Where the archaeology of the north-eastern part of the continent shows distinct horizons or types, as in New York, the simpler forms can generally be identified fairly closely with historic Algonkin culture. In this area at least they therefore preceded Mound Builders and Iroquois, and in part survived them. In general the southern Algonkin tribes farmed, the north ern ones were non-agricultural. Three divisions drifted into the northern Plains and became nomadic bison hunters : the Arapaho and Gros Ventre, the Blackfeet and the Cheyenne. The speech of the first two is highly specialized, indicating their separation for a long time ; the Cheyenne are later comers in the Plains. In recent generations some of the Cree and Ojibwa have begun to take on the Plains type of customs.
Apart from Arapaho, Blackfoot and Cheyenne, the Algonkin languages are relatively uniform. The principal divisions are: I., Arapaho. II., Blackfoot. III., Cheyenne, nearest to the next. IV., Central-Eastern: A, Central, comprising: (1) Ojibwa type: (a) Ojibwa, Pottawatomi, Ottawa, Algonkin proper; (b) Illinois (Peoria), Miami; (2) Cree type: (a) Cree, Montagnais, prob ably Naskopi; (b) Menominee; (c) Sauk, Fox, Kickapoo, Shawnee, nearest to next; (3) Delaware type: Delaware, Mohe gan, Wappinger, Pequot. B, Eastern, comprising: (I) Abnaki type: (a) Micmac; (b) Abnaki; (c) Pennacook; (2) Massa chuset type : Massachuset, Wampanoag, Narraganset, Montauk, Nipmuk. Position in the family uncertain : Powhatan, Nanticoke and other south Atlantic coast tribes. (T. Michelson, Bur. Am. Ethn. Rep. xxviii. 1912.) All the Algonkin languages are plastic, polysynthetic and highly elaborate in structure, and acquaintance with them unduly in fluenced early conceptions of the nature of American languages in general, many of which are much simpler. Of late it has seemed possible that the speech of the Beothuk of Newfoundland, of the Kootenay of British Columbia, and of the Wiyot and Yurok of the coast of California may prove to be remote branches of Algonkin.
In 1907 the aggregate population of tribes of admitted Algonkin affinity was estimated at 90,000, a sensible majority being resi dent in Canada, and Ojibwa and Cree making up a full half of the total. (A. L. K.)