BY
A. W. WILLIAMSON.
Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
FROM
AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN, JANUARY, 1882.
BY A. W. WILLIAMSON.
To the ethnologist and to the philologist the Dakotas andthose speaking kindred languages are a very interesting people.There are four principal Dakota dialects, the Santee, Yankton,Assinniboin and Titon. The allied languages may be dividedinto three groups:
I. a, Winnebago; b, Osage, Kaw, and 2 Quapaw; c, Iowa,Otoe and Missouri; d, Omaha and Ponka.
II. Mandan.
III. a, Minnetaree (Minitari) or Hidatsa; b, Absauraka, orCrow.
Pawnee and Aricaree seem also to be somewhat related.
In my father's opinion the Dakota dialects differ about asmuch as the Greek dialects did in the time of Homer, andthe Assinniboin is much nearer to the Yankton dialect of whichit is an offshoot than is the Titon. Judging by the vocabulariesto which I have access chiefly in Hayden's "Indian tribes ofthe Missouri," I would suppose the first group to differ fromthe Dakota about as much as the German from the English,and to differ among themselves somewhat as Hollandish, Friesian,and English. The Mandan appears to be separated muchmore widely from them than they are from each other. TheMinnetaree and Crow constitute a distinct group diverging fromeach other more than the Santee and Titon, the extreme dialectsof the Dakota. They show more resemblance to theMandan than to any other one of the class, but diverge verywidely from it. But very few words approximate identity.About one half of the words in Matthew's Hidatsa dictionaryappear to me to be in part at least composed of material relatedto the Dakota, and about five per cent to fairly represent Dakotawords. Many of these show little similarity except ascompared in the light of sound representation.
When first discovered the Dakotas and Assinniboins werenomads, living almost entirely by hunting and fishing. TheDakotas, then probably less than ten thousand, are now morethan thirty thousand in number. There are probably aboutthree thousand Assinniboins. The allied tribes, except theCrows, when first found lived chiefly by agriculture. Theyhave during the last hundred years rapidly diminished in numbers,and do not number over twelve thousand including theCrows.
All of the Dakotan tribes and some others formerly madeand baked pottery similar to that found in the mounds of theOhio valley. The Osages and some others lived in earthhouses, whose ruins are similar to those of the houses of themound builders. The Minnetarees, Mandans and Aricareesstill live in houses of the same kind, and make and bake pottery.Measurements indicate that the crania of the Dakotasin size of brain and angle decidedly approach the Europeanform. The cheek bones of the Dakotas are much less prominentthan those of the Chippewas, and those one-fourth Chippewaand three-fourths white have on an average darker complexionsthan those half white and half Dakota. Among theMinnetarees and Mandans are many persons of light hair, blueeyes, and tolerably fair complexion, not attributable to an infusionof Caucasian blood since the time of Columbus.
No people take more pains to speak their language accuratelythan the Dakotas. Their social condition is similar to thatof the Arabs, whose language has within historic observationchanged more slowly than any other. The Assinniboins havebeen separated from the Dakotas about three centuries,perhaps a little less, possibly much more. Dur