Re: Algonquin or Algonkian?
susan miller (akcs.sat8chi@vpnet.chi.il.us)
Mon, 22 May 1995 22:09:00 CDT
Frederick W. Hodge, HANDBOOK OF AMERICAN INDIANS NORTH OF MEXICO,
discusses the Algonquin/Algonkian definitions. The discipline
Anthropology has a standard, I believe, for spellings of names of the
tribes. I think William C. Sturtevant, HANDBOOK OF NORTH AMERICAN
INDIANS sets the standard spellings for the anthropologists. Somebody
correct me if I'm wrong. As I recall, the anthropologists like
"Algonkian" for the name of the language family. Historians are using
"Algonquian" for the communities that speak languages of that family, as
in Richard White's MIDDLE GROUND. "Algonquin" is an out-of-date form of
the name for those groups and the family of languages that they speak.
All those words come from a name applied early in the history of
Europeans in the western hemisphere to a specific community of indigenous
people. I think Hodge details that.