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Language Lineage

Arapahoan

Arapaho and Gros Ventre (Aaniiih), Plains languages whose sound changes are among the most drastic in the family.

c. 1st millennium BCE – presentThe central Plains; today the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Fort Belknap in Montana
On this page
  1. Plains Algonquian
  2. Reservations
  3. Where it's spoken
  4. Turning points

01

Plains Algonquian

Arapaho and its close relative Gros Ventre (Aaniiih) were spoken on the central Plains. With Blackfoot and Cheyenne they are often called 'Plains Algonquian', but that is a geographical label, not a branch. Arapahoan went through such sweeping sound changes that many of its words are hard to recognise as Algonquian at all, though Ives Goddard has traced them regularly back to Proto-Algonquian.

02

Reservations

After the Plains wars the Arapaho were divided. The Northern Arapaho were settled on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming in 1878, alongside the Eastern Shoshone, and the Southern Arapaho in Oklahoma with the Southern Cheyenne. Gros Ventre speakers at Fort Belknap in Montana dwindled through the 20th century. Northern Arapaho communities now run immersion programmes for children.

On the map

Where it’s spoken

Spoken todayShading marks whole countries, not the regions within them.
  1. United Statesa few hundred

Figures are rough first-language estimates, rounded, from censuses and Ethnologue. Counts for small or scattered communities are especially uncertain.

Rings along the limb

Turning points

Oldest first.

  1. Splitc. 1st millennium BCEContested

    Onto the central Plains

    The ancestors of the Arapaho and Gros Ventre move onto the Plains and undergo radical sound changes. Their route and date are uncertain.

    Sources (1)
    • Goddard, Ives, ed. 1996. Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 17: Languages. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
  2. Contact1878

    Wind River

    The Northern Arapaho are settled on the Wind River Reservation with the Eastern Shoshone, separated from the Southern Arapaho in Oklahoma. Reservation life and boarding schools begin the shift to English.

    Sources (1)
    • Mithun, Marianne. 1999. The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  3. ExtinctionLate 20th – early 21st centuryContested

    Gros Ventre falls silent

    The last fluent speakers of Gros Ventre at Fort Belknap pass away. The community is working to revive the language from recordings and documentation.

    Sources (1)
    • Mithun, Marianne. 1999. The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.