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Language Lineage

Blackfoot

The westernmost and most divergent Algonquian language, spoken by the Siksiká, Kainai, Piikani and Aamsskáápipikani nations, and so different from the rest that its sound correspondences are hard to trace.

c. 1st millennium BCE – presentThe northwestern Plains of Alberta and Montana
On this page
  1. Far West
  2. Schools and Revival
  3. Where it's spoken
  4. Turning points

01

Far West

Blackfoot (Siksiká) is spoken on the northwestern Plains, along the Rocky Mountain front in Alberta and Montana. It is the most divergent member of the family, probably because its speakers separated earliest and lived longest among non-Algonquian neighbours. Its sound correspondences with the other Algonquian languages are only partly understood. The Blackfoot Confederacy dominated the northwestern Plains in the horse and fur-trade era of the 18th and 19th centuries.

02

Schools and Revival

After the buffalo were destroyed in the 1880s and the reserve and reservation era began, residential and boarding schools broke the transmission of Blackfoot in many families. In 1995 the Piegan Institute opened the Cuts Wood School in Browning, Montana, a Blackfoot immersion school that became a model for Native language revival in the United States.

On the map

Where it’s spoken

Spoken todayShading marks whole countries, not the regions within them.
  1. Canadac. 3,000–5,000
  2. United States

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

    The first to go west

    The ancestors of the Blackfoot move onto the northwestern Plains and separate from the other Algonquian languages, probably earliest of all. Their route and date are debated.

    Sources (1)
    • Goddard, Ives, ed. 1996. Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 17: Languages. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
  2. Contactc. 1730 – 1880

    Horses, guns and the fur trade

    The Blackfoot acquire horses and guns, trade with the Hudson's Bay Company and dominate the northwestern Plains until the buffalo herds are destroyed in the 1880s.

    Sources (1)
    • Mithun, Marianne. 1999. The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  3. Revitalization1995

    Immersion schooling

    The Piegan Institute opens the Cuts Wood School, a Blackfoot-immersion school for children in Browning, Montana.

    Sources (1)
    • Hinton, Leanne, Leena Huss & Gerald Roche, eds. 2018. The Routledge Handbook of Language Revitalization. New York: Routledge.