Arapaho

tribe of Native Americans historically living on the plains of Colorado and Wyoming

The Arapaho (/əˈræpəh/; French: Arapahos, Gens de Vache) are a tribe of Native Americans in the Great Plains. They used to live on the plains of Colorado and Wyoming. They were close friends of the Cheyenne tribe. They were barely friends with the Lakota and Dakota.

Arapaho
Hinono'eino
Total population
10,861[1]
Regions with significant populations
Languages
English, Arapaho, Plains Sign Language
Religion
Christianity, Peyotism, Traditional religions
Related ethnic groups
Algonquian people, Cheyenne people, Gros Ventre people

History

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Early history

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Around 3,000 years ago, the ancestors of the Arapaho-speaking people (Heeteinono'eino') lived in the western Great Lakes region. They lived there along the Red River Valley. This would be in what is present-day Manitoba, Canada and Minnesota, United States.[2] The Arapaho were an agricultural people. They grew crops, including maize.[3]

Language

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The Arapaho language is currently spoken in two different dialects. It is considered to be a part the Algonquian language family. There are only about 250 fluent speakers of Northern Arapaho. Most of them live on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. There are even fewer fluent Southern Arapaho speakers. All of them are very old.[4]

References

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  1. "2010 Census CPH-T-6. American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes in the United States and Puerto Rico: 2010" (PDF). census.gov.
  2. Pritzker 319
  3. Pritzker 297
  4. Cowell, Andrew & Ramsberger, Gail & Menn, Lise. "Dementia and grammar in a polysynthetic language: An Arapaho case study." Language, vol. 93 no. 1, 2017, pp. 97-120. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/lan.2017.0002


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