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The Algonquian Migration from Plateau to Midwest: Linguistics and Archaeology

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The Algonquian Migration from Plateau to Midwest: Linguistics and Archaeology J. PETER DENNY University of Western Ontario By means of linguistic research, hypotheses have been developed about the history of the Algonquian languages, which assert the times and places in which these languages and their ancestor languages were spoken. This historical geography of Algonquian needs to be connected to the archaeology of the same times and places, as has been done, most impressively, for the California languages (Moratto 1984: Chapter 11) and for African languages (Ehret and Posnansky 1982). In this paper,1 I offer a hypothesis linking archaeology and linguistics for one crucial phase of Algonquian history, the entry into the Midwest. The Algonquian languages are widely distributed in the northeast quar­ ter of the North American continent, yet linguistic evidence and oral tra­ dition suggests that Proto-Algonquian, the ancestor language of the group, was spoken in the Columbia Plateau. (All places named are shown in Fig­ ure 1.) In the present study I argue that the Proto-Algonquians moved east as one culture, and then their language spread and diversified into the daughter languages in the Northeast. I propose an archaeological identity for the starting-point of the Proto-Algonquian migration in the Plateau, and another archaeological identity for its end-point in the Midwest. This study of Algonquian culture history is a part of my research in cross-cultural differences in thinking processes. It is recognized that the habitual cognitive styles which characterize a culture arise at particular 'Thanks are due to Michael Spence and Christopher Ellis for their guidance concerning archaeology and to Chet Creider for advice on historical linguistics. The first version of this paper was read at the 1990 Midwest Archaeological Con­ ference. I am grateful to those who offered valuable comments on that occasion, especially Robert Salzer, Robert Hall and James Griffin. The paper has bene­ fited greatly from suggestions made following its presentation to the Algonquian Conference, especially by Eric Hamp. 103 FIG. 1 MAP OF PLACE NAMES THE ALGONGUIAN MIGRATION 105 points in its past history. The best known case is the development of the de-contextualized thought style of Western Europe in classical Greece, which is first codified in Plato's insistence on studying each thought in and of itself (Havelock 1963). For Amerindian groups, we must try to achieve culture histories which are detailed enough so that we can, in future, discern the development of their intellectual preferences. Proto-Algonquian in the Midwest An Algonquian migration from the west has long been considered. It is reported in the oral traditions of Algonquian peoples: the Delaware told one of their missionaries, John Heckewelder (1819), that many hundreds of years ago they lived in a very distant country in the western part of the American continent. Also, it has been hypothesized on linguistic grounds: Sapir (1916) argued that since the three languages which had most anciently separated from the Algonquian group, Wiyot, Yurok and Blackfoot, were all found in the west it was likely that the rest of the Algonquians had moved east. To study this migration it is strategic to determine the end-point first, since there are two linguistic methods which scholars have used to work back from the current Algonquian languages to the likely location in the Midwest from which they spread. The first of these is to use the words for biological taxa which are common to all the languages in order to establish the eco­ logical zone in which Proto-Algonquian must have been spoken. This was first done by Siebert (1967) who identified the region between Lakes Huron and Ontario as the Proto-Algonquian homeland in the Northeast; however. there does not seem to be any archaeological unit in this region which might be the Proto-Algonquians. In addition, Snow (1976) has claimed that this pioneering investigation used too many species whose ranges are hard to determine, or are too widespread to be helpful. Snow re-did the analysis and claimed that this technique only limits the Proto-Algonquian homeland to the much larger region of overlap of the larch (tamarack) and the beech, i.e., the mixed forest zone running from Lake Michigan to the Atlantic. In this case, other methods will be needed to find the homeland within this vast area. However, an important by-product of these investigations is the assurance, provided by the many words for Northeastern species which are the same in the Algonquian languages, that Algonquian speech arrived in the east as the single ancestral language, Proto-Algonquian, prior to the development of the descendant languages (probably excepting Blackfoot). The large region established by the first linguistic technique can be narrowed by the second one, which involves identifying the region of max­ imum diversity of the languages. Since the only genetic sub-group within Proto-Algonquian as yet established is Proto-Eastern Algonquian (God- 106 J. PETER DENNY dard 1978a), it is thought that Proto-Algonquian split into the following 12 languages: Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Cree, Ojibway, Menomini, Potawotami, Fox, Illinois, Miami, Shawnee, and Proto-Eastern Algonquian. The area that holds the largest number of these is the Lake Michigan-Ohio River area where 6 of them occur: Menomini, Potawotami, Fox, Illinois, Miami and Shawnee.2 This region is the most likely homeland, according to Dyen's (1956) migration theory, because it requires fewer moves (6) for the other languages to leave this region, than would be required for a larger number of languages to emigrate out of the Plains, the boreal forest, or the Atlantic seaboard regions, given that each of these ends up with fewer languages in it. In a previous study (Denny 1989), I reviewed the various archaeological traditions of the Lake Michigan-Ohio River region for the time period in which Proto-Algonquian was diversifying into its daughter languages, about 1000 to 500 B.C. (Goddard 1978a),3 and found that the twinned Red Ocher and Glacial Kame burial complexes were the only ones which could be used to account for the geographic spread of Algonquian speech.4 If we understand these to be the alliance-building activities of a single culture (Morse and Morse 1964:85), they explain the first wave of expansion which brings Algonquian speech: 1) up both sides of Lake Michigan, poised for later entry into the boreal forest; 2) northeast as far as Lake Champlain, in position for its later spread along the Atlantic Coast; and 3) east as far as the Scioto River.5 During a period of a thousand years, beginning about 1400 B.C., participants in the Red Ocher and Glacial Kame networks 2 Linguists and ethno-historians claim there is substantial evidence for placing Fox-Sauk-Kickapoo-Mascouten at contact between lower Lake Michigan and lower Lake Huron, with Potawotami just to the north (Goddard 1978b), despite earlier doubts (Wakefield 1966; Fitting 1970). This appears compatible with the detailed hypothesis for their locations in Late Woodland times (after A.D. 1000) given by Stothers and Graves (1985). 3Similar dates are suggested by Siebert (1967) and Haas (1965). 4The alternative proposals are reviewed in detail in Denny (1989). The main one is that Point Peninsula (200 B.C. to A.D. 1000) accounts for the spread of Al­ gonquian speech (Walker 1975; Fiedel 1987, 1989; Seeber 1982). Although Point Peninsula did have influences on the Atlantic Coast (Allen 1982), it dates rather late to align with linguists' estimates that Proto-Algonquian starts splitting up between 1000 B.C. and 500 B.C. More importantly, since the continuities from Point Peninsula to the modern Iroquoian tribes are very clear, Point Peninsula was almost certainly Iroquoian-speaking. Proposals that several of the Lauren- tian traditions (4000-2000 B.C.) were Algonquian-speaking (Tuck 1977; Snow 1980:233) can be ruled out on linguistic grounds: to cover the large geographic ranges involved, even the chain of related Proto-Algonquian dialects that Snow (1977) envisages would have had to diverge into separate languages long before they are believed to have done so. The northeast spread of Proto-Algonquian along the north shore of Lake THE ALGONGUIAN MIGRATION 107 of exchange, alliance and ceremonialism gradually developed bilingualism in Algonquian and eventually abandoned their old languages in favour of Algonquian. Hypotheses about the further spread of Ojibway and Cree into the boreal forest, and of Eastern Algonquian languages along the Atlantic Coast are given in Denny (1989).6 Proto-Algonquian in the Columbia Plateau There are several lines of linguistic and archaeological evidence which make it likely that Proto-Algonquian was spoken in the Columbia Plateau. First, Proto-Algonquian is known to be related genetically to two northern Cal­ ifornia languages, Wiyot and Yurok (Haas 1958; Goddard 1975). Second, speakers of these latter two languages are known to have arrived on the California coast bearing cultures typical of the Plateau region (Moratto 1984:564-565). Third, they are thought to have migrated there recently, the Wiyot about A.D. 900 and the Yurok about A.D. 1100 (Whistler 1979, cited in Moratto 1984:540). Fourth, as argued by Sapir, since the languages most anciently related to Proto-Algonquian, Wiyot and Yurok, occur in the West, it is likely that the split between them and Proto-Algonquian devel­ oped there. Unfortunately, this inference cannot be strengthened by Dyen's migration theory, because Berman (1982) has shown that the split produced only two languages, Proto-Algonquian and Ritwan, the latter splitting sub­ sequently into Wiyot and Yurok. Since there are only two languages, we cannot argue that the movement of Proto-Algonquian eastwards is more probable than the movement of Ritwan westwards.
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