The area formerly occupied by the Algonquian family was more extensive
than that of any other linguistic stock in North America, their
territory reaching from Labrador to the Rocky Mountains, and from
Churchill River of Hudson Bay as far south at least as Pamlico Sound of
North Carolina. In the eastern part of this territory was an area
occupied by Iroquoian tribes, surrounded on almost all sides by their
Algonquian neighbors. On the south the Algonquian tribes were bordered
by those of Iroquoian and Siouan (Catawba) stock, on the southwest and
west by the Muskhogean and Siouan tribes, and on the northwest by the
Kitunahan and the great Athapascan families, while along the coast of
Labrador and the eastern shore of Hudson Bay they came in contact with
the Eskimo, who were gradually retreating before them to the north. In
Newfoundland they encountered the Beothukan family, consisting of but a
single tribe. A portion of the Shawnee at some early period had
separated from the main body of the tribe in central Tennessee and
pushed their way down to the Savannah River in South Carolina, where,
known as Savannahs, they carried on destructive wars with the
surrounding tribes until about the beginning of the eighteenth century
they were finally driven out and joined the Delaware in the north. Soon
afterwards the rest of the tribe was expelled by the Cherokee and
Chicasa, who thenceforward claimed all the country stretching north to
the Ohio River.
The Cheyenne and Arapaho, two allied tribes of this stock, had become
separated from their kindred on the north and had forced their way
through hostile tribes across the Missouri to the Black Hills country of
South Dakota, and more recently into Wyoming and Colorado, thus forming
the advance guard of the Algonquian stock in that direction, having the
Siouan tribes behind them and those of the Shoshonean family in front.