siouan

Other Definitions
siouan (dict)

Siouan is a family of related Native American languages in North America. Most people think the Sioux people are exclusively the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota of the 19th-century plains. While the Lakota (North & South Dakota), Dakota (Minnesota) and Nakota (Nebraska, Canada) do comprise "the Great Sioux Nation", their language family is much broader and includes "the old speakers", the Hochank (formerly Winnebago, Wisconsin), and their traditional enemy, their linguistic cousins, the Absaroke (Crow, Montana). Siouan also extends back East and down South. While social migrations have yet to be definitively worked out, linguistic and historical sitings indicate a southern origin of Siouan people, with migrations over a thousand years ago from North Carolina and VIrginia to Ohio, then both down the Ohio River to the Mississippi and up to the Missouri, and across Ohio to Illinois, Wisconin and Minnesota, home of the Dakota. Some linguists associate Siouan languages with Caddoan and Iroquoian languages in a Macro-Siouan language family.