Athabaskan or Athabascan (also Athapascan or Athapaskan) is the name of a large group of distantly related Native American peoples, also known as the Athabasca Indians or Athapaskes, and of their language family.
Eyak and Athabaskan form a language group called Eyak-Athabascan. Tlingit is said to be related to this group to form the language family called Na-Dené by linguists. Haida was once thought to have been a member of the Na-Dené language family, but most linguists dispute this today.
The word itself does not come from any Athabaskan language; it is an anglicized version of the Cree Indian name for Lake Athabasca in Canada. Athabaskan languages are spoken throughout the interior of Alaska and the interior of northwestern Canada. There are Athabaskan people in northern California and southern Oregon. The Navajo and the various Apache people of the southwest also speak Athabaskan languages.
Language groups
Below is a list of all of the Athabaskan languages and their geographic locations. The Apachean or Southern Athabaskan languages are spoken in the American Southwest, Texas, Oklahoma, and Canada:
The languages which compose the Athapascan family are plainly related to each other and, because of certain peculiarities, stand out from the other American languages with considerable distinctness.
The tendency of the members of this family to adopt the culture of neighbouring peoples is so marked that it is difficult to determine and describe any distinctive Athapascan culture or, indeed, to say whether such a culture ever existed.
If a true Athapascan culture may be said to have existed anywhere, it was among the eastern tribes of the Northern group, such as the Chipewyan, Kawchodinne, Stuichamukh, Tabanottine, and Thlingshadinne, although differing comparatively little from that of the northern-most Algonquian tribes and the neighbouring [Inuit].
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