IROQUOIAN WOODLAND VILLAGE SITE DISCOVERED IN ONTARIO

[wnylib]

7. The "s" gets dropped in Iroquois because

it's a French word and follows French pronunciation patterns.

There are many cultural/linguistic groups of Native Americans, just as there are of other peoples around the world. Most of the general grouping terms that we use for them come from anthropological linguistic and cultural studies and are not necessarily terms the people would use for themselves.

For example, the grouping from the US southeastern tribes that were removed to OK is Muskogean. They include the Creek, Chickasaw, and Choctaw, but NOT the Cherokee, who were also removed from the same region at the same time on the Trail of Tears. The Cherokee are linguistically and culturally Iroquoian. Before being removed to OK, they were the southernmost Iroquoian tribe. They never joined the Iroquois Confederacy and were enemies of the Iroquois confederated tribes.

Another grouping is the Uto-Aztecan of the US southwest and parts of Mexico. They are the largest linguistic family of Native Americans in terms of the number of speakers. Being part of a linguistic family implies having a shared distant past, just like French, Spanish, and Italian have a shared past in Latin language and culture before becoming separate languages and nations. So the cultures of the various Native American tribes in a linguistic group might have some similarities, like their languages have some similarities, but they evolved into separate tribal nations over time.

The Uto-Aztecan group includes the Utes of Utah, the Shoshoni, Comanche, Hopi, Aztecs, snd several lesser known tribes of the southwest and CA.

Another very large grouping is the Algonquian linguistic/cultural group. There is a tribe called Algonquin, but the group also includes the New England tribes that the colonial Puritans encountered, the Powhattan Confederacy of VA, and several Canadian and US midwestern tribes.

The names that you have specifically mentioned - the Apache and Blackfoot people - apply to individual tribes rather than to groupings of tribes. Therefore, they are simply called Apache or Blackfoot. The "an" ending is generally applied to cultural linguistic groupings.