1 28 A SYNOPSIS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES. [iNTROD. Puncas, who are settled on the Missouri one hundred and fifty miles above the Oniahaws, speak the same dialect. The population of the loways is estimated at twelve hun- dred ; that of the Ottoes and Missouris at sixteen hundred, and that of the Oniahaws and Puncas at two thousand ; making, with the Quappas, Osages, and Kansas, an aggregate of eleven or twelve thousand souls. All the nations speaking languages belonging to the Great Sioux Family may therefore be com- puted at more than fifty thousand souls. The vocabularies of the Quappas and of the Osages are in Mr. Du ponceau's collection ; the first was transmitted to him by General Izard, and is spelt according to the French orthogra- phy ; he received that of the Osages from Dr. Murray of Ken- tucky, and we have another of the same language published by Mr. Bradbury.* Those of the Ottoes and of the Omahaws were taken by Dr. Say. We have not that of the loways ; but nineteen words, supplied by Governor Cass, seem to leave no doubt of its identity with the Ottoes. The Paivnees speak a language altogether different from that of the Sioux tribes, or of any other Indians known to us ; unless that of the Panis or Towiaches of Red River should be found to be the same. They consist of two nations, the Pawnees proper, and the Ricaras or Aricaras } sometimes also called Black Pawnees. The Pawnees proper inhabit the country on the river Platte, west of the Ottoes and Omahaws : their three villages, two of which are distinguished by the names of Loup Pawnees and Republican Pawnees, are now in the same vicinity on the river Loup, a northern tributary of the river Platte, about sixty miles above the confluence of those two rivers. They raise corn and other vegetables, but apply still less to agriculture than the Ottoes and Omahaws. They hunt southerly as far as the Arkansa, and westerly to the sources of the river Platte. They were seen by Bourgmont, in 1724, in the same country which they now occupy, but were not known to us before the acquisition of Louisiana. Their number, by the concurrent accounts of General Pike and Major Long, amounts to six
- The words in the appended vocabulary of the Osage, taken from
those two sources, have accidentally been confounded.
