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Show BASIS OP AMERICAN HISTORY [ 1700 people, divided into two groups, the Blood and the Piegan, who have joined to themselves an Atha-pa^ an tribe of the north, the Sarcee, and formed a close confederation. X^ Their culture is much the same as that of the Siouan tribes who border them on the south, but also contains certain elements which may be either a reminiscence of their former home in the east or the result of more recent contact with the Ojibwa and other Algonquian relatives. v The Arapaho and Cheyenne are also Algonquian tribes who became cut off from the bulk of their family in the early western migration and have become true representatives of the plains. They are chiefly distinguished by certain peculiar social developments, particularly among the Cheyenne. \ On the southern plains the Comanche of Sho-shonean lineage have for over a century been closely associated with the Kiowa, and being like them of a roving and turbulent disposition, formerly extended their depredations as far south as Mexico. Physically the Comanche retain something of the heavy- featured face of the true Shoshone and are in general of a rather low type of culture. \ They are singularly deficient, for a tribe of the plains, in religious ceremonials; and their social system is loose and disorganized, as might be expected from their plateau inheritance. Several common features, not already discussed, are characteristic of these groups of the west. \ l n |