Arapaho
 |
|
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 10,861 Arapaho and part Arapaho | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 United States ( Colorado  Oklahoma  Wyoming  Nebraska) |
|
| Languages | |
| English, Arapaho, Plains Sign Talk | |
| Religion | |
| traditional religion, Native American Church, Christianity | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Gros Ventre, Cheyenne and other Algonquian peoples |
The Arapaho (in French: Arapahos, Gens de Vache) are a tribe of Native Americans historically living on the plains of Colorado and Wyoming. They were close allies of the Cheyenne tribe and loosely aligned with the Lakota and Dakota. The Arapaho language, Heenetiit, is an Algonquian language closely related to Gros Ventre (Ahe/A'ananin), whose people are seen as an early offshoot of the Arapaho. Blackfeet and Cheyenne are the other Algonquian-speakers on the Plains, but their languages are quite different from Arapaho.
By the 1850s, Arapaho bands formed two tribes: the Northern Arapaho and Southern Arapaho. Since 1878, the Northern Arapaho have lived with the Eastern Shoshone on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming and are federally recognized as the Arapahoe Tribe of the Wind River Reservation. The Southern Arapaho live with the Southern Cheyenne in Oklahoma. Together, their members are enrolled as the federally recognized Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.
It is uncertain where the word 'Arapaho' came from. It may have come from the Pawnee word for "trader", iriiraraapuhu, or it may have been a corruption of a Crow word for "tattoo".
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Wikipedia