Western Ojibwa (also known as (), Saulteaux, and Plains Ojibwa) is a dialect of the Ojibwe language, a member of the Algonquian language family. It is spoken by the Saulteaux, a subnation of the Ojibwe people, in southern Manitoba and southern Saskatchewan, Canada, west of Lake Winnipeg. Saulteaux is generally used by its speakers, and is the general term in the language itself.
Classification
Genetically, Ojibwa is part of the Algonquian language family. This language family includes languages like Mi'kmaq, Abenaki, Malecite, Potawatomi, Delaware, Montagnais-Naskapi, Cree, and Blackfoot in Canada. In the U.S., are languages such as Menomini, Fox, Shawnee and Cheyenne. Yurok and Wiyot, also known as the Ritwan languages in old literature, that were once spoken in California are also relatives with Algonquian language family. Despite the geographic distance, these two languages make part of the Algic language family with the Algonquian languages.
Randolph Valentine (2000) divides Ojibwa into two major dialect groups: a southern group and a northern group. The southern dialect group includes Saulteaux in southern Manitoba and southern Saskatchewan; Ojibwa in most of Ontario, Manitoulin Island and Georgian Bay; Ottawa or Odawa in southern Ontario; and finally Chippewa in North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. The northern dialect group includes Oji-Cree in northern Ontario and Algonquin in Western Quebec.
Leonard Bloomfield (1946) was able to reconstruct the phonology system and some of the morphology of Proto-Algonquian through the comparison of cognates from four languages: Fox, Cree, Menomini, and Ojibwa.
Fig. 0.1 Proto-Algonquian Reconstructions made by Bloomfield (1946)
Fig. 0.2 Comparison of Central Ojibwa (Odawa), Western Ojibwa (Saulteaux), and Swampy Cree (2002)
History
In comparison to other eastern tribes, the Ojibwa have suffered the least population loss at the time of European contact. With the number of their peoples and early acquisition of rifles, the Ojibwa were a powerful political force during the early period of the fur trade.
It was common for small groups to go onto the Plains to exploit the hunt and then return to the Woodland area. They would hunt moose, elk, and other forest game. As a result, they gradually advanced north and west from their Red River base, following the forest edge. The bison hunt also became incorporated into the cycle of seasonal exploitation for many of the Ojibwa family groups.
The small groups of Plains Ojibwa are called the Saulteaux. This name derives from French and refers to those that gathered around the falls – specifically the Sault Ste. Marie area of modern Ontario and Michigan. They defeated the Cheyenne in the 1700s and occupied southern Manitoba and southern Saskatchewan when the fur trade died out. They were entrenched as a plains Indian group with the signing of the Number Treaties in the 1870s.
Neither Western Ojibwa or any dialect of Ojibwa has official status in North America.
Geographic distribution
The Ojibwa-speaking regions are found mainly to the south of Cree-speaking regions in Canada.
The exact number of current Saulteaux dialect speakers is unknown. However, there are several Saulteaux communities found in southern Manitoba and southern Saskatchewan.
Phonology
Saulteaux has twenty-four phonemic segments – seventeen consonants and seven vowels.
Consonants
The consonants are four resonants and thirteen obstruents. The resonant nasals are labial /m/ and alveolar /n/. The resonant glides are labio-velar and palatal . Western Ojibwa has the glottal stop , not .
Fig. 1.1 Obstruents in Western Ojibwa
Vowels
The vowels are divided into three short vowels and four long vowels.
Fig. 1.2 Short vowels in Western Ojibwa
Fig. 1.3 Long vowels in Western Ojibwa
N.B. – circumflexes/macrons over vowels mark length: = .
Western Ojibwa is non-syncopating which means that weak vowels are not deleted according to metrical position.
Short vowels are treated different in the Ojibwa dialects. In Saulteaux, tensing does not occur with initial short vowels. They also do not shift to .
Nasal vowels are becoming denasalized; however, vowels may be nasalized before a nasal followed by a sibilant, i.e. in the phonotactically permissible sequences , , and .
After a long vowel and before s or ʃ, is not pronounced the same as elsewhere, instead the preceding vowel is given a nasalized sound.