What Does Athapaskan Mean?

Athabaskan or Athabascan (also called Athapaskan or Athapascan) is the appellation for a sizeable group of intimately related Native Americans, also called the Athabasca Indians or Athapaskes as well as of their language family. These people can be found in western North America in two core Southern and Northern groups.

The Athabaskan family is formidable as the largest kin in North America, both in terms of total number of languages as well as the number of speakers. There are three major geographic groupings of the Athabaskan language family: Northern, Pacific Coast, and Southern.

Athabaskan is actually an anglicized adaptation of the Cree name for Canada's Lake Athabasca. The name Athabaskan was given by Albert Gallatin in his categorization of North American languages. He personally acknowledged that the term used for these related languages was wholly his individual preference.