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<p><tt>> My own feeling is that all 5 Dhegiha-speaking tribes were in the Ohio Valley and probably never in the upper Midwest until the Omahas and Poncas moved North. This would have been between about the 7th and 12th centuries A.D. at least. I tried to show this in my article in Histories of Maize: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Prehistory, Biogeography, Domestication, and Evolution of Maize. Edited by John E. Staller, Robert H. Tykot, Bruce F. Benz. Published by Elsevier, San Diego, N.Y. 2006. The paper shows a definite dissociation of Dhegiha from Chiwere and Dakota at a fairly early date.<br>
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<tt>This would put the Dhegihans closest to the Southeastern languages, wouldn't it? Any sense of the languages of these two groups having similarities due to proximity? I seem to find Biloxi easier than other Siouan languages outside of Dhegiha, but I'm not sure whether it's really similar to OP, or if it's just because both Biloxi and OP have substantial interlinear texts recorded by Dorsey.</tt><br>
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<tt>Rory</tt><br>
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