Algic

Algic is an indigenous language family of North America, uniting the widespread Algonquian languages with two small languages of the Pacific coast, Yurok and Wiyot. The Algonquian branch once reached from the Rocky Mountains to Atlantic Canada, while Yurok and Wiyot belong to the redwood coast of north-western California.

All descend from Proto-Algic, reconstructed as roughly five thousand years old, whose homeland is thought to have lain in the inland north-west, between the middle Columbia River and the country west of Lake Superior.

The Yurok, who call themselves by a word meaning person, hold the lower Klamath River and its mouth, with villages dating to the fourteenth century; the Wiyot live around Humboldt Bay. Russian sea-otter traders reached the Wiyot coast in 1806. Hudson's Bay Company trappers entered Yurok lands in 1827.