Hinóno'eitíít

Hinóno'eitíít, the Arapaho language, is a Plains Algonquian tongue of the Algic family, grouped with the closely related Gros Ventre speech, Atsina, as dialects of Arapaho-Atsina. Its speakers' ancestors farmed maize in the Red River valley until Ojibwe groups armed by French traders pushed them westward with the early Cheyenne.

They entered the Great Plains before 1700, at first using dog-drawn travois, and after acquiring horses in the early 1700s became nomadic bison hunters. A group that split off became the Gros Ventre, the A'aninin or White Clay people, whose speech kept three consonants lost in Arapaho proper.

On the plains the Arapaho traded meat and hides for corn with the Mandan and Arikara, and around 1811 allied with the Cheyenne, joining them by 1826 in pushing the Kiowa and Comanche south.