Siksiká

Siksiká, also called Niitsí'powahsin, is the Algonquian language of the Niitsitapi, the Blackfoot peoples of the northwestern Great Plains. It is among the westernmost and most divergent of Algonquian languages, with a polysynthetic grammar in which whole sentences may be folded into a single verb. Its four dialects, Siksiká, Kainai, Northern Piegan and Southern Piegan, belong to the nations of the Blackfoot Confederacy.

The Niitsitapi took to horses acquired from other Plains tribes by the early 1700s, and the language was carried across the grasslands by bison-hunting bands that gathered each summer for the Okan, the Sun Dance. European traders reached them only in the later eighteenth century.