Eastern Algonquian

Eastern Algonquian is the only proven genetic subgroup of the Algonquian family, whose seventeen or so languages lined the Atlantic seaboard of North America from the Canadian Maritimes to North Carolina, cut off from inland relatives by Iroquoian and Siouan speakers and the Appalachians. Its members include the Abenakian languages, Lenape or Delaware, Massachusett and Powhatan.

All were unwritten tongues of farming, fishing and hunting peoples until English settlers arrived. Captain John Smith took down the first Powhatan wordlists at Jamestown between 1607 and 1609, and in 1663 the missionary John Eliot printed his translation of the Bible into Massachusett, the first Bible published in the Americas, whose use spread through the Christian praying towns of New England.