Assiniboine

The Assiniboine (/əˈsɪnɪbɔɪn/ ə-SIN-ih-boyn) are an Indigenous people of the Northern Plains. They are a First Nations in Canada, where they primarily live in Saskatchewan, with some living in Alberta and southwestern Manitoba, and they are a Native American people in the United States, where they primarily live in northern Montana, with some living in western North Dakota.

In the 18th century, the Assiniboine were part of the Iron Confederacy with the Cree.

The name Assiniboine is also spelled Assiniboin and is pluralized as Assiniboines and Assiniboins /əˈsɪnɪbɔɪnz/. In Ojibwe, their name is Asiniibwaan which translates to "Stone Sioux". They are also known as the Hohe and the endonym Nakoda, also spelled Nakota or Nakona.

The Europeans and Americans adopted names that other tribes used for the Assiniboine; they did not until later learn the tribe's autonym, their name for themselves. In Siouan languages, they are Nakoda. With the widespread adoption of North American English, however, many now use the name that became common in English. The English adopted Assiniboine, used by the Canadian French colonists. It was a transliteration into French phonetics of what they heard the Ojibwe use as a term for these western people. The Ojibwe name is asinii-bwaan (stone Sioux). In Cree they are called asinîpwâta (asinîpwâta ᐊᓯᓃᐹᐧᑕ noun animate singular, asinîpwâtak ᐊᓯᓃᐹᐧᑕᐠ noun animate plural).

In the same way, Assnipwan comes from the word asinîpwâta in the western Cree dialects, from asiniy ᐊᓯᓂᐩ noun animate 'rock, stone' and pwâta ᐹᐧᑕ noun animate 'enemy, Sioux'. Early French-speaking traders in the west were often familiar with Algonquian languages. They transliterated many Cree or Ojibwe exonyms for other western Canada indigenous peoples during the early colonial era. English speakers referred to the Assiniboine by adopting terms from French spelled using English phonetics.

The word Assiniboine has its origin as follows: They split from the Sioux in the 1500s. Their ancient rivals the Ojibwe, knew of these as a new people and they start calling them Asiniy-Pwât meaning "Stone Dakota."

Other tribes associated "stone" with the Assiniboine because they primarily cooked with heated stones. They dropped hot stones into water to heat it to boiling for cooking meat. Some writers believed that the name was derived from the Ojibway term asin, stone, and the French bouillir, to boil, but such an etymology is very unlikely.

Assiniboine is a Mississippi Valley Siouan language, in the Western Siouan language family. As of the early 21st century, about 150 people speak the language and most are more than 40 years old. The majority of the Assiniboine today speak only American English. The 2000 census showed 3,946 tribal citizens who lived in the United States.