The Algonquin tribes are the most populous and widespread North American Native groups, with tribes originally numbering in the hundreds and speaking several related dialects. They inhabited most of the Canadian region south of Hudson Bay between the Rockies and the Atlantic Ocean and, bypassing select territories held by the Sioux and Iroquois, the latter of whom had driven them out of their territory along the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers in the 17th and 18th centuries.Algonquin or Algonkin is used in reference to the tribe, but Algonquian either refers to the Algonquin language or to the group of tribes that speak related dialects. Because the Northern climates made agriculture difficult, the Algonquin were a semi-nomadic people, moving