wickiup & wigwam

wickiup (WIK-ee-uhp) - n., a dwelling with an arched framework overlaid with bark, hides, or mats, used by Native Americans in the western and southwestern United States.

wigwam (WIG-wom, WIG-wawm) - n., a dwelling with an arched framework overlaid with bark, hides, or mats, used by Native Americans in the northeastern United States.


Both are semipermanent dwellings used by nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples, as opposed to settled structures such as longhouses or transient housing like tipis. Here's an Apache wickiup from 1930:


Thanks, WikiMedia!

And an Ojibwe wigwam (next to Dakota tipis) from 1928:


Thanks, WikiMedia!

Even in the northeast, the preferred word is becoming wickiup because of historical derogatory uses of wigwam. Wigwam dates from the 1620s, from an Eastern Abenaki language, possibly Abenaki wìkəwαm or its Penobscot equivalent, both meaning house, from Proto-Algonquian wi·kiwa·ʔmi. Wikiup dates from the 1850s, and while peoples across the southwest and west have words approximating wikiup, English seems to have gotten it from Fox-Sauk wikiyapi, house, an Algonquian language from west of the Great Lakes, also from Proto-Algonquian wi·kiwa·ʔmi.

So, yeah, their similarity is because they're a doublet.

---L.