Native Americans, or American Indians, are the indigenous people who lived in the Americas before European colonization. In Canada the term First Nations is now in general use. In Alaska, because of legal use in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANSCA) and because of the presence of the Inuit, Yupik, and Aleut peoples, the term Alaskan Native is used.
Based on anthropological evidence, there were three distinct migrations from Siberia across the Bering Land Bridge. The first wave of migration came into a land populated by the large mammals of the late Pleistocene epoch: mammoths, horses, giant sloth, wooly rhinoceros, etc. The Clovis culture is one example. Later a culture developed known as the Folsom culture, based on the hunting of bison.
The second wave being of the Athabascan people including the ancestors of the Apache and Navajo; the third of the Inuit, the Yupik, and the Aleut who may have come by sea over the Bering Strait. These last are so ethnically distinct from the remainder of the aboriginal inhabitants of the Americas that they are not usually included in the term "American Indian" or "First Nations".
The Athabascan peoples, late migrants, are generally found in Alaska and western Canada but several tribes migrated south as far as California and the American Southwest.
In the Mississippi valley of the United States, in Mexico and Central America, and in the Andes of South America Native American civilizations arose with farming cultures and city states.
The native peoples of the United States and Canada are commonly classified by ten geographical regions, which shared cultural traits. The regions are:
- Arctic
- Subarctic
- Northwest Coast
- Plateau
- California
- Great Basin
- Southwest
- Plains - Prairies
- Eastern Woodlands
- Southeast
Indians of Central and South America are generally classified by language, environment, and cultural similarities.
Since the Tribes list promises to get way too long, it might be good to gradually move individual tribes up to the regions list as I have placed the Creek.
Tribes
- Arapaho
- Blackfeet
- Caddo
- Cheyenne
- Commanche
- Coushatta
- Crow (Absaroka or Apsáalooke)
- Delaware
- Kickapoo
- Kiowa
- Lakota (Sioux)
- Mohican
- Nez Perce
- Sauk or Sac
Languages
- Algonquin
- Athabascan
- Mobilian
- Taino language (Arawak)
- Uto-Aztec
- Languages of the Pueblo: Keres, Towa, Tewa
- See http://users.cybercity.dk/~nmb3879/indian0.html
Military defeat, cultural pressure, confinement on reservations or reserves and especially slavery, have had deleterious effects on Native Americans' mental and ultimately physical health. Historically, diseases introduced by Europeans such as smallpox and measles decimated Indian populations with fatalities in excess of 80% in some cases. Contemporary problems include alcoholism and diabetes, see New World Syndrome
External Resources:
- http://www.anthro.mankato.msus.edu/cultural/newworld/index.shtml
- http://www.nativeweb.org/resources/
- http://www.dickshovel.com/trbindex.html (List of North American Tribes)
- http://www.indianlife.org/reserves/ (Canadian reserves)
Further Reading
- Discover Indian Reservations USA: A Visitors' Welcome Guide, Edited by Veronica E. Tiller, Forward by Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Council Publications, Denver, Colorado, 1992, Trade Paperback, 402 pages, ISBN: 0-9632580-0-1
- Arlene B. Hirschfelder, Mary Gloyne Byler, and Michael Dorris, Guide to research on North American Indians, American Library Association, 1983, (ISBN 0838903533)
- Indians in the United States & Canada, A Comparative History, Roger L. Nicholes, University of Nebraska Press, 1998, Trade Paperback, 393 pages, ISBN: 0-8032-8377-6
See European colonization of the Americas, Indian Territory, The Indian Trade, Indian Massacres, and Indian Removal.
What is the best name for this group of people?
The term Native American was originated by anthropologists wbo prefer it to the former apellations of "Indian" or "American Indian", which they consider inaccurate, as these terms bear no relationship to the actual origins of aboriginal Americans, and were born of the misapprehension on the part of Christopher Columbus, arriving at islands off the east coast of the North American continent, that he had reached the Indies. Of course, "Indian" and "American Indian" continue to be widely used in North America, even by Native Americans themselves, many of whom are not offended by the terms.
One minority view has been that a more accurate term might be "Asiatic Americans" because of the popular theory that such peoples migrated to the Americas from Asia accross an ice bridge covering the Bering Straits some 20,000 years ago. There is competent fossil evidence that this may have been the case. The strong tradition among archaeologists and anthropologists, however, is to indicate the geographic origins of a people as relating to the region where they (or their remains) were first encountered by researchers.
One difficulty with the term, however, as a substitute for "American Indian," is that there are at least two peoples who certainly are natives of the Americas, but who are not properly considered American Indians: the Inuit, the Yupik, and the Aleut people of the far north of the continent. Another difficulty is that many Native American groups migrated to their current locations after the start of European colonization, and therefore it can be argued that they are no more native to their current locations than the Europeans.
External Resources:
http://www.nativeweb.org/resources/
http://www.dickshovel.com/trbindex.html (List of North American Tribes)
http://www.indianlife.org/reserves/ (Canadian reserves)
Further Reading
- Discover Indian Reservations USA: A Visitors' Welcome Guide, Edited by Veronica E. Tiller, Forward by Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Council Publications, Denver, Colorado, 1992, Trade Paperback, 402 pages, (ISBN 0-9632580-0-1)
- Arlene B. Hirschfelder, Mary Gloyne Byler, and Michael Dorris, Guide to research on North American Indians, American Library Association, 1983, (ISBN 0838903533)
See European colonization of the Americas, Indian Territory, and The Indian Trade.