Native Americans, or American Indians, are the people descended from the various peoples who lived in North America before European colonization. Based on anthropological evidence there were three distinct migrations from Siberia across the Bering Land Bridge; the second being of the Athapascan people including the ancestors of the Apache and Navaho; the third of the Inuit and Aleut.
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 hunting of bison.
The Athapascan peoples, late migrants, are generally found in Alaska and western Canada but several tribes migrated south as far as Texas, California and the American Southwest.
In the Mississippi valley of the United States, in Central America and in the Andes of South America Native American civilizations arose.
Tribes
- Aleut
- Apache
- Arapahoe
- Blackfoot
- Caddo
- Cherokee
- Cheyenne
- Choctaw
- Commanche
- Coushatta
- Cree
- Delaware
- Havasupai
- Hopi
- Iroquois
- Kickapoo
- Kiowa
- Lakota (Sioux)
- Mohican
- Muckleshoot
- Navajo
- Nez Perce
- Sauk or Sac
- Seminole
- Tlingit
- Ute
Languages
Folks working this article may find resources at:
www.nativeweb.org/resources/
Further Reading
- Arlene B. Hirschfelder, Mary Gloyne Byler, and Michael Dorris, Guide to research on North American Indians, American Library Association, 1983, ISBN: 0838903533