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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. See [[archeology of the Americas]].
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. See [[archeology of the Americas]].


==The Comming of the White Man==
==The Coming of the White Man==
In the [[15th century]] Spaniards and other Europeans brought [[horse]]s to the Americas. Some of these animals escaped their owners and began to breed and increase their numbers in the wild. Ironically the horse originally evolved in the Americas but the last American horses died out at the end of the last [[ice age]]. The reintroduction of the horse, however, had a profound impact on Native American cultures in the [[Great Plains]] of North America. This new mode of travel made it possible for some tribes to greatly expand their territories, exchange goods with neighboring tribes and to more easily capture game.
In the [[15th century]] Spaniards and other Europeans brought [[horse]]s to the Americas. Some of these animals escaped their owners and began to breed and increase their numbers in the wild. Ironically the horse originally evolved in the Americas but the last American horses died out at the end of the last [[ice age]]. The reintroduction of the horse, however, had a profound impact on Native American cultures in the [[Great Plains]] of North America. This new mode of travel made it possible for some tribes to greatly expand their territories, exchange goods with neighboring tribes and to more easily capture game.


Revision as of 09:50, 2 February 2003

Native Americans, also called American Indians or simply Amerindians, 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. (See further discussion below.)

Based on anthropological evidence, there were at least 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, including mammoths, horses, giant sloths, and wooly rhinoceri. 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 recent years, the anthropological evidence has been supplemented by studies based on molecular genetics. The results here are still provisional, but suggest that there were four distinct migrations from Asia and, most surprisingly, that there is evidence of smaller scale, contemporaneous human migration from Europe. This is most easily understood by postulating that the migrant population, living in Europe at the time of the most recent ice age, adopted a life-style resembling that lived by the Inuit and Yupik in recent centuries.

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. See archeology of the Americas.

The Coming of the White Man

In the 15th century Spaniards and other Europeans brought horses to the Americas. Some of these animals escaped their owners and began to breed and increase their numbers in the wild. Ironically the horse originally evolved in the Americas but the last American horses died out at the end of the last ice age. The reintroduction of the horse, however, had a profound impact on Native American cultures in the Great Plains of North America. This new mode of travel made it possible for some tribes to greatly expand their territories, exchange goods with neighboring tribes and to more easily capture game.

Europeans also unintentionally brought diseases that the Native Americans had no immunity to. Common and rarely fatal ailments such as chicken pox and the measles were often fatal to Native Americans and other more deadly diseases, such as smallpox, were especially deadly to Indian populations. It is difficult to estimate the percentage of the total Native American population that were killed by these diseases since waves of disease oftentimes preceded White scouts and often destroyed entire villages. But some historians have argued that greater than 80% of some Indian populations may died due to European-derived diseases.

In 19th century United States territories Native Americans were increasingly marginalized from their native lands to areas farther and farther west as white settlement of the young nation expanded in that direction. Numerous Indian Wars were fought between US forces many different tribes. Countless treaties were drafted during this period and then later nullified for various reasons. The fighting climaxed with the Native American victory at the Battle of Little Bighorn and with the massacre of Native Americans at Wounded Knee. Then on January 31, 1876 the United States government ordered all Native Americans to move into reservations or reserves. This effectively ended the Prairie Culture that developed around the use of the horse for hunting, travel and trading.

Military defeat, cultural pressure, confinement on reservation and especially slavery, have had deleterious effects on Native Americans' mental and ultimately physical health. Contemporary problems include alcoholism and diabetes, see New World Syndrome

Classification

The native peoples of the United States and Canada are commonly classified by ten geographical regions, which shared cultural traits. The following list is based on the region of origin, followed by the current location. See the individual article for the tribe for a history of their movements. The regions are:

Indians of Central and South America are generally classified by language, environment, and cultural similarities.

Languages

For a general discussion, see Language families and languages

See also: Native American mythology

External Resources:

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 who prefer it to the former appelations of Indian or American Indian, which they consider inaccurate, as these terms bear no relationship to the actual origins of Aboriginal Americans (or American Aborigines), and were borne 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. Red Indian is a common British term, useful in differentiating this group from a distinct group of people referred to as East Indians.

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 across 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 several groups of people who certainly are indigenous to the Americas, but who are not properly considered American Indians, for example the Innu people of the Labrador/Quebec peninsula and the Inuit, Yupik, and Aleut peoples of the far north of the continent. Another difficulty is that many Native American groups migrated (or were displaced) 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.

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