Any of the aboriginal peoples of the Americas; the Arctic peoples (Inuit and Aleut) are often included, especially by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (bia) of the Department of the Interior, responsible for overseeing policy on us Native American life, their reservations, education, and social welfare.
History
Native Americans reached North America by the Bering Land Bridge about 14,000–15,000 years ago. The earliest well-dated archeological sites in North America are about 13,000–14,000 years old. In South America they are about 12,000–13,000 years old. Several migrations occurred after that time, during emergences of the land bridge, with the last being the Inuit and Aleut of about 3,000 to 1,000 years ago. Columbus called these people Indians in 1492, because he mistakenly thought he had reached the East Indies.
Lifestyle
Hunting, fishing, and moving camp throughout the Americas, the migrants inhabited both continents, and their nearby islands, and settled all the ecological zones, from the most tropical to the most frozen, including the woodlands, deserts, plains, mountains, and river valleys, from the west coast to the east, and from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Traditionally, Native Americans were agriculturalists but, as they specialized, many kinds of societies evolved, speaking many languages: hunters and fishers (the Inuit, the Athabaskans); specialized fishers (along the Northwest Coast); specialized hunters and gatherers (the Iroquois Nation, the Sioux of the Great Plains); specialized collectors (near the Great Lakes and in the Amazonian rainforests); farmers (the Hopi of the Southwest); and ancient civilizations (in Mexico—the Olmec, the Maya, the Aztec; in Peru—the Chimú, the Inca). Some of the specialized collectors of plants evolved into farmers, domesticating corn, beans, and squash in Mexico and Central America
; potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, lima beans, avocados, peanuts, manioc, sweet potatoes, and tobacco in South America.
Cultural development
Farming surpluses led to trade and taxation, which became the basis for the rise of civilizations, where the rulers and the priesthood prized jade, cacao (chocolate), and vanilla beans for ritual purposes; arts and sciences such as writing, astronomy, mathematics, engineering, architecture, and medicine were pursued; and crafts —such as pottery, basketry, weaving, and the working of metals, wood, and leather flourished. Militarism became a fact of life in many areas of North, Central, and South America, but political balances were disrupted and destroyed by the Spanish Conquest and subsequent European colonization.
The Spanish introduced the horse about 1600 which by about 1750 allowed many tribes to invade the prairies to hunt bison. The traditional image of the Native American on horseback and living in teepees is thus relatively recent.
Depletion of numbers
It is estimated that there just over 200 Native American groups in the 1600s. By the 1970s there were 173 ranging in size from less than 100 to several thousands. Nearly 90% now live west of the Mississippi. The relatively small number in the east is the result of disease, warfare and massacres by colonists, but mainly by the us government's policy of forced migration west, the most extensive program beginning with the Indian Removal Act 1830. The discovery of gold in California 1848 led to a massive migration west of the white man and the killing of much of the game the Native Americans survived on. This led to many bloody skirmishes between 1850 and 1880 and the loss of much of their land. In North America, most Native Americans were living on reservations by 1887.
South America
In South America the Native Americans were massacred by the Spanish, died from new diseases and serious famines, and were forced to work as slaves in Spanish mines. Interbreeding with the Spanish produced a mestizo population. In Brazil, the Native Americans interbred with the Portuguese and the slaves imported to work on the sugar plantations to produce the modern Brazilian population. In the 19th century many of the remaining tribal populations were decimated by disease and had their land expropriated for huge cattle ranches.
Distribution
Canada 300,000, including the Inuit; the largest group is the Six Nations (Iroquois), with a reserve near Brantford, Ontario, for 7,000; they are members of the National Indian Brotherhood of Canada.
United States 1.6 million, almost 900,000 (including Inuit and Aleuts) living on or near reservations, mainly in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah (where the Navajo have the largest of all reservations), Oklahoma, Texas, Montana, Washington, North and South Dakota, and Wyoming. The rest (700,000) live among the general population. The population level is thought to be about the same as at the time of Columbus, but now includes many people who are of mixed ancestry. Although treaties exist between the us and many Native American nations, their people were, in fact, made citizens of the us in 1924. There is an organized American Indian Movement (aim).
Latin America many mestizo (mixed Native American-Spanish descent), among them half the 12 million in Bolivia and Peru. Since the 1960s they increasingly stress their Native American inheritance in terms of language and culture. The few Native American groups formerly beyond white contact are being transported and killed while their environment is destroyed with the clearing and industrial development of the Amazon Basin.