Native Americans of North America, indigenous peoples of North America. Native Americans had lived throughout the continent for thousands of years before Europeans began exploring the “New World” in the 15th century.

Most scientists agree that the human history of North America began when the ancient ancestors of modern Native Americans made their way across a land bridge that once spanned the Bering Sea and connected northeastern Asia to North America

. Scientists believe these people first migrated to the Americas more than 10,000 years ago, before the end of the last ice age (see Migration to the Americas). However, some Native Americans believe their ancestors originated in the Americas, citing gaps in the archaeological record and oral accounts of their origins that have been passed down through generations.

Native Americans excelled at using natural resources and adapting to the climates and terrains in which they lived. Over thousands of years distinct culture areas developed across North America. In the Northeast, for example, Native Americans used wood from the forests to build houses, canoes, and tools. Dense populations in the Pacific Northwest exploited the abundance of sea mammals and fish along the Pacific Coast. In the deserts of the Southwest, Native Americans grew corn and built multilevel, apartment-style dwellings from adobe, a sun-dried brick. In the Arctic, inhabitants adapted remarkably well to the harsh environment, becoming accomplished fishers and hunters.

Among the several hundred Native American groups that settled across North America, there existed, and still exists, many different ways of life and world views. Each group had distinctive social and political systems, clothing styles, shelters, foods, art forms, musical styles, languages, educational practices, and spiritual and philosophical beliefs. Nevertheless, Native American cultures share certain traits that are common to many indigenous peoples around the world, including strong ties to the land on which they live.

When European explorers and settlers began to arrive in the Americas in the 15th century, Native Americans found themselves faced with a new set of challenges. Some Native Americans learned to coexist with Europeans, setting up trade networks and adopting European technologies. Many more faced generations of upheaval and disruption as Europeans, and later Americans and Canadians, took Native American lands and tried to destroy their ways of life. During the 20th century, however, Native American populations and cultures experienced a resurgence. Today, Native Americans are working to reassert more control over their governments, economies, and cultures.

The indigenous peoples of North America are known by many terms. Most tribal peoples prefer to be identified by their tribal affiliation, such as Hopi, Onondaga, Mohawk, or Cherokee. The most common collective terms are Native American or American Indian. For many years, Indian was the most prevalent term. When Christopher Columbus and other European explorers arrived in the Americas, they thought they were in Asia, which the Spanish referred to as “the Indies.” They called the native peoples indios, as in the people of the Indies, later translated to Indian. However, some scholars believe the Europeans were not calling native peoples indios, but rather In Dios, meaning “Of God.”

The term Native American became popular in the United States in the 1960s, although some people believe it is too broad because it can refer to anyone born in the Americas, including Hawaiians and descendants of immigrants. In Canada, aboriginal people is a commonly used collective term. It refers to Indians, Métis (people of mixed indigenous and European ancestry), and Inuit. In the 1970s many Indians in Canada began calling their bands First Nations. When referring to the original inhabitants of the United States, this article uses Native Americans, American Indians, Indians, and native peoples interchangeably. When referring to the original inhabitants of Canada, the article generally uses aboriginal peoples, indigenous peoples, and native peoples.

Scholars vary greatly in their estimates of how many people were living in the Americas when Columbus arrived in 1492. Estimates range from 40 million to 90 million for all of the Americas, and from 2 million to 18 million for the aboriginal population north of present-day Mexico. These figures are hypothetical; exact population figures are impossible to ascertain. Furthermore, the date of Columbus’s arrival was not necessarily the peak of the Native American population. Civilizations had risen and fallen before that time—the Hopewell culture, for example, flourished from 200 bc to ad 400 in eastern North America. Some anthropologists believe the peak occurred around ad 1200.

The number of distinct Native American groups or cultures that existed at the time of European contact is more difficult to estimate. Scholars do not estimate the number of tribes that existed at the time because few Native American peoples had the level of political organization associated with true tribes. For many native peoples, especially those who lived in areas with sparse resources, the family was the largest unit, while others were organized into bands. Some tribes did exist, but it is impossible to estimate their number, for smaller groups were constantly merging into new, larger groups, or in some cases, disappearing. Europeans applied the term nation to people with a common language and customs and a name for themselves, and by 1700, they were aware of some 50 or 60 distinct Indian “nations” east of the Mississippi River. The Spaniards found some 50 Indian nations in the West, including the Pueblo, Athapaskan-speaking peoples, Comanche, and Piman- and Yuman-speaking peoples. In the Southeast and East, many Indians tried to meet the European invasion by creating confederacies or by increasing their reliance on existing confederacies of smaller groups.

European settlement of the Americas drastically reduced the Native American population. The European conquest was primarily a biological one. Explorers and colonists brought a wide range of deadly communicable diseases directly from crowded European cities. These diseases spread quickly among Native Americans, who had no immunity to them. Transmitted through trade goods or a single infected person, measles, smallpox, and other diseases annihilated entire communities even before they had seen a single European. From the 16th century to the early 20th century, 93 epidemics and pandemics (very widespread epidemics) of European diseases decimated the native population. To cite only one example, in the American Southwest, the Pueblo population fell by 90 to 95 percent between 1775 and 1850. In addition to smallpox and measles, explorers and colonists brought a host of other diseases: bubonic plague, cholera, typhoid fever, scarlet fever, pleurisy, mumps, diphtheria, pneumonia, whooping cough, malaria, yellow fever, and various sexually transmitted diseases.

Despite the undisputed devastation wreaked on Indian populations after European contact, native populations showed enormous regional variability in their response to disease exposure. Some peoples survived and, in some cases, even returned to their pre-contact population level. Others disappeared swiftly and completely. Today, as scholars explore the magnitude of the Native American population decline, they are finding that the issues are much more complex than was previously assumed. Archaeological evidence indicates that illness was increasing in the Native American population in many regions before the arrival of Columbus, probably in response to problems of population density, diet, and sanitation.

Although the introduction of new diseases was the main cause of the rapid decline of indigenous populations, other reasons were genocidal warfare, massive relocations and removals of Native Americans from their homelands, and the destruction of traditional ways of life. With white encroachment on their land, Native Americans no longer had access to their traditional hunting, gathering, and farming areas. Their subsistence patterns broke down, leading to malnutrition and greater susceptibility to disease. Relocation to new areas, often among hostile Indian tribes that were already living there, meant that people demoralized by their circumstances had to establish new subsistence patterns as well as come to terms with their forced dependency. By 1900, these factors, along with increased mortality and decreased fertility, had reduced the Native American population to its low point of only about 250,000 people in the United States and about 100,000 in Canada.

During the 20th century, Native Americans experienced a remarkable population recovery because of decreased mortality rates, including declining disease rates. Intermarriage with nonnative peoples and changing fertility patterns have kept Native American birthrates higher than birthrates for the total North American population. Another factor in the increase is that more people in the United States are identifying themselves as Native American on their census forms. By one estimate, as much as 60 percent of the population increase of American Indians from 1970 to 1980 was due to these changing identifications.

In the United States, 2.48 million people identified themselves as American Indian in the 2000 census, up from 1.8 million in 1990. More than 300 American Indian tribes are recognized by the U.S. federal government. In Canada, there are about 600 bands of Indians. At the 1996 census, about 805,000 people—including Indians, Métis, and Inuit—identified themselves as aboriginals. For more information on current population trends in the United States and Canada, see the Native Americans Today section of this article.

Trudy Griffin-Pierce contributed the Population: Past and Present section of this article.

Most anthropologists believe the ancestors of Native Americans were hunter-gatherers who migrated from northeastern Asia during the last part of the Pleistocene Epoch (1.6 million to 10,000 years before present). From about 25,000 to 10,000 years ago a now-submerged land bridge, called Beringia, linked northeastern Asia and northwestern North America. At that time, sea levels were lower than they are today because more of the world’s water was frozen in glaciers. The early colonizers who crossed this natural land bridge were surely unaware they had arrived on a new continent. Scholars may never know why ancient peoples ventured to the Americas. Perhaps they were in pursuit of wide-ranging game; perhaps they were driven by the enduring human urge to explore unknown territory. Whatever their motivation, these peoples, or their descendants, pushed south toward what is now the continental United States. Eventually, they made it all the way to the southern tip of South America.

Traveling south during the late Pleistocene would have been no easy task. Massive glaciers buried much of present-day Canada and parts of the United States. By about 14,000 years ago, however, the glaciers had retreated far enough to open a passable southern route down the Pacific Coast. Then, about 2,500 years later, a habitable ice-free corridor opened in the continental interior, along the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains. Many scholars suspect that both routes were used by ancient peoples migrating to the Americas.

For much of the 20th century, the earliest archaeological evidence of a human presence in the Americas was of the Clovis people, who first appeared about 11,500 years ago. For decades archaeologists believed these early Americans were fast-moving hunters who singularly pursued mammoth, mastodon, and other large, now-extinct Pleistocene-age animals. There is little doubt Clovis groups were highly mobile and spread rapidly, for their distinctive fluted stone spearpoints occur throughout North America in the centuries after 11,500 years ago. However, there is now evidence that Clovis people relied on a variety of food resources and were less dependent on big game than once supposed. It also appears they were not the first Americans.

Excavations in the late 20th century at the site of Monte Verde, in southern Chile, testify to an earlier human presence in the Americas, one dating to at least 12,500 years ago. Archaeologists had long suspected a pre-Clovis occupation of the Americas, but no site achieved wide acceptance until Monte Verde. The artifacts unearthed at Monte Verde include well-preserved remains of leaves and seeds, meat and bone, and ivory, as well as stone tools that are quite different from those produced by Clovis peoples. For some archaeologists, these findings suggest that Monte Verde’s ancient inhabitants were descendants of a separate, pre-Clovis migration to the Americas—possibly one that traveled down the Pacific Coast.

The early colonizers of the Americas, known as Paleo-Indians, faced the challenge of adapting to vast new lands with a great diversity of local environments. These lands were themselves undergoing dramatic changes as the great ice sheets melted off and global climates rapidly warmed. Living in small bands of perhaps 25 to 75 people, Paleo-Indians had to learn how to survive in the new lands and to maintain contacts with distant kin. For this reason, they were highly nomadic, moving regularly and camping in easily transported animal-skin tents or other lightweight shelters. Equipped with an assortment of tools made from stone, bone, and wood, they hunted a variety of animals, from small prey such as turtles and birds, to large game, including deer and the occasional mammoth. They probably also relied on wild plant foods as well, although evidence of this is rarely preserved.

By about 10,000 years ago the descendants of the first Americans had left traces of their presence in virtually every corner of the Americas, from high in the Rocky Mountains down to lush tropical lowlands near the equator. After that time, regionally distinctive ways of life began to appear throughout the Americas as Paleo-Indian groups adapted to local environments. In North America these environments included deciduous woodlands and evergreen forests, vast deserts, grassy prairies, fertile river drainages, and coastal lowlands. Paleo-Indians living in desert country became adept at collecting wild plant foods because game animals were scarce. Buffalo- (or bison-) hunting cultures appeared on the Great Plains, where large herds of the animals lived. People living in forests hunted woodland game animals, while those near rivers and lakes fished and hunted waterfowl. Along the coasts, Paleo-Indians fished and gathered shellfish. In time, agriculture spread to North America from Mesoamerica, where cultivation of food crops began as early as 7,000 years ago, and sophisticated farming cultures appeared in the southwestern and eastern regions of what is now the United States.

For more information about the peopling of the Americas, see Migration to the Americas.

David Meltzer contributed the Early Peoples section of this article.

When European explorers first arrived in North America, they encountered a great diversity of Native American peoples with widely varying customs. Over time, these indigenous peoples had developed different cultural practices that were suited to their local environments. Scholars find it convenient to group Native Americans who shared similar cultural patterns before European or Euro-American contact into regions known as culture areas.

Culture areas are applied to distinct geographic regions. Each region has a characteristic habitat made up of the prevailing climate, landforms, and natural resources, including plant and animal life. Prior to European or Euro-American contact, habitat profoundly influenced how Native Americans lived. Indigenous peoples adapted to the available resources in each habitat to obtain foods and materials for shelter, clothing, tools, and arts. The environment shaped how they organized their communities and how they viewed the world around them. Peoples living where land was suitable for farming but rainfall was limited, for example, were likely to develop similar types of agricultural practices and to share mythological themes surrounding their farming. Similarly, peoples living in areas with large herds of migrating game were likely to have nomadic or seminomadic lifestyles and to celebrate the animals they hunted in their mythologies.

Culture areas may also help provide a framework for understanding Native Americans after European or Euro-American contact, as non-Indians made inroads onto indigenous lands and influenced indigenous culture. One culture area in particular—that of the Great Plains—came to be defined long after the first Europeans had arrived in North America. Horses brought to the Americas by Spanish colonizers transformed aboriginal ways of living on the vast North American Plains.

Scholars have devised a number of different systems for defining culture areas. The most common system divides North America north of Mexico into ten culture areas. These include the Southeast culture area, Northeast culture area, Southwest culture area, California culture area, Great Basin culture area, Northwest Coast culture area, Plateau culture area, Great Plains culture area, Subarctic culture area, and Arctic culture area.

Whichever culture area system is used, it should be kept in mind that each tribe or group had its own distinctive customs, making cultural generalizations difficult. It is also important to remember that many Native American customs and behaviors that originated in pre-contact times are still practiced today. The Native American saga is ongoing.