People indigenous to the United States

People indigenous to the United States

Native Americans in the United States are those indigenous peoples within the territory that is now encompassed by the continental United States. This collective term encompasses a large number of distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of them still enduring as political communities. The U.S. states and several of the inhabited insular areas which do not form part of the continental U.S. territory also contain indigenous groups. These other indigenous peoples in the United States are not generally designated as "Native Americans". They are Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and various Pacific Islander peoples.Based on anthropological and genetic evidence, most scientists believe that most Native Americans descend from people who migrated from Siberia across the Bering Land Bridge between 17,000 and 11,000 years ago, where the Bering Strait is today.The exact epoch and route is still a matter of controversy.It should be noted, however, that many Native Americans reject theories of modern anthropology, having their own traditional stories that offer accounts to their origins, which are seen only as folklore by the scientific community.While many Native American groups retained a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle through the time of European occupation of the New World, in some regions, specifically in the Mississippi River valley of the United States, in Mexico, Central America, the Andes of South America, they built advanced civilizations with monumental architecture and large-scale organization into cities and states.

A recent (2004) study has claimed evidence which, if accepted, would extensively revise the timeline of human habitation in the Americas. At the Topper site on the Savannah River, South Carolina, archaeologist Dr. Albert Goodyear recovered stone tool artifacts dated these remains to be at least 50,000 years old. Other archaeologists have disputed the dating methodology employed, and have also questioned whether these "artifacts" are not in fact naturally-formed, rather than of human manufacture.

By 1500 BCE, many tribes had settled into small indigenous communities. In several regions, temporary hunter-gatherer settlements were transformed into small permanent or semi-permanent settlements and villages, frequently established in regions, such as river valleys, which were conducive to the raising of crops. Several such societies and communities, over time, intensified this practice of established settlements, and grew to support sizeable and concentrated populations. Examples include Mississippian Cultures and the Pueblo peoples . They constructed large and complex earthworks, and were particularly skilled at small stone sculptures and engravings on shell and copper. Agriculture was independently developed in what is now the eastern United States by 2500 BC, based on the domestication of indigenous sunflower, squash and goosefoot. Eventually, in the last eleven hundred years, the Mexican crops of corn and beans were replaced by the indigenous crops.

The large pueblos, or villages, built on top of rocky talleland or mesas of Southwest were a complicated aggregate of family apartments. Towns were one large complex of buildings, with multistoried houses arranged around courtyards or plazas. Wooden ladders provided access to upper levels. Under the courtyards, subterranean kivas, or ceremonial structures, served as meeting rooms for religious societies.

The European colonization of the Americas forever changed the lives and cultures of the Native Americans. In the 15th to 19th century, their populations were ravaged, by the privations of displacement, by disease, and in many cases by warfare with European groups and enslavement by them. The first Native American group encountered by Christopher Columbus in 1492, the 250,000 were enslaved. It is said that only 500 survived by the year 1550, and the group was considered extinct before 1650. In the 15th century, Spaniards and other Europeans brought horses to the Americas. Some of these animals escaped and began to breed and increase their numbers in the wild. Ironically, the horse had originally evolved in the Americas, but the last American horses were game for early human hunters, and went extinct about 9000 years ago. The re-introduction of the horse had a profound impact on Native American culture 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 more easily capture game.

Europeans also brought diseases against which the Native Americans had no immunity. Chicken pox and measles, were fatal among Europeans, often proved fatal to Native Americans, and more dangerous diseases such as smallpox were especially deadly to Native American populations. Some historians estimate that up to 80% of some Native populations may have died due to European diseases. For more information, see population history of American indigenous peoples.

During the American Revolutionary War, the newly proclaimed United States competed with the British for the allegiance of Native American nations east of the Mississippi River. Most Native Americans who joined the struggle sided with the British, hoping to use the war to halt colonial expansion onto American Indian land. Many native communities were divided over which side to support in the war. Frontier warfare during the American Revolution was particularly brutal, and numerous atrocities were committed on both sides. Noncombatants of both races suffered greatly during the war, and villages and food supplies were frequently destroyed during military expeditions. The largest of these expeditions was the Sullivan Expedition of 1779, which destroyed more than 40 Iroquois villages in order to neutralize Iroquois raids in upstate New York. The expedition failed.

Native Americans were stunned to learn that when the British made peace with the Americans in the Treaty of Paris (1783), the British had ceded a vast amount of American Indian territory to the United States without even informing their Indian allies. The United States treated the American Indians who had fought with the British as a conquered people who had lost their land. When this proved impossible to enforce (the Indians had lost the war on paper, not on the battlefield), the policy was abandoned. The United States was eager to expand, and the national government sought to do so only by purchasing Native American land in treaties. The states and settlers were frequently at odds with this policy.

In the 19th century, the incessant Westward expansion of the United States compelled large numbers of Native Americans to resettle further west, sometimes by force, almost always reluctantly. Under President Andrew Jackson, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which authorized the President to conduct treaties to exchange Indian land east of the Mississippi River for lands west of the river. As many as 100,000 American Indians relocated in the West as a result of this Indian Removal policy. In theory, relocation was supposed to be voluntary, but in practice great pressure was put on American Indian leaders to sign removal treaties. Conflicts, generally known as "Indian Wars", broke out between U.S. forces and many different tribes. U.S. government authorities entered numerous treaties during this period, but later abrogated many for various reasons. Well-known military engagements include the Native American victory at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, and the massacre of Native Americans at Wounded Knee in 1890. On January 31, 1876, the United States government ordered all remaining Native Americans to move into reservations or reserves. It was the begining of the downturn of Prairie Culture that had developed around the use of the horse for hunting, travel and trading.

In the late nineteenth century, reformers, in order to "civilize" Indians, adapted the practice of educating native children in Indian Boarding Schools. These schools, which were primarily run by Christians, proved traumatic to Indian children, who were forbidden to speak their native languages, taught Christianity instead of their native religions and in numerous other ways forced to abandon their Indian identity[2] and adopt European-American culture. There are also many documented cases of sexual, physical and mental abuses happening at these schools.

Current status