Portal:Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The Indigenous peoples of the Americas Portal

Current distribution of Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are groups of people native to a specific region that inhabited the Americas before the arrival of European settlers in the 15th century and the ethnic groups who continue to identify themselves with those peoples.

The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are diverse; some Indigenous peoples were historically hunter-gatherers, while others traditionally practice agriculture and aquaculture. In some regions, Indigenous peoples created pre-contact monumental architecture, large-scale organized cities, city-states, chiefdoms, states, kingdoms, republics, confederacies, and empires. These societies had varying degrees of knowledge of engineering, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, writing, physics, medicine, planting and irrigation, geology, mining, metallurgy, sculpture, and goldsmithing. (Full article...)

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Ancient Pueblo peoples, Ancestral Pueblo peoples , or Ancestral Puebloans were an ancient Native American culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the United States, comprising southern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northern New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado. They lived in a range of structures, including pit houses, pueblos, and cliff dwellings designed so that they could lift entry ladders during enemy attacks, which provided security. Archaeologists referred to one of these cultural groups as the Anasazi, although the term is not preferred by contemporary Pueblo peoples.

The word Anaasází is Navajo for "Ancient Ones" or "Ancient Enemy". Archaeologists still debate when this distinct culture emerged. The current consensus, based on terminology defined by the Pecos Classification, suggests their emergence around the 12th century BCE, during the archaeologically designated Early Basketmaker II Era. Beginning with the earliest explorations and excavations, researchers wrote that the Ancient Puebloans are ancestors of contemporary Pueblo peoples.

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Machu Picchu

image credit: Martin St-Amant

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General images

The following are images from various Indigenous peoples of the Americas-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Tunumiit Inuit couple from Kulusuk, Greenland (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 2A map showing the origin of the first wave of humans into the Americas, including the Ancestral Northern Eurasian, which represent a distinct Paleolithic Siberian population, and the Northeast Asians, which are an East Asian-related group. The admixture happened somewhere in Northeast Siberia. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 3An Indigenous man playing a panpipe, antara, or siku (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 4Owners of a roadside cafe near Cachi, Salta Province, Argentina (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 5The Rarámuri marathon in Urique (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 6The major indigenous language families of much of present-day South America and Panama (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 7A map of Canada showing the percent of self-reported indigenous identity (First Nations, Inuit, Métis) by census division, according to the 2021 Canadian census (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 8Indigenous peoples textile art in 1995 by Julia Pingushat, including Inuk, Arviat, Nunavut, Canada, wool, and embroidery floss (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 9An illustration in Florentine Codex, compiled between 1540 and 1585, depicting the Nahua peoples suffering from smallpox during the conquest-era in central Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 10An Indigenous woman in traditional dress near Cochabamba, Bolivia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 11A Navajo man on horseback in present-day Monument Valley in Arizona (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 12Indigenous Pipil women dancing in the traditional Procession of Palms in Panchimalco, El Salvador (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 13Principal component analysis showing the Native American cluster in other Eurasian populations. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 14Shaman of the Cofán people from the Amazonian forest in present-day Ecuador (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 15Members of an uncontacted tribe encountered in Acre in present-day Brazil in 2009 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 16A qpGraph on the formation of Ancient Paleo-Siberians and Native American populations. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 17A Mapuche man in present-day Chile (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 18A Mapuche man and woman; the Mapuche make up about 85% of Indigenous population that live in Chile. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 19A bison hunt depicted by George Catlin (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 20The domesticated plant species that were cultivated by the Indigenous peoples have influenced the crops that were produced globally. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 21A Navajo boy in the desert in present-day Monument Valley in Arizona with the "Three Sisters" rock formation in the background in 2007 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 22A Quechua woman and child in the Sacred Valley in Cuzco Region, Peru (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 23The bean is native to Mexico and Central America and later began to be cultivated in South America. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 24A Huichol woman from Zacatecas, Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 25A carnival with Tzeltal people in Tenejapa Municipality, Chiapas (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 26The Kogi, descendants of the Tairona, are a culturally intact, largely pre-Columbian era society. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 27Maya glyphs in stucco now on display at Museo de sitio in Palenque, Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 28Language families of Indigenous peoples in North America shown across present-day Canada, Greenland, the United States, and northern Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 29Evo Morales, an Aymara member and former President of Bolivia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 30Chimu culture feather pectoral, feathers, reed, copper, silver, hide, cordage, c. 1350–1450 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 31Wayuu women in the Guajira Peninsula, which comprises parts of Colombia and Venezuela (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 32A Warao family traveling in their canoe in Venezuela (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 33A Choctaw artist in present-day Oklahoma (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 34A Mayan woman (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 35The ancient mesoamerican engraving of maize now on display at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 36An Indigenous Terena man from present-day Brazil (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 37The West Indies in relation to the continental Americas (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 38"The Maiden", one of the discovered Llullaillaco mummies, a preserved Inca human sacrifice from around the year 1500. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 39Guambía people relaxing in Colombia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 40The tomato (jitomate, in central Mexico) was later cultivated by the pre-Hispanic civilizations of Mexico. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 41Areas of Indigenous peoples in North America at time of European colonization (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 42Indigenous people at a farm plantation in Minas Gerais in present-day Brazil, c. 1824 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 43A schematic illustration of maternal (mtDNA) gene-flow in and out of Beringia, from 25,000 years ago to present
Image 44Quechua women in festive dress on Taquile Island on Lake Titicaca, west of Peru (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 45Maya women from present-day Guatemala (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)

Selected biography

Molly Brant (c.1736 – April 16, 1796), also known as Mary Brant, Konwatsi'tsiaienni, and Degonwadonti, was a prominent Mohawk woman in the era of the American Revolution. Living in the Province of New York, she was the consort of Sir William Johnson, the influential British Superintendent of Indian Affairs, with whom she had eight children. Joseph Brant, who became an important Mohawk leader, was her younger brother.

After Johnson's death in 1774, Brant and her children returned to her native village of Canajoharie on the Mohawk River. A Loyalist during the American Revolutionary War, she fled to British Canada, where she worked as an intermediary between British officials and the Iroquois. After the war, she settled in what is now Kingston, Ontario. In recognition of her service to the Crown, the British government gave Brant a pension and compensated her for her wartime losses.

Since 1994, Brant has been honored as a Person of National Historic Significance in Canada. She was long ignored or disparaged by historians of the United States, but scholarly interest in her increased in the late 20th century. She has sometimes been controversial, criticized for being pro-British at the expense of the Iroquois. A devout Anglican, she is commemorated on April 16 in the calendar of the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church (USA). No portraits of her are known to exist; an idealized likeness is featured on a statue in Kingston and on a Canadian stamp issued in 1986.

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Did you know…

... that Lutheran priest Henrik Lund wrote Greenland's nation anthem, Nunarput utoqqarsuanngoravit, in the indigenous Greenlandic language?
... that the artwork of full-blood Tsimshian photographer Benjamin Haldane has enjoyed a revival after his glass plate negatives were discovered in an Alaskan dump?
... that in traditional Plains hide painting, Native American women painted abstract, geometric designs while men painted representational, narrative images?

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Chichen Itza

image credit: Daniel Schwen

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