Portal:Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The Indigenous peoples of the Americas Portal

Indigenous population throughout the Americas

The Indigenous peoples of the Americas, also called Indians, Amerindians, or simply Natives, are the peoples who are native to the Americas or the Western Hemisphere. Their ancestors are among the pre-Columbian population of South or North America, including Central America and the Caribbean. Indigenous peoples live throughout the Americas.

There are at least 1,000 different Indigenous languages of the Americas still in use in the 21st century. Some languages, including Quechua, Arawak, Aymara, Guaraní, Nahuatl, and some Mayan languages, have millions of speakers and are recognized as official by governments in Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay, and Greenland. (Full article...)

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The indigenous people of the Everglades region arrived in the Florida peninsula of what is now the United States approximately 14,000 to 15,000 years ago, probably following large game. The Paleo-Indians found an arid landscape that supported plants and animals adapted to prairie and xeric scrub conditions. Large animals became extinct in Florida around 11,000 years ago. Climate changes 6,500 years ago brought a wetter landscape. The Paleo-Indians slowly adapted to the new conditions. Archaeologists call the cultures that resulted from the adaptations Archaic peoples. They were better suited for environmental changes than their ancestors, and created many tools with the resources they had. Approximately 5,000 years ago, the climate shifted again to cause the regular flooding from Lake Okeechobee that gave rise to the Everglades ecosystems.

From the Archaic peoples, two major tribes emerged in the area: the Calusa and the Tequesta, who were of Taíno origin, an Arawak people, originating from the Caribbean and South America. The earliest written descriptions of these people come from Spanish explorers who sought to convert and conquer them. Although they lived in complex societies, little evidence of their existence remains today. The Calusa were more powerful in number and political structure. Their territory was centered on modern-day Ft. Myers, and extended as far north as Tampa, as far east as Lake Okeechobee, and as far south as the Keys. The Tequesta lived on the southeastern coast of the Florida peninsula around what is today Biscayne Bay and the Miami River. Both societies were well adapted to live in the various ecosystems of the Everglades regions. They often traveled through the heart of the Everglades, though they rarely lived within it.

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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 1Wayuu women in the Guajira Peninsula, which encompasses parts of Colombia and Venezuela (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 2An Indigenous man playing a panpipe, antara, or siku (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 3The Rarámuri marathon in Urique (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 4Modern Maya people in Sololá, Guatemala (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 5Célia Xakriabá, an Indigenous activist and politician from Brazil (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 6Chimu culture feather pectoral, feathers, reed, copper, silver, hide, cordage, c. 1350–1450 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 7A Huichol woman from Zacatecas, Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 8A Mapuche man in present-day Chile (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 9A Quechua woman and child in the Sacred Valley in Cuzco Region, Peru (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 10A Warao family traveling in their canoe in Venezuela (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 11Quechua women in festive dress on Taquile Island on Lake Titicaca, west of Peru (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 12A qpGraph on the formation of Ancient Paleo-Siberians and Native American populations. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 13The common bean is native to Mexico and Central America and later began to be cultivated in South America. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 14An illustration in Florentine Codex, compiled between 1540 and 1585 CE, depicting the Nahua peoples suffering from smallpox during the conquest-era in central Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 15Embera girl in the Darién Province, 2006. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 16An Indigenous woman in traditional dress near Cochabamba, Bolivia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 17Evo Morales, an Aymara member and former President of Bolivia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 18Language 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 19Pre-contact distribution of native American languages in the Southwest US, Mexico, and Central America (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 20Proportion of Native Americans in each county in 2020. (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 carnival with Tzeltal people in Tenejapa Municipality, Chiapas (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 23A Mapuche man and woman; the Mapuche make up about 85% of Indigenous population that live in Chile. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 24A 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 25Owners of a roadside cafe near Cachi, Salta Province, Argentina (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 26Indigenous people at a farm plantation in Minas Gerais in present-day Brazil, c. 1824 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 27Indigenous Pipil women dancing in the traditional Procession of Palms in Panchimalco, El Salvador (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 28A Choctaw artist in present-day Oklahoma (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 29Areas of Indigenous peoples in the Americas at time of European colonization (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 30Ceramic portrait of a Maya noblewoman, Jaina Island, Mexico, 600–800 CE (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 31Indigenous peoples textile art in 1995 by Julia Pingushat, including Inuk, Arviat, Nunavut, Canada, wool, and embroidery floss (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 32Proportion of Native Mexicans in each municipalities in 2020. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 33The tomato (jitomate, in central Mexico) was later cultivated by the pre-Hispanic civilizations of Mexico. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 34Indigenous girls in Quiché Department, 1996 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 35Members of an uncontacted tribe encountered in Acre in Brazil in 2009 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 36A bison hunt depicted in a painting by George Catlin (1844) (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 37The major indigenous language families of South America, except Quechuan, Aymaran, and Mapuche (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 38Indigenous populations of the Americas in 2024. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 39A representation of the domesticated plant species cultivated by Indigenous peoples have influenced the crops that were produced globally. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 40Moche portrait vessel from Peru, 100 BCE–500 CE (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 41Guambía people relaxing in Colombia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 42Shaman of the Cofán people from the Amazonian forest in present-day Ecuador (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 43A Navajo man on horseback in present-day Monument Valley in Arizona (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 44A schematic illustration of maternal (mtDNA) gene-flow in and out of Beringia, from 25,000 years ago to present
Image 45The ancient Mesoamerican engraving of maize now on display at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 46A 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 47Principal component analysis showing the Native American cluster in other Eurasian populations. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 48An elderly Maya woman (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 49The West Indies (or Antilles) in relation to the continental Americas (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 50Indigenous Maleku people in Costa Rica (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)

Selected biography

Ishi (c. 1860 – March 25, 1916) was the last member of the Yahi, a group of the Yana people of the U.S. state of California. Widely acclaimed in his time as the "last wild Indian" in America, Ishi lived most of his life completely outside modern culture. At about 49 years of age, in 1911, he emerged from "the wild" near Oroville, California, leaving his ancestral homeland, present-day Tehama County, near the foothills of Lassen Peak, known to Ishi as Wa ganu p'a.

Ishi means "man" in the Yana language. The anthropologist Alfred Kroeber gave this name to the man because it was rude to ask someone's name in the Yahi culture. When asked his name, he said: "I have none, because there were no people to name me," meaning that no Yahi had ever spoken his name. He was taken in by anthropologists at the University of California, who both studied him and hired him as a research assistant. He lived most of his remaining five years in a university building in San Francisco.

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Did you know…

... that the Cascajal Block, a serpentinite slab from the Olmec civilization, was dated to the which early first millennium BCE and may represent the earliest writing system in the Americas?
... that Jim Thorpe (Sac and Fox) won the 1912 Olympic gold medals for the pentathlon and decathlon?
...that underwater panthers were creatures appearing in the mythology of a number of Native American traditions, which combined the features of mountain lions or lynx with those of snakes, and were believed to inhabit the deepest parts of lakes and rivers?

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