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, Indigenous Americans 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 Kiowa /ˈkaɪ.oʊwə/ are a nation of American Indians of the Great Plains. They migrated from western Montana southward into the Rocky Mountains in Colorado in the 17th and 18th centuries, In 1867, the Kiowa moved to a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma.

Today they are federally recognized as Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma with headquarters in Carnegie, Oklahoma. The Kiowa language is still spoken today and is part of the Tanoan language family. As of 2011^[update], there are 12,000 members.

Kiowa call themselves Ka'igwu, meaning "Principal People". Ancient names were Kwu-da and Tep-da, relating to the myth pulling or coming out of a hollow log until a pregnant woman got stuck. Later, they called themselves Kom-pa-bianta for "people with large tipi flaps", before they met Southern Plains tribes or before they met white men. Another explanation of their name "Kiowa" originated after their migration through what the Kiowa refer to as "The Mountains of the Kiowa" (Kaui-kope) in the present eastern edge of Glacier National Park, Montana, just south of the border with Canada.

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Doña Ramona, a Seri shaman from Punta Chueca, Sonora, Mexico.

image credit: Tomás Castelazo

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General images

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

Image 1A bison hunt depicted in a painting by George Catlin (1844) (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 2The major indigenous language families of South America, except Quechuan, Aymaran, and Mapuche (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 3A Mapuche man and woman; the Mapuche make up about 85% of Indigenous population that live in Chile. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 4Indigenous peoples textile art in 1995 by Julia Pingushat, including Inuk, Arviat, Nunavut, Canada, wool, and embroidery floss (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 5A qpGraph on the formation of Ancient Paleo-Siberians and Native American populations. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 6The tomato (jitomate, in central Mexico) was later cultivated by the pre-Hispanic civilizations of Mexico. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 7Tunumiit Inuit couple from Kulusuk, Greenland (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 8Maya glyphs in stucco now on display at Museo de sitio in Palenque, Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 9Pre-contact distribution of North American language families (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 10A schematic illustration of maternal (mtDNA) gene-flow in and out of Beringia, from 25,000 years ago to present
Image 11A 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 12Language 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 13Moche portrait vessel from Peru, 100 BCE–500 CE (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 15Proportion of Native Mexicans in each municipalities in 2020. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 16The ancient Mesoamerican engraving of maize now on display at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 17Embera girl in the Darién Province, 2006. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 18Guambía people relaxing in Colombia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 19Principal component analysis showing the Native American cluster in other Eurasian populations. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 20Célia Xakriabá, an Indigenous activist and politician from Brazil (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 21Indigenous Maleku people in Costa Rica (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 22Wayuu women in the Guajira Peninsula, which encompasses parts of Colombia and Venezuela (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 23A Quechua woman and child in the Sacred Valley in Cuzco Region, Peru (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 24Quechua women in festive dress on Taquile Island on Lake Titicaca, west of Peru (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 25An Indigenous woman in traditional dress near Cochabamba, Bolivia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 26Indigenous Pipil women dancing in the traditional Procession of Palms in Panchimalco, El Salvador (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 27A Warao family traveling in their canoe in Venezuela (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 28Indigenous girls in Quiché Department, 1996 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 29A Choctaw artist in present-day Oklahoma (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 30An Indigenous man playing a panpipe, antara, or siku (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 31A 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 32Evo Morales, an Aymara member and former President of Bolivia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 33The Rarámuri marathon in Urique (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 34Proportion of Native Americans in each county in 2020. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 35Pre-contact distribution of native American languages in the Southwest US, Mexico, and Central America (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 36Members of an uncontacted tribe encountered in Acre in Brazil in 2009 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 37A 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 38A Huichol woman from Zacatecas, Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 39Proportion of Native Argentines in each department in 2022. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 40An elderly Maya woman (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 41The West Indies (or Antilles) in relation to the continental Americas (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 42Indigenous populations of the Americas in 2024. (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 44Modern Maya people in Sololá, Guatemala (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 45Areas of Indigenous peoples in the Americas at time of European colonization (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 46A carnival with Tzeltal people in Tenejapa Municipality, Chiapas (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 47A Mapuche man in present-day Chile (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 48Owners of a roadside cafe near Cachi, Salta Province, Argentina (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 49Ceramic portrait of a Maya noblewoman, Jaina Island, Mexico, 600–800 CE (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 50Chimu culture feather pectoral, feathers, reed, copper, silver, hide, cordage, c. 1350–1450 (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 even though the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma only has 519 members, they created the first and only eagle rehabilitation center in Oklahoma?
... that among the Taíno people of the Caribbean, a zemi is a spirit or a sculpture representing the spirit?
... that critically acclaimed Bolivian Aymara painter, Alejandro Mario Yllanes, disappeared from New York after winning, but not claiming, the Guggenheim fellowship in 1946?

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