Portal:Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The Indigenous peoples of the Americas Portal

Current distribution of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas (not including mixed people like mestizos, métis, zambos and pardos)

The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples.

Many Indigenous peoples of the Americas were traditionally hunter-gatherers and many, especially in the Amazon basin, still are, but many groups practiced aquaculture and agriculture. While some societies depended heavily on agriculture, others practiced a mix of farming, hunting, and gathering. In some regions, the Indigenous peoples created monumental architecture, large-scale organized cities, city-states, chiefdoms, states, kingdoms, republics, confederacies, and empires. Some had varying degrees of knowledge of engineering, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, writing, physics, medicine, planting and irrigation, geology, mining, metallurgy, sculpture, and gold smithing. (Full article...)

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Ohlone people, also known as the Costanoan, are a Native American people of the central and northern California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the area along the coast from San Francisco Bay through Monterey Bay to the lower Salinas Valley. At that time they spoke a variety of languages, the Ohlone languages, belonging to the Costanoan sub-family of the Utian language family, which itself belongs to the proposed Penutian language phylum. The term "Ohlone" has been used in place of "Costanoan" since the 1970s by some descendant groups and by most ethnographers, historians, and writers of popular literature. In pre-colonial times, the Ohlone lived in more than 50 distinct landholding groups, and did not view themselves as a distinct group. They lived by hunting, fishing, and gathering, in the typical ethnographic California pattern. The members of these various bands interacted freely with one another as they built friendships and marriages, traded tools and other necessities, and partook in cultural practices. The Ohlone people practiced the Kuksu religion. Before the Spanish came, the northern California region was one of the most densely populated regions north of Mexico. However in the years 1769 to 1833, the Spanish missions in California had a devastating effect on Ohlone culture. The Ohlone population declined steeply during this period.

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Indigenous woman, Chocó Department, Colombia

image credit: Monster4711

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

Image 1Schematic illustration of maternal (mtDNA) gene-flow in and out of Beringia, from 25,000 years ago to present
Image 2Choctaw artist from Oklahoma (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 3Wayúu artisan women, in the Colombian-Venezuelan Guajira. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 4The Kogi, descendants of the Tairona, are a culturally-intact, largely pre-Columbian society. The Tairona were one of the few indigenous American civilizations that were not fully conquered. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 5Current distribution of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas (not including mixed people like mestizos, métis, zambos and pardos) (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 6Owners of a roadside cafe near Cachi, Argentina (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 7Mayan women in Antigua Guatemala (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 8A Navajo man on horseback in Monument Valley, Arizona (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 9Tunumiit Inuit couple from Kulusuk, Greenland (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 10Maya glyphs in stucco at the Museo de sitio in Palenque, Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 11Chimu culture feather pectoral, feathers, reed, copper, silver, hide, cordage, ca. 1350–1450 CE (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 12Bill Reid's sculpture The Raven and the First Men (collection of the Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver). The Raven represents the Trickster figure common to many mythologies. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 13Indigenous man of Terena tribe from Brazil (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 14Ancient mesoamerican engraving of maize, National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 15Main indigenous language families of South America and Panama (except Quechua, Aymaran, and Mapuche). (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 16Maya women from Guatemala (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 17Quechua woman and child in the Sacred Valley, Cuzco Region, Peru (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 18A Mayan woman (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 19A Warao family from Venezuela traveling in their canoe (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 20Guambía people relaxing in Colombia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 21Cultural areas of North America at time of European contact (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 22Some Inuit on a traditional qamutiik (dog sled) in Cape Dorset, Nunavut, Canada (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 23Wixarika (Huichol) woman from Zacatecas (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 24Evo Morales (Aymara), President of Bolivia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 25A bison hunt depicted by George Catlin (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 26Textile art by Julia Pingushat (Inuk, Arviat, Nunavut, Canada), wool, embroidery floss, 1995 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 27Diné boy, in the desert of Monument Valley, AZ, United States of America. The Three Sisters buttes are visible in the background. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 28Drawing accompanying text in Book XII of the 16th-century Florentine Codex (compiled 1540–1585), showing Nahuas of conquest-era central Mexico suffering from smallpox (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 29Indigenous man playing a panpipe, antara or siku (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 30Quechua women in festive dress, on the island of Taquile (Lake Titicaca). (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 31Tenejapa Carnival with Tzeltal people, Chiapas (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 32Language 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 33"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 34Indigenous Salvadoran Pipil women dancing in the traditional Procession of Palms, Panchimalco in El Salvador (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 35Mapuche man and woman. The Mapuche make up about 85% of Indigenous population that live in Chile. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 36Rarámuri marathon in Urique. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 37Indigenous woman in traditional dress, near Cochabamba, Bolivia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 38Indigenous people at a Brazilian farm plantation in Minas Gerais ca. 1824 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 39Shaman of the Cofán people from the Ecuadorian Amazon Ecuador Amazonian forest (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)

Selected biography

"Sacagawea" (1910), North Dakota State Capitol, Leonard Crunelle, sculptor.

Sacagawea (/ˌsækədʒəˈwiːə/ see below; c. 1788 – December 20, 1812; see here for other theories about her death), also Sakakawea or Sacajawea, was a Lemhi Shoshone woman, who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition, acting as an interpreter and guide, in their exploration of the Western United States. She traveled thousands of miles from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean between 1804 and 1806.

She has become an important part of the Lewis and Clark legend in the American public imagination. The National American Woman Suffrage Association of the early twentieth century adopted her as a symbol of women's worth and independence, erecting several statues and plaques in her memory, and doing much to spread the story of her accomplishments.

In 2000, the United States Mint issued the Sacagawea dollar coin in her honor, depicting Sacagawea and her son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. The face on the coin was modeled on a modern Shoshone-Bannock woman named Randy'L He-dow Teton. No contemporary image of Sacagawea exists.

In 2001, she was given the title of Honorary Sergeant, Regular Army, by then-president Bill Clinton.

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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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Indigenous peoples of the Americas

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Sacsayhuamán Inca site, Cusco, Peru.

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