Over thousands of years, as they migrated across the continent, the people who would come to be collectively defined as Native Americans developed a wide range of languages, customs, and civilizations. Historically, most Native American peoples in North America were hunter-gatherers living in socially and culturally complex communities with strongly animistic and shamanistic religious traditions. Starting in the sixteenth century, Native Americans came in contact with newly-arrived European colonialists, resulting in the decimation and mass displacement of many indigenous groups due to unfamiliar diseases and land disputes that often escalated to warfare. Despite the widespread destruction caused by the European encounter, there are over five million indigenous Americans living in the United States today who trace their heritage to a number of different Native American tribes and bands. Many Native Americans are also of mixed ethnicity, with some European or African-American background.
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Native American history
Archeologists believe that sometime around 12,000 B.C.E., humans journeyed across the Bering land bridge, crossing from Asia into Alaska. Early settlers were hunter-gatherers, and are thought to have subsisted primarily through hunting now-extinct land animals, such as mastodon and ancient bison. The geographic and climatic diversity of the land led to the development of many distinct linguistic and cultural groups. The first complex societies to emerge in North America date back to the seventh millennium B.C.E., as reflected in elaborate earthwork mounds probably erected for religious purposes. One such complex, Watson Brake in Louisiana, is older than both the Pyramids in Egypt and Stonehenge in England.
By 1000 B.C.E., Native Americans had settled almost all of the territory between the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, forming continent-wide trade and exchange networks. Over the next two millennia, Native American societies made advanced use of stone and bone tools, leatherworking, textile manufacture, tool production, shelter construction, and crop cultivation, as well as transitioning from spears and atlatls (spear-throwers) for hunting to bows and arrows. Notably, this period saw the widespread introduction of pottery work, and an elaboration of forms, decorations, and manufacturing techniques. At the turn of the second millennium C.E., complex agricultural societies emerged in the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States, particularly along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Cahokia, a large urban center in modern Illinois, is thought to have reached a population of over 20,000 people — making it the most populous city in North America during the pre-Columbian era.
In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed on an island in the Caribbean, ushering in the era of European colonization. Believing at first that he had reached the East Indies, Columbus described the natives he met as “Indians.” Native Americans regarded Europeans as strange, but were delighted with the steel knives, mirrors, copper kettles, and other intriguing novelties they traded for furs and other commodities. Indigenous tribes were accommodating and hospitable: without their aid, the first waves of settlers would not have survived in the new, unfamiliar, and often harsh land. However, as they became increasingly settled, European colonialists set about to expand their settlements at the expense of Native Americans, seeking to seize fertile land and valuable resources.
The European population expanded rapidly, employing technological advantages such as horses and guns. More importantly, Europeans carried diseases to which they themselves were partially immune — such as measles, smallpox, and cholera — which utterly decimated the defenseless indigenous population. Native American tribal nations (which had acquired horses and guns of their own) fiercely resisted colonization, whether by diplomacy or by warfare. During King Phillips’ War (1675–1678), considered by many to be the deadliest war in Colonial American history, brutal raids and acts of retribution took place between natives and colonists in New England. During the American Revolution (1765–1783), most Native Americans who joined the fighting sided with the British, hoping that defeat would stop the colonists from expanding further into Native American land.
During the nineteenth century, as the United States entered a new era as an independent country, many indigenous tribes found themselves in increasingly perilous positions. This era brought with it a particularly tragic chapter in American history, as Native Americans were subjected to forced removals (such as the infamous “Trail of Tears,” in which approximately 60,000 Native Americans were expelled westward from their eastern lands), massacres (such as the 1890 Battle of Wounded Knee, in which over 300 Lakota natives were massacred by a detachment of the U.S. Cavalry troops), and forced cultural assimilation (such as the introduction of Native American boarding schools, in which native children were forced to speak English, attend church, and leave tribal traditions behind). Throughout the century, the U.S. government passed several acts to diminish indigenous autonomy, leading to consolidation of a system in which Native Americans were encouraged, enticed, or forced to relocate to designated tracts of land called “reservations.”
The twentieth century saw a dramatic change in the official stance towards Native Americans. Due in part to the heroic service of many of Native Americans in World War I, the Indian Citizen Act of 1924 offered official citizenship to indigenous tribes. The Indian Relocation Act of 1956 encouraged Native Americans to leave the reservations and integrate into urban life. The 1968 Indian Civil Rights Act and the 1975 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act further encouraged Native Americans’ efforts at self-government and cultural, educational, and administrative self-determination. In 2009, the U.S. government issued a formal apology to “all Native Peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native Peoples by citizens of the United States.” Today, there are more than 570 federally recognized tribes living within the United States. Over 70% of Native Americans live in major cities across the country.
Native American culture
Steeped in tradition and spirituality, Native American culture is as rich as it is diverse. While different native groups and cultures differ significantly in emphasis and detail among, traditional Native American religion is broadly characterized by the belief that spirits are present in all things, both animate and inanimate. Religious practice is based on communication with the spirit world through the medium of a shaman or medicine-man, who also acts as a healer. Practiced by many native societies, the sweat-lodge ceremony, or purification ritual, accompanies important events such as the rite of passage ceremony, marriage, or healing. Another significant religious institution among indigenous Americans is the Native American Church, a syncretistic church incorporating elements of native spiritual practice with symbolic elements from Christianity.
Across the Great Plains, nomadic tribes historically resided in teepees, a cone-shaped dwelling built from a number of poles tied together at the top and wrapped with a large buffalo-hide covering. In the northeast, settled communities built longhouses: large, elongated permanent houses built from wood and bark. In the southwest, Native Americans resided in pueblos, permanent shelters constructed of bricks made from adobe clay, often built inside caves or on the sides of large cliffs. Totem poles, the famous monumental carvings made from large trees by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest, symbolized and commemorated tribal ancestors, legends, clan lineages, or notable events. The ceremonial pipe, often erroneously called “peace pipes” by Europeans, were employed in numerous Native American cultures to offer prayers in a religious ceremony, to make a ceremonial commitment, or to seal a covenant or treaty.
The legacy of Native American cultures continues to reverberate across the continent, with many place names originating in various Native American languages. For example, the name Manhattan derives from a Munsee Lenape-language term meaning “place where we gather the (wood to make) bows,” while the name Chicago derives from an Algonquian word meaning “place of the wild onion.” The game of lacrosse — the oldest sport in North America — originates in a tribal game played by eastern Woodlands indigenous peoples. Beyond North America, New World crops introduced to Europeans by Native Americans, such as potatoes, tomatoes, and corn, are now staples of kitchens all over the world.
Native American languages
While most Native Americans today speak English, dozens of Native American languages are still in use. Some of the most common Native American languages (excluding Eskimo-Aleut languages) include Dakota (over 18,000 speakers), Apache (over 14,000 speakers), and Cherokee (over 12,000 speakers). The most prevalent Native American language spoken today is Navajo, an Athabaskan language of the Na-Dené family, with 178,000 speakers concentrated primarily in the states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Navajo speakers make up more than 50% of all Native American language speakers in the United States.
Explore more about ethnicity estimates
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- What Is My Ethnicity? How MyHeritage Estimates Ethnicities at MyHeritage Knowledge Base
- Where's My Ethnicity?!: Why An Ethnicity Might Not Show Up In Your DNA (and How To Find Evidence Of It Anyway) at MyHeritage Knowledge Base