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 the peoples that inhabited the Americas before the arrival of European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now 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 gold smithing. (Full article...)

Selected article

Chaco Culture National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park hosting the densest and most exceptional concentration of pueblos in the American Southwest. The park is located in northwestern New Mexico, between Albuquerque and Farmington, in a remote canyon cut by the Chaco Wash. Containing the most sweeping collection of ancient ruins north of Mexico, the park preserves one of the United States' most important pre-Columbian cultural and historical areas.

Between AD 900 and 1150, Chaco Canyon was a major center of culture for the Ancient Pueblo Peoples. Chacoans quarried sandstone blocks and hauled timber from great distances, assembling fifteen major complexes that remained the largest buildings in North America until the 19th century. Evidence of archaeoastronomy at Chaco has been proposed, with the "Sun Dagger" petroglyph at Fajada Butte a popular example. Many Chacoan buildings may have been aligned to capture the solar and lunar cycles, requiring generations of astronomical observations and centuries of skillfully coordinated construction. Climate change is thought to have led to the emigration of Chacoans and the eventual abandonment of the canyon, beginning with a fifty-year drought commencing in 1130.

Composing a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in the arid and sparsely populated Four Corners region, the Chacoan cultural sites are fragile; fears of erosion caused by tourists have led to the closure of Fajada Butte to the public. The sites are considered sacred ancestral homelands by the Hopi and Pueblo people, who maintain oral accounts of their historical migration from Chaco and their spiritual relationship to the land. Though park preservation efforts can conflict with native religious beliefs, tribal representatives work closely with the National Park Service to share their knowledge and respect the heritage of the Chacoan culture.

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Selected image

Huichol yarn painting

image credit: Jebulon

General images

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

Image 1Indigenous people at a farm plantation in Minas Gerais in present-day Brazil, c. 1824 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 2Chimu culture feather pectoral, feathers, reed, copper, silver, hide, cordage, c. 1350–1450 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 3A schematic illustration of maternal (mtDNA) gene-flow in and out of Beringia, from 25,000 years ago to present
Image 4A carnival with Tzeltal people in Tenejapa Municipality, Chiapas (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 5Language 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 6A Navajo boy in the desert in present-day Monument Valley in Arizona with the Three Sisters in the background in 2007 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 7The major indigenous language families of much of present-day South America and Panama (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 8Members of an uncontacted tribe encountered in Acre in present-day Brazil in 2009 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 9"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 10A Mayan woman (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 11Owners of a roadside cafe near Cachi, Salta Province, Argentina (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 12Guambía people relaxing in Colombia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 13A Mapuche man and woman; the Mapuche make up about 85% of Indigenous population that live in Chile. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 14Principal component analysis showing the Native American cluster in other Eurasian populations. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 15An Indigenous woman in traditional dress near Cochabamba, Bolivia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 16A Mapuche man in present-day Chile (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 17Some Inuit on a traditional qamutiik dog sled in Kinngait, Nunavut, Canada (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 18Indigenous Pipil women dancing in the traditional Procession of Palms in Panchimalco, El Salvador (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 19Areas of Indigenous peoples in North America at time of European colonization (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 21Maya women from present-day Guatemala (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 22An Indigenous man playing a panpipe, antara, or siku (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 23A Huichol woman from Zacatecas, Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 24A Quechua woman and child in the Sacred Valley in Cuzco Region, Peru (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 25A bison hunt depicted by George Catlin (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 26Wayuu women in the Guajira Peninsula, which comprises parts of Colombia and Venezuela (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 27The Rarámuri marathon in Urique (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 28Bill Reid's sculpture The Raven and the First Men now on display at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver; the Raven represents the Trickster figure common to many mythologies. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 29The West Indies in relation to the continental Americas (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 30The tomato (jitomate, in central Mexico) was later cultivated by the pre-Hispanic civilizations of Mexico. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 31Maya glyphs in stucco now on display at Museo de sitio in Palenque, Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 32Tunumiit Inuit couple from Kulusuk, Greenland (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 33The ancient mesoamerican engraving of maize now on display at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 34Evo Morales, an Aymara member and former President of Bolivia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 35A Navajo man on horseback in present-day Monument Valley in Arizona (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 36The bean is native to Mexico and Central America and later began to be cultivated in South America. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 37Shaman of the Cofán people from the Amazonian forest in present-day Ecuador (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 38A Warao family traveling in their canoe in Venezuela (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 39The Kogi, descendants of the Tairona, are a culturally intact, largely pre-Columbian era society. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 40Indigenous peoples textile art in 1995 by Julia Pingushat, including Inuk, Arviat, Nunavut, Canada, wool, and embroidery floss (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 41A Choctaw artist in present-day Oklahoma (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 42Quechua women in festive dress on Taquile Island on Lake Titicaca, west of Peru (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 43A 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 44An Indigenous Terena man from present-day Brazil (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 45An 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)

Selected biography

Jim Thorpe

Jacobus Franciscus "Jim" Thorpe (Sac and Fox (Sauk): Wa-Tho-Huk, translated to Bright Path) (May 28, 1888 – March 28, 1953) was an American athlete of mixed ancestry (mixed Caucasian and American Indian). Considered one of the most versatile athletes of modern sports, he won Olympic gold medals for the 1912 pentathlon and decathlon, played American football (collegiate and professional), and also played professional baseball and basketball. He lost his Olympic titles after it was found he was paid for playing two seasons of semi-professional baseball before competing in the Olympics, thus violating the amateurism rules. In 1983, 30 years after his death, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) restored his Olympic medals.

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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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Sacsayhuamán ruins in Cusco

image credit: Martin St-Amant

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Avañe'ẽ (Warani) · Aymar aru (Aymara) · ᏣᎳᎩ (Cherokee) · Chahta (Choctaw) · ᐃᔨᔫ (Cree) · ᐃᓄᒃ (Inuktitut) · Iñupiak · Kalaallisut (Greenlandic Inuit) · Mvskoke (Muscogee) · Nahuatlahtolli · Diné bizaad (Navajo) · Qhichwa Simi · Tsêhesenêstsestôtse (Cheyenne)

Indigenous languages in Wikimedia Incubators: Alabama · Blackfoot · Chinook Jargon · Choctaw · Creek · Lakota · Micmac · Mohawk · Nheengatu · Northwestern Ojibwa · O'odham · Shoshoni · Unami-Lenape · Wüne pakina (Mapudungun) · Yucatec Maya · Central Alaskan Yup'ik · Zuni

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