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.

Although some Indigenous peoples of the Americas were traditionally hunter-gatherers—and many, especially in the Amazon basin, still are—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, 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 goldsmithing. (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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Miniconjou Lakota Sioux Chief Spotted Elk lies dead in the snow, victim of the Wounded Knee massacre

image credit: National Archives and Records Administration

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General images

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

Image 1Indigenous man playing a panpipe, antara or siku (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 2Eight Crow Nation prisoners under guard at Crow agency, Montana, 1887 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 3Dineh 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 4Drawing 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 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 6The Kogi, descendants of the Tairona, are a culturally-intact, largely pre-Columbian society. The Tairona were the only Indigenous Andean civilization that was not fully conquered. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 7Chimu culture feather pectoral, feathers, reed, copper, silver, hide, cordage, ca. 1350–1450 CE (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 8A bison hunt depicted by George Catlin (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 9Illustration of Paleo-Indians hunting a glyptodon (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 10Indigenous people at a Brazilian farm plantation in Minas Gerais ca. 1824 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 11Tenejapa Carnival with Tzeltal people, Chiapas (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 12Ancient mesoamerican engraving of maize, National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 13Guambía people relaxing in Colombia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 14Choctaw artist from Oklahoma (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 15Quechua woman and child in the Sacred Valley, Cuzco Region, Peru (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 16This map shows the percentage of Indigenous population in different countries of the Americas. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 17Indigenous woman in traditional dress, near Cochabamba, Bolivia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 18Rarámuri marathon in Urique. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 19Language 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 20Textile art by Julia Pingushat (Inuk, Arviat, Nunavut, Canada), wool, embroidery floss, 1995 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 21Schematic illustration of maternal (mtDNA) gene-flow in and out of Beringia, from 25,000 years ago to present
Image 22Tunumiit Inuit couple from Kulusuk, Greenland (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 23Wixarika (Huichol) woman from Zacatecas (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 24A Navajo man on horseback in Monument Valley, Arizona (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 25Indigenous Salvadoran Pipil women dancing in the traditional Procession of Palms, Panchimalco in El Salvador (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 26Indigenous man of Terena tribe from Brazil (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 27Cultural areas of North America at time of European contact (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 28Evo Morales (Aymara), former President of Bolivia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 29A Mayan woman. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 30Shaman of the Cofán people from the Ecuadorian Amazon Ecuador Amazonian forest (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 31Mapuche man and woman. The Mapuche make up about 85% of Indigenous population that live in Chile. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 32Maya women from Guatemala (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 33Bill 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 34"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 35Owners of a roadside cafe near Cachi, Argentina (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 36A Warao family from Venezuela traveling in their canoe (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 37Some Inuit people on a traditional qamutiik (dog sled) in Cape Dorset, Nunavut, Canada (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 38Maya glyphs in stucco at the Museo de sitio in Palenque, Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)

Selected biography

Sequoyah (ᏍᏏᏉᏯ Ssiquoya, as he signed his name, or ᏎᏉᏯ Se-quo-ya, as his name is often spelled today in Cherokee) (c. 1770–1840), named in English George Gist or George Guess, was a Cherokee silversmith. In 1821 he completed his independent creation of a Cherokee syllabary, making reading and writing in Cherokee possible. This was the only time in recorded history that a member of a pre-literate people independently created an effective writing system. After seeing its worth, the people of the Cherokee Nation rapidly began to use his syllabary and officially adopted it in 1825. Their literacy rate quickly surpassed that of surrounding European-American settlers.

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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

Indigenous people of the Americas

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Anti-indigenous racism in the Americas

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Indigenous peoples of Central America

Indigenous culture of the Americas

History of indigenous peoples of the Americas

Indigenous rights organizations in the Americas

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Indigenous peoples of North America

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Ball court, Chichen Itza, Mexico

image credit: Martinelli95

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