Indigenous cultures of North America

The indigenous peoples of North America are the tribes and nations whose ancestors were already on the continent when European explorers and colonizers arrived.

The largest group are American Indians who arrived before 10,000 BC, inhabited most of the continent, and include the indigenous of South America and the those of Mesoamerica. In the U.S. they are now usually called Native Americans, in Canada First Nations, and in Mexico indígenas. Groups that arrived later settled in less hospitable northern areas, the Inuit in Alaska, Northern Canada and Greenland, the Yupik in Alaska and the Aleuts in the Aleutian Islands. Further, there are the Métis people of Canada and the northern U.S. who have a distinct culture of their own blending indigenous and European (French and Scottish) elements.

Native Hawaiians are from a quite different culture and history and are not included in this guide. See Hawaii.

Understand
There have been hundreds of indigenous nations and tribes. Many exist today, though often greatly reduced in numbers and territory, while others were wiped out by Europeans (in particular the Spanish, British and French), or the modern states which succeeded them (the U.S., Mexico, Canada, etc.), either from diseases brought from the Old World, by military conquest, genocides, or for other reasons.

Anthropologists who study indigenous cultures tend to group them either according to the similarities of their languages or by their geographic location. Language is useful in determining which groups are related to each other and how they migrated over time. For example, the relationships within the Uto-Aztecan language family suggest that the founders of the Aztec Empire were related to groups from thousands of kilometres to the north in the present-day United States, like the Utes.

Geography is more useful in imagining how people go about their day to day lives: peoples living in a similar climate tend to have similar lifestyles based on harvesting the same natural resources. Here are some main cultural regions, correlated with guides on Wikivoyage:
 * Arctic — the entire Arctic Ocean coast of Canada and Alaska, plus parts of Alaska's Pacific coast and of Greenland.
 * Subarctic — the entire Boreal forest region
 * Northwest Coast — the Pacific coast from the Alaska Panhandle to Northern California
 * Plateau — inland areas in British Columbia and Washington, plus most of Idaho
 * California — part of Baja California (state) and most of the U.S. state of California
 * Great Basin — Nevada, Utah, Southwestern Idaho.
 * Southwestern — In the entire Southwestern United States (Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah) and all the states of northern Mexico.
 * Great Plains — the Canadian Prairies and the entire Great Plains region of the US plus parts of some adjacent states.
 * Northeastern — in Canada, all of the Maritime Provinces plus large parts of Ontario and Quebec. In the US, all of New England and the Mid-Atlantic region
 * Southeastern — Basically synonymous with the Southern United States as used on Wikivoyage plus Florida.
 * Mesoamerican — All of the regions of Mexico (except the far north) and much of Central America
 * Isthmo-Colombian Area — Includes the southern parts of Central America (eastern El Salvador, eastern Honduras, Caribbean Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama) and the northernmost portion of South America (northwest Colombia)
 * Caribbean — on the Caribbean islands

People could and did move across these regional boundaries, often moving seasonally to access different resources at different times of the year, for example people from the Subarctic region spending part of the year on the Great Plains to hunt bison. Also there was extensive trade; the high-grade flint from the Niagara region has been found at pre-Columbian Hopi and Navaho sites in the U.S. Southwest, and obsidian from Yellowstone, Wyoming was traded as far away as the U.S. Gulf Coast a thousand years before Columbus.

The Mesoamericans, Southwestern, Southeastern, and Northeastern cultures were farmers, and these groups had large, complex societies with permanent settlements, specialized artisans and officials, and social hierarchy. The majority of people living in North America at the time of contact lived in these regions.
 * The Mesoamerican civilizations (Mayans, Aztecs, Toltecs, Olmecs, etc.) were the earliest farmers, domesticating the "Three Sisters" of maize (corn), squash, and beans. Mesoamericans also had the most urbanized societies, with a network of villages, towns, and even walled cities featuring large temples and palaces, and were the only ones in the New World to have writing.
 * The Southwestern peoples eventually developed strains of the Three Sisters that could survive their harsh, desert climate and built abode-walled villages, or in Spanish pueblos, and are often known as puebloans.
 * The Southeastern peoples adopted the Three Sisters from the Mesoamericans and built large earth mounds and had a few relatively large towns and cities, as well as many smaller villages.
 * Northeastern cultures lived in small, fenced villages and practised a mixed lifestyle that combined shifting agriculture (the Three Sisters, as well as wild rice), with hunting and gathering.

Most of the rest of the continent was populated by hunter-gatherers. They were dependent on the North American wildlife for survival. They typically lived in portable dwellings (domed wigwams or hogans, conical teepees) so they could follow their principle game animals: bison on the plains, deer and moose in the subarctic, and so on. Their population densities were very low, especially in the Subarctic.

An exception to this were peoples of the North West Coast who despite not practising agriculture were able to live in hard-walled houses in relatively larger population densities due to the abundance of seafood, especially salmon, available in their region. Only two cultures in history have developed elaborate artistic traditions before cities or agriculture; the other were the Ainu of Japan, who also relied heavily on salmon.

The island of Newfoundland is excluded from this list, since its original indigenous population, the Beothuk, are extinct, but are believed to have followed a subarctic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Newfoundland was later re-settled by Mi'kmaq people from Nova Scotia.

Destinations
Natives live all over North America and some native artifacts can be found in many museums all over the continent.

Some indigenous cultures have their own articles here, with their own lists of sites.
 * Maya civilization
 * Navajo Nation

Artifacts have been found at a number of archeological sites, some dating back many thousands of years. The sites themselves are typically closed to visitors when excavations are under way, and visiting them at other times is likely to be a bad idea &mdash; not much to see and digging on your own would be a crime. However, nearby museums are often worth a visit and there may be opportunities for volunteer work on some sites.

Before 3000 BCE
One ancient culture has left artifacts in several countries:

Mexico
There is evidence that the oldest known human settlements in North America are at a site outside Puebla, Mexico. People first developed agriculture and settled near their crops (the Neolithic revolution) sometime after 12,000 BCE. Historians debate who was first; the main candidates are Mexico, Ancient China and the Fertile Crescent. Certainly the new lifestyle was well established in all those places, each with different crops, by 7,000 BCE.

United States of America






Buy


Various native handicrafts are often sold in tourist areas of some cities, for example:
 * Northwest coast Indian art in Vancouver or Seattle
 * Inuit art in Ottawa and Montreal (imported from Nunavut)
 * Southwestern Indian items including fine silver and turquoise work in Santa Fe.

Native handicrafts are also sold on or near reserves; for example, the Navajo Nation has fine weavings and pottery and Pipestone National Monument has pipes and other stone carvings.

Also, some of the museums listed above sell replicas of items in their collections.

Itineraries

 * Lewis and Clark Trail, route of a US government expedition to what is now Oregon, 1804-1806
 * Mohawk Trail, a scenic route in Massachusetts
 * Oregon Trail, a route of widespread settler colonization westward which had a severe impact on native communities on the trail
 * Santa Fe Trail, another major route for settlers
 * Trail of Tears, route of a forced migration of Cherokee and others in which several thousand died

Respect
Due to a long history of discrimination and ill-treatment, and at times even genocides, there still exists a fair bit of mistrust between indigenous people and the white majority in the United States and Canada. While the indigenous people now have equal rights with the white majority on paper, much discrimination continues to exist informally, and indigenous people are still in general economically disadvantaged relative to their white counterparts. The issues are complex and sensitive; visitors should consider avoiding political discussions and, if they do get involved in one, do much more listening than talking.

Avoid saying that Christopher Columbus (or the Vikings) discovered America, as this is highly disrespectful; the ancestors of the indigenous people were here millennia before any European set foot on American soil. Cf. the Native American leader who on meeting the Pope in the Vatican declared this land his, as he was the one to first set foot there.

If you need to refer to race, Native American is now the preferred term for referring to people indigenous to the contiguous United States, though American Indian is usually acceptable too, while First Nations is the preferred term for the non-Inuit indigenous people of Canada. The Inuit of northern Canada do not identify as "First Nations" and consider themselves to be a separate people. Similarly, the indigenous people of Alaska often do not identify as "Native American"; just stick to the term Alaska Native instead.

The term "Red Indian" used to be common for referring to Native Americans, but it is now considered a racist slur and should be avoided. "Indian", used alone, is not nearly as rude but should also be avoided. Similarly, the term "Eskimo" was once commonly used to refer to the indigenous peoples of the Arctic, but it has now almost completely fallen out of use in Canada and Greenland, and is falling out of favour in Alaska as well.