Native Americans
"American Indian" redirects here. For other indigenous peoples, see
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
and
other geographic regions
. For
Americans from South Asia, see
Indian American
. Native Americans within
the boundaries of the present-day
United States
(including
indigenous
peoples
of
Alaska
and
Hawaii
) are composed of numerous, distinct
tribes
and
ethnic groups
, many of which survive as intact political communities.
The terms used to refer to Native Americans have been
controversial
.
According to a 1995
U.S.
Census Bureau
set of home interviews, most of the
respondents with an expressed preference refer to themselves as "American
Indians" or simply "Indians"; this term has been adopted by major
newspapers and some academic groups, but does not traditionally include
Native Hawaiians
or certain
Alaskan Natives
, such as
Aleut
,
Yup'ik
, or
Inuit
peoples.
Since the end of the 15th century, the
migration of Europeans to the
Americas
has led to centuries of conflict and adjustment between
Old
and
New World
societies. Many Native Americans lived as
hunter-gatherer
societies and told their histories by
oral traditions
; Europeans therefore
created almost all of the surviving historical record concerning the conflict.
[2]
The indigenous cultures were quite different from those of the proto-
industrial and mostly
Christian
immigrants. Many
[
citation needed
]
native
cultures were
matrilineal
and occupied hunting grounds and agricultural
lands for use of the entire community. Europeans at that time had
patriarchal
cultures and had developed concepts of individual
property rights
with
respect to land that were extremely different. The differences in cultures
between the established Native Americans and immigrant Europeans, as well
as shifting alliances among different nations of each culture through the
centuries, caused extensive political tension, ethnic violence, and social
disruption. Native Americans suffered high fatalities from
contact with
Eurasian diseases
to which they had not acquired
immunity
.
Smallpox
epidemics
are thought to have caused the greatest loss of life for indigenous
populations, although estimates of the pre-Columbian population of what
today constitutes the U.S. vary significantly, from 1 million to 18 million.[3]
[4]
After the
colonies
revolted against
Great Britain
and established the United
States of America,
President
George Washington
and
Henry Knox
conceived
of the idea of "civilizing" Native Americans in preparation for assimilation
as U.S. citizens.[5][6][7][8][9] Assimilation (whether voluntary, as with the
Choctaw
,[10][11] or
forced
) became a consistent policy through American
administrations. During the 19th century, the ideology of
manifest destiny
became integral to the American nationalist movement. Expansion of
European-American populations to the west after the American Revolution
resulted in increasing pressure on Native American lands, warfare between
the groups, and rising tensions. In 1830, the U.S. Congress passed the
Indian
Removal Act
