American Indian and Alaska Native One race: 2.5 million
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples from the regions of North America now encompassed by the continental United States, including parts of Alaska. They comprise a large number of distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which are still enduring as political communities. There is a wide range of terms used, and some controversy surrounding their use: they are variously known as American Indians, Indians, Amerindians, Amerinds, or Indigenous, Aboriginal or Original Americans.
Not all Native Americans come from the contiguous U.S. Some come from Alaska, Hawaii and other insular regions. These other indigenous peoples, including Alaskan Native groups such as the Inupiaq, Yupik Eskimos, and Aleuts, are not always counted as Native Americans, although Census 2000 demographics listed "American Indian and Alaskan Native" collectively. Native Hawaiians (also known as Kanaka Māoli and Kanaka ʻOiwi) and various other Pacific Islander American peoples, such as the Chamorros (Chamoru), can also be considered Native American, but it is not common to use such a designation.

European colonization
The European colonization of the Americas nearly obliterated the populations and cultures of the Native Americans. During the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries, their populations were ravaged by conflicts with European explorers and colonists, disease, displacement, enslavement as well as internal warfare. Scholars now believe that, among the various contributing factors, epidemic disease was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the American natives.

Initial impacts
Spanish explorers of the early 16th century were probably the first Europeans to interact with the native population of Florida.

Early relations
During the American Revolutionary War, the newly proclaimed United States competed with the British for the allegiance of Native American nations east of the Mississippi River. Most Native Americans who joined the struggle sided with the British, hoping to use the war to halt further colonial expansion onto Native American land. Many native communities were divided over which side to support in the war. For the Iroquois Confederacy, the American Revolution resulted in civil war. Cherokees split into a neutral (or pro-American) faction and the anti-American Chickamaugas, led by Dragging Canoe.
Frontier warfare during the American Revolution was particularly brutal, and numerous atrocities were committed by settlers and native tribes. Noncombatants suffered greatly during the war, and villages and food supplies were frequently destroyed during military expeditions. The largest of these expeditions was the Sullivan Expedition of 1779, which destroyed more than 40 Iroquois villages in order to neutralize Iroquois raids in upstate New York. The expedition failed to have the desired effect: Native American activity became even more determined.

Relations during and after the American Revolutionary War
See also: List of Indian reservations in the United States
In the nineteenth century, the incessant Westward expansion of the United States incrementally compelled large numbers of Native Americans to resettle further west, often by force, almost always reluctantly. Under President Andrew Jackson, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which authorized the President to conduct treaties to exchange Native American land east of the Mississippi River for lands west of the river. As many as 100,000 Native Americans eventually relocated in the West as a result of this Indian Removal policy. In theory, relocation was supposed to be voluntary (and many Native Americans did remain in the East), but in practice great pressure was put on Native American leaders to sign removal treaties. Arguably the most egregious violation of the stated intention of the removal policy was the Treaty of New Echota, which was signed by a dissident faction of Cherokees, but not the elected leadership. The treaty was brutally enforced by President Andrew Jackson, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated four thousand Cherokees on the Trail of Tears.
The explicit policy of Indian Removal forced or coerced the relocation of major Native American groups in both the Southeast and the Northeast United States, resulting directly and indirectly in the deaths of tens of thousands. The subsequent process of assimilations was no less devastating to Native American peoples. Tribes were generally located to reservations on which they could more easily be separated from traditional life and pushed into European-American society. Some Southern states additionally enacted laws in the 19th century forbidding non-Indian settlement on Indian lands, intending to prevent sympathetic white missionaries from aiding the scattered Indian resistance.
The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 gave United States citizenship to Native Americans, in part because of an interest by many to see them merged with the American mainstream, and also because of the heroic service of many Native American veterans in World War I.

Removal and reservations
There are 561 federally recognized tribal governments in the United States. These tribes possess the right to form their own government, to enforce laws (both civil and criminal), to tax, to establish membership, to license and regulate activities, to zone and to exclude persons from tribal territories. Limitations on tribal powers of self-government include the same limitations applicable to states; for example, neither tribes nor states have the power to make war, engage in foreign relations, or coin money (this includes paper currency).

Current status
See also: Blood quantum laws
Intertribal and interracial mixing was common among Native American tribes making it difficult to clearly identify which tribe an individual belonged to. Bands or entire tribes occasionally split or merged to form more viable groups in reaction to the pressures of climate, disease and warfare. A number of tribes practiced the adoption of captives into their group to replace their members who had been captured or killed in battle. These captives came from rival tribes and later from European settlers. Some tribes also sheltered or adopted white traders and runaway slaves and Native American-owned slaves. So a number of paths to genetic mixing existed.
In later years, such mixing, however, proved an obstacle to qualifying for recognition and assistance from the U.S. federal government or for tribal money and services. To receive such support, Native Americans must belong to and be certified by a recognized tribal entity. This has taken a number of different forms as each tribal government makes its own rules while the federal government has its own set of standards. In many cases, qualification is based upon the percentage of Native American blood, or the "blood quanta" identified in an individual seeking recognition. To attain such certainty, some tribes have begun requiring genetic genealogy (DNA testing). Those passing as white might use the slightly more acceptable Native American ancestry to explain inconvenient details of their heritage.

Blood Quanta
Though cultural features, language, clothing, and customs vary enormously from one tribe to another, there are certain elements which are encountered frequently and shared by many tribes.
Early hunter-gatherer tribes made stone weapons from around 10,000 years ago; as the age of metallurgy dawned, newer technologies were used and more efficient weapons produced. Prior to contact with Europeans, most tribes used similar weaponry. The most common implement were the bow and arrow, the war club, and the spear. Quality, material, and design varied widely.
Large mammals like mammoths and mastodons were largely extinct by around 8,000 B.C., and the Native Americans switched to hunting other large game, such as bison. The Great Plains tribes were still hunting the bison when they first encountered the Europeans. The acquisition of the horse and horsemanship from the Spanish in the 17th century greatly altered the natives' culture, changing the way in which these large creatures were hunted and making them a central feature of their lives.

Cultural aspects

Gens structure
Subdivision and differentiation took place between various groups. Upwards of forty stock languages developed in North America, with each independent tribe speaking a dialect of one of those languages. Some functions and attributes of tribes are:

The possession of a territory and a name.
The exclusive possession of a dialect.
The right to invest sachems and chiefs elected by the gentes.
The right to depose these sachems and chiefs.
The possession of a religious faith and worship.
A supreme government consisting of a council of chiefs.
A head-chief of the tribe in some instances. Tribal structure
See also: petroglyph, pictogram, and petroform
The Iroquois, living around the Great Lakes and extending east and north, used strings or belts called wampum that served a dual function: the knots and beaded designs mnemonically chronicled tribal stories and legends, and further served as a medium of exchange and a unit of measure. The keepers of the articles were seen as tribal dignitaries.
Pueblo peoples crafted impressive items associated with their religious ceremonies. Kachina dancers wore elaborately painted and decorated masks as they ritually impersonated various ancestral spirits. Sculpture was not highly developed, but carved stone and wood fetishes were made for religious use. Superior weaving, embroidered decorations, and rich dyes characterized the textile arts. Both turquoise and shell jewelry were created, as were high-quality pottery and formalized pictorial arts.
Navajo spirituality focused on the maintenance of a harmonious relationship with the spirit world, often achieved by ceremonial acts, usually incorporating sandpainting. The colors—made from sand, charcoal, cornmeal, and pollen—depicted specific spirits. These vivid, intricate, and colorful sand creations were erased at the end of the ceremony.

Society and art
The most widespread religion at the present time is known as the Native American Church. It is a syncretistic church incorporating elements of native spiritual practice from a number of different tribes as well as symbolic elements from Christianity. Its main rite is the peyote ceremony. Prior to 1890, traditional religious beliefs included Wakan Tanka. In the American Southwest, especially New Mexico, a syncretism between the Catholicism brought by Spanish missionaries and the native religion is common; the religious drums, chants, and dances of the Pueblo people are regularly part of Masses at Santa Fe's Saint Francis Cathedral. Native American-Catholic syncretism is also found elsewhere in the United States. (e.g., the National Kateri Tekakwitha Shrine in Fonda, New York and the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, New York).
Native Americans are the only known ethnic group in the United States requiring a federal permit to practice their religion. The eagle feather law, (Title 50 Part 22 of the Code of Federal Regulations), stipulates that only individuals of certifiable Native American ancestry enrolled in a federally recognized tribe are legally authorized to obtain eagle feathers for religious or spiritual use. Native Americans and non-Native Americans frequently contest the value and validity of the eagle feather law, charging that the law is laden with discriminatory racial preferences and infringes on tribal sovereignty. The law does not allow Native Americans to give eagle feathers to non-Native Americans, a common modern and traditional practice. Many non-Native Americans have been adopted into Native American families, made tribal members and given eagle feathers.
Many Native Americans would describe their religious practices as a form of spirituality, rather than religion, although in practice the terms may sometimes be used interchangeably.

Religion
There were historical treaties between the European Colonists and the Native American tribes requesting the return of any runaway slaves. For example, in 1726, the British Governor of New York exacted a promise from the Iroquois to return all runaway slaves who had joined up with them. This same promise was extracted from the Huron Natives in 1764 and from the Delaware Natives in 1765.

Native Americans and African American slaves
Most Native American tribes had traditional gender roles. In some tribes, such as the Iroquois nation, social and clan relationships were matrilinear and/or matriarchal, although several different systems were in use. One example is the Cherokee custom of wives owning the family property. Men hunted, traded and made war, while women cared for the young and the elderly, fashioned clothing and instruments and cured meat. The cradle board was used by mothers to carry their baby while working or traveling.

Gender roles

Main article: Native American music Music and art
The Inuit, or Eskimo, prepared and buried large amounts of dried meat and fish. Pacific Northwest tribes crafted seafaring dugouts 40–50 feet long for fishing. Farmers in the Eastern Woodlands tended fields of maize with hoes and digging sticks, while their neighbors in the Southeast grew tobacco as well as food crops. On the Plains, some tribes engaged in agriculture but also planned buffalo hunts in which herds were efficiently driven over bluffs. Dwellers of the Southwest deserts hunted small animals and gathered acorns to grind into flour with which they baked wafer-thin bread on top of heated stones. Some groups on the region's mesas developed irrigation techniques, and filled storehouses with grain as protection against the area's frequent droughts.
As these native peoples encountered European explorers and settlers and engaged in trade, they exchanged food, crafts, and furs for trinkets, blankets, iron, and steel implements, horses, firearms, and alcoholic beverages.

Traditional economy
Native Americans have been depicted by American artists in various ways at different historical periods. During the period when America was first being colonized, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the artist John White made watercolors and engravings of the people native to the southeastern states. John White's images were, for the most part, faithful likenesses of the people he observed. Later the artist Theodore de Bry used White's original watercolors to make a book of engravings entitled, A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia. In his book, de Bry often altered the poses and features of White's figures to make them appear more European, probably in order to make his book more marketable to a European audience. During the period that White and de Bry were working, when Europeans were first coming into contact with native Americans, there was a large interest and curiosity in native American cultures by Europeans, which would have created the demand for a book like de Bry's.
Several centuries later, during the reconstruction of the Capitol building in the early nineteenth century, the U.S. government commissioned a series of four relief panels to crown the doorway of the Rotunda. The reliefs encapsulate a vision of European--Native American relations that had assumed mythicohistorical proportions by the nineteenth century. The four panels depict: The Preservation of Captain Smith by Pocahontas (1825) by Antonio Capellano, The Landing of the Pilgrims (1825) and The Conflict of Daniel Boone and the Indians (1826-27) by Enrico Causici, and William Penn's Treaty with the Indians (1827) by Nicholas Gevelot. The reliefs present idealized versions of the Europeans and the native Americans, in which the Europeans appear refined and gentile, and the natives appear ferocious and savage. The Whig representative of Virginia, Henry A. Wise, voiced a particularly astute summary of how Native Americans would read the messages contained in all four reliefs: "We give you corn, you cheat us of our lands: we save your life, you take ours."
While many nineteenth century images of native Americans conveyed similarly negative messages, there were artists, such as Charles Bird King, who sought to express a more positive image of the native Americans as noble savages.

Depictions by Europeans and Americans
Further information: Native American name controversy
When Christopher Columbus arrived in the "New World", he described the people he encountered as Indians because he mistakenly believed that he had reached the Indies, the original destination of his voyage. Despite Columbus's mistake, the name Indian (or American Indian) stuck, and for centuries the people who first came to the Americas were collectively called Indians in America, and similar terms in Europe. The problem with this traditional term is that the peoples of India are, of course, also known as Indians. The term Red Man was common among the early settlers of New England because the northeastern tribes colored their bodies with red pigments, but later this term became a pejorative and insulting epithet during the western push into America, with the corruption redskin becoming its most virulent form. A usage in British English was to refer to natives of North America as 'Red Indians', though now old fashioned, it is still widely used.

Terminology differences
The term Native American was originally introduced in the United States by anthropologists as a more accurate term for the indigenous people of the Americas, as distinguished from the people of India. Because of the widespread acceptance of this newer term in and outside of academic circles, some people believe that Indians is outdated or offensive. People from India (and their descendants) who are citizens of the United States are known as Indian Americans.
Criticism of the neologism Native American, however, comes from diverse sources. Some American Indians have misgivings about the term Native American. Russell Means, a famous American Indian activist, opposes the term Native American because he believes it was imposed by the government without the consent of American Indians. The continued usage of the traditional term is reflected in the name chosen for the National Museum of the American Indian, which opened in 2004 in Washington, D.C..
Recently, the U.S. Census introduced the "Asian Indian" category to more accurately sample the Indian American population.

Common usage in the United States
As of 2005 Census estimates, 1.0 percent of the US population is of American Indian and Alaska Native descent. This population is unevenly distributed across the country, with Alaska and New Mexico boasting double digit native populations while in five states they constitute only 0.2% of the population.
Alaska 16%
New Mexico 10.2%
South Dakota 8.8%
Oklahoma 8.1%
Montana 6.5%
North Dakota 5.3%
Arizona 5.1%
Wyoming 2.7%
Washington 1.7%
Idaho 1.4%
Nevada 1.4%
Oregon 1.4%
Utah 1.3%
North Carolina 1.3%
Minnesota 1.2%
California 1.2%
Colorado 1.1%
Wisconsin 0.9%
Kansas 0.9%
Nebraska 0.9%
Texas 0.7%
Arkansas 0.7%
Maine 0.6%
Rhode Island 0.6%
Michigan 0.6%
Louisiana 0.6%
New York 0.5%
Alabama 0.5%
Vermont 0.4%
South Carolina 0.4%
Missouri 0.4%
Mississippi 0.4%
Delaware 0.4%
Florida 0.4%
Virginia 0.3%
District of Columbia 0.3%
Connecticut 0.3%
New Jersey 0.3%
Maryland 0.3%
Iowa 0.3%
Massachusetts 0.3%
Indiana 0.3%
Tennessee 0.3%
Illinois 0.3%
Hawaii 0.3% Native Hawaiian 9%
Georgia 0.3%
Kentucky 0.2%
New Hampshire 0.2%
Ohio 0.2%
Pennsylvania 0.2%
West Virginia 0.2%

State percentages

African and Native American interaction
Alaska Natives
American Indian College Fund
American Indians in Children's Literature
Classification of Native Americans (list of tribes by cultural area)
Company/product names derived from Indigenous peoples
Eagle feather law
European Contact
First Nations
Fur trade (historical treatment)
Genocide reference by L. Frank Baum
Indian Campaign Medal
Indian Massacres
Indian old field
Indian Removal
Indian Reorganization Act
Indian Territory
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
List of English words from indigenous languages of the Americas
List of Indian reservations in the United States
Lists of Native Americans
List of pre-Columbian civilizations
List of writers from peoples indigenous to the Americas
Medicine man
Medicine wheel
NAFPS
National Museum of the American Indian
Native American Church
Native American gambling enterprises
Native American languages
Native American mascot controversy
Native American mythology
Native American name controversy
Native American pottery
Native Americans and World War II
Petrosomatoglyph
Population history of American indigenous peoples
Pre-Columbian Africa-Americas contact theories
Residential school
Sports team names/mascots derived from Indigenous peoples
Trail of Tears
Treaties of the United States (includes Native American treaties)
Two-Spirit Bibliography