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 who are native to the Americas or the Western Hemisphere. Their ancestors are among the pre-Columbian population of South or North America, including Central America and the Caribbean. Indigenous peoples live throughout the Americas. While often minorities in their countries, Indigenous peoples are the majority in Greenland and close to a majority in Bolivia and Guatemala.

There are at least 1,000 different Indigenous languages of the Americas still in use in the 21st century. Some languages, including Quechua, Arawak, Aymara, Guaraní, Nahuatl, and some Mayan languages, have millions of speakers and are recognized as official by governments in Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay, and Greenland. (Full article...)

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Nahuatl (/ˈnɑːwɑːtəl/; Nahuatl pronunciation: [ˈnaːwatɬ] ^ⓘ), known informally as Aztec, is a language or group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by an estimated 1.5 million Nahua people, most of whom live in Central Mexico. All Nahuan languages are indigenous to Mesoamerica.

Nahuatl has been spoken in Central Mexico since at least the 7th century AD. It was the language of the Aztecs who dominated what is now central Mexico during the Late Postclassic period of Mesoamerican history. During the centuries preceding the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the Aztec Empire had expanded to incorporate a large part of central Mexico, and its influence caused the variety of Nahuatl spoken by the residents of Tenochtitlan to become a prestige language in Mesoamerica. At the conquest, with the introduction of the Latin alphabet, Nahuatl also became a literary language, and many chronicles, grammars, works of poetry, administrative documents and codices were written in it during the 16th and 17th centuries. This early literary language based on the Tenochtitlan variety has been labeled Classical Nahuatl and is among the most studied and best-documented languages of the Americas.

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An Andean man in traditional dress. Pisac, Peru

image credit: Cacophony

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General images

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

Image 1A representation of the domesticated plant species cultivated by Indigenous peoples have influenced the crops that were produced globally. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 2Quechua women in festive dress on Taquile Island on Lake Titicaca, west of Peru (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 4Members of an uncontacted tribe encountered in Acre in Brazil in 2009 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 5Pre-contact distribution of native American languages in the Southwest US, Mexico, and Central America (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 6A 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 7An Indigenous Terena man from present-day Brazil (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 8Indigenous people at a farm plantation in Minas Gerais in present-day Brazil, c. 1824 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 9A Warao family traveling in their canoe in Venezuela (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 10The tomato (jitomate, in central Mexico) was later cultivated by the pre-Hispanic civilizations of Mexico. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 11Indigenous Pipil women dancing in the traditional Procession of Palms in Panchimalco, El Salvador (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 12A bison hunt depicted in a painting by George Catlin (1844) (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 13A Huichol woman from Zacatecas, Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 14Shaman of the Cofán people from the Amazonian forest in present-day Ecuador (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 15A Quechua woman and child in the Sacred Valley in Cuzco Region, Peru (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 16The common bean is native to Mexico and Central America and later began to be cultivated in South America. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 17Moche portrait vessel from Peru, 100 BCE–500 CE (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 18The Rarámuri marathon in Urique (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 19A Navajo boy in the desert in present-day Monument Valley in Arizona with the "Three Sisters" rock formation in the background in 2007 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 20Wayuu women in the Guajira Peninsula, which encompasses parts of Colombia and Venezuela (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 21Ceramic portrait of a Maya noblewoman, Jaina Island, Mexico, 600–800 CE (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 22Chimu culture feather pectoral, feathers, reed, copper, silver, hide, cordage, c. 1350–1450 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 23An illustration in Florentine Codex, compiled between 1540 and 1585 CE, depicting the Nahua peoples suffering from smallpox during the conquest-era in central Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 24Indigenous populations of the Americas in 2024 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 25Tunumiit Inuit couple from Kulusuk, Greenland (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 26An Indigenous man playing a panpipe, antara, or siku (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 27Areas of Indigenous peoples in the Americas at time of European colonization (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 28The major indigenous language families of South America, except Quechua, Aymara, and Mapuche (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 29Evo Morales, an Aymara member and former President of Bolivia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 30Modern Maya people in Sololá, Guatemala (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 31Proportion of Native Argentines in each department in 2022. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 32An Indigenous woman in traditional dress near Cochabamba, Bolivia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 33A Choctaw artist in present-day Oklahoma (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 34An elderly Maya woman (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 35The ancient Mesoamerican engraving of maize now on display at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 36A carnival with Tzeltal people in Tenejapa Municipality, Chiapas (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 37Proportion of Native Mexicans in each municipalities in 2020. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 38A Mapuche man in present-day Chile (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 39Owners of a roadside cafe near Cachi, Salta Province, Argentina (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 40Principal component analysis showing the Native American cluster in other Eurasian populations. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 41A Navajo man on horseback in present-day Monument Valley in Arizona (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 42Embera girl in the Darién Province, 2006. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 43Maya glyphs in stucco now on display at Museo de sitio in Palenque, Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 44Language 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 45Pre-contact distribution of North American language families (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 46The West Indies (or Antilles) in relation to the continental Americas (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 47A Mapuche man and woman; the Mapuche make up about 85% of Indigenous population that live in Chile. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 48Proportion of Native Brazilians in each department in 2022. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 49Proportion of Native Americans in each county in 2020. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 50Indigenous peoples textile art in 1995 by Julia Pingushat, including Inuk, Arviat, Nunavut, Canada, wool, and embroidery floss (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 51A qpGraph on the formation of Ancient Paleo-Siberians and Native American populations. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 52Guambía people relaxing in Colombia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 53A map of Canada showing the percent of self-reported Indigenous identity (First Nations, Inuit, Métis) by census division, according to the 2021 Canadian census (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)

Selected biography

Mitchell Red Cloud, Jr. (2 July 1924 – 5 November 1950) was a Marine in the United States Marine Corps during World War II, and later a soldier in the United States Army during the Korean War. Corporal Red Cloud posthumously received the Medal of Honor for his actions near Chonghyon, North Pyongan Province, North Korea on 5 November 1950.

Red Cloud, a Ho-Chunk Native American, enlisted in the US Army shortly before the beginning of the Korean War. Serving with the 24th Infantry Division, he was among the troops who fought the first battles of the war, being pushed back with the 19th Infantry Regiment during the Battle of Taejon and the Battle of Pusan Perimeter. He was then a part of the Eighth United States Army advance into North Korea. On the night of 5 November 1950, Red Cloud was manning a forward observation post when he spotted an imminent surprise attack by Chinese forces. Red Cloud singlehandedly held off the Chinese forces despite being shot eight times, at one point ordering his men to tie him to a tree because he was too weak to stand by himself. His company found him the next morning, surrounded by dead Chinese troops. He was credited with alerting his company to the ambush and saving them from being overrun. For these actions, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

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Did you know…

... that the Cascajal Block, a serpentinite slab from the Olmec civilization, was dated to the which early first millennium BCE and may represent the earliest writing system in the Americas?
... that Jim Thorpe (Sac and Fox) won the 1912 Olympic gold medals for the pentathlon and decathlon?
...that underwater panthers were creatures appearing in the mythology of a number of Native American traditions, which combined the features of mountain lions or lynx with those of snakes, and were believed to inhabit the deepest parts of lakes and rivers?

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