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122-401: The Iroquoian languages are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America . They are known for their general lack of labial consonants . The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking . As of 2020, almost all surviving Iroquoian languages are severely or critically endangered , with some languages having only a few elderly speakers remaining. The two languages with

244-489: A collective noun (also describing First Nations, Inuit, and Métis) is a specific term of art used in some legal documents, including the Constitution Act, 1982 . Over time, as societal perceptions and government–indigenous relationships have shifted, many historical terms have changed definitions or been replaced as they have fallen out of favor. The use of the term "Indian" is frowned upon because it represents

366-667: A colonial state. The peopling of the Americas began when Paleolithic hunter-gatherers ( Paleo-Indians ) entered North America from the North Asian Mammoth steppe via the Beringia land bridge , which had formed between northeastern Siberia and western Alaska due to the lowering of sea level during the Last Glacial Maximum (26,000 to 19,000 years ago). These populations expanded south of

488-640: A connection to residential schools. Additionally, Indigenous respondents with higher HLS and HLASS scores had one or more negative health outcomes. While there are many studies that found an association between IHT and adverse health outcomes, scholars continue to suggest that it remains difficult to understand the impact of IHT. IHT needs to be systematically measured. Indigenous people also need to be understood in separate categories based on similar experiences, location, and background as opposed to being categorized as one monolithic group. For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples domesticated, bred, and cultivated

610-518: A day, whereas people in agricultural and industrial societies work on average 8.8 hours a day. Sahlins' theory has been criticized for only including time spent hunting and gathering while omitting time spent on collecting firewood, food preparation, etc. Other scholars also assert that hunter-gatherer societies were not "affluent" but suffered from extremely high infant mortality, frequent disease, and perennial warfare. Researchers Gurven and Kaplan have estimated that around 57% of hunter-gatherers reach

732-559: A diet high in protein and low in other macronutrients results in the body using the protein as energy, possibly leading to protein deficiency. Lean meat especially becomes a problem when animals go through a lean season that requires them to metabolize fat deposits. In areas where plant and fish resources are scarce, hunter-gatherers may trade meat with horticulturalists for carbohydrates . For example, tropical hunter-gatherers may have an excess of protein but be deficient in carbohydrates, and conversely tropical horticulturalists may have

854-855: A few still considered uncontacted peoples . The Americas also host millions of individuals of mixed Indigenous, European, and sometimes African or Asian descent, historically referred to as mestizos in Spanish-speaking countries. In many Latin American nations, people of partial Indigenous descent constitute a majority or significant portion of the population, particularly in Central America , Mexico , Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador , Colombia , Venezuela , Chile , and Paraguay. Mestizos outnumber Indigenous peoples in most Spanish-speaking countries, according to estimates of ethnic cultural identification. However, since Indigenous communities in

976-476: A large array of plant species. These species now constitute between 50% and 60% of all crops in cultivation worldwide. In certain cases, the Indigenous peoples developed entirely new species and strains through artificial selection , as with the domestication and breeding of maize from wild teosinte grasses in the valleys of southern Mexico. Numerous such agricultural products retain their native names in

1098-424: A large citizenry. Indigenous civilizations also displayed impressive accomplishments in astronomy and mathematics, including the most accurate calendar in the world. The domestication of maize or corn required thousands of years of selective breeding, and continued cultivation of multiple varieties was done with planning and selection, generally by women. Inuit, Yupik, Aleut, and Indigenous creation myths tell of

1220-781: A more constant supply of sustenance. In 2018, 9000-year-old remains of a female hunter along with a toolkit of projectile points and animal processing implements were discovered at the Andean site of Wilamaya Patjxa, Puno District in Peru . A 2020 study inspired by this discovery found that of 27 identified burials with hunter gatherers of a known sex who were also buried with hunting tools, 11 were female hunter gatherers, while 16 were male hunter gatherers. Combined with uncertainties, these findings suggest that anywhere from 30 to 50 percent of big game hunters were female. A 2023 study that looked at studies of contemporary hunter gatherer societies from

1342-551: A multitude of ways because the Indigenous community and their history are diverse. Many studies (such as Whitbeck et al., 2014; Brockie, 2012; Anastasio et al., 2016; Clark & Winterowd, 2012; Tucker et al., 2016) have evaluated the impact of IHT on health outcomes of Indigenous communities from the United States and Canada. IHT is a difficult term to standardize and measure because of the vast and variable diversity of Indigenous people and their communities. Therefore, it

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1464-511: A paper entitled, " Notes on the Original Affluent Society ", in which he challenged the popular view of hunter-gatherers lives as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", as Thomas Hobbes had put it in 1651. According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well. Their "affluence" came from

1586-416: A pre-Columbian high of an estimated three million to some 300,000 in 1997. The Spanish Empire and other Europeans re-introduced horses to the Americas. Some of these animals escaped and began to breed and increase their numbers in the wild. The reintroduction of the horse , extinct in the Americas for over 7500 years, had a profound impact on Indigenous cultures in several regions, such as those of

1708-592: A second, more recent wave of migration several thousand years later and have much more recent genetic and cultural commonalities with the Indigenous peoples of Siberia . However, these groups are nonetheless considered "Indigenous peoples of the Americas". The term Amerindian , a portmanteau of "American Indian", was coined in 1902 by the American Anthropological Association . It has been controversial ever since its creation. It

1830-599: A size of a few dozen people. It remained the only mode of subsistence until the end of the Mesolithic period some 10,000 years ago, and after this was replaced only gradually with the spread of the Neolithic Revolution . The Late Pleistocene witnessed the spread of modern humans outside of Africa as well as the extinction of all other human species. Humans spread to the Australian continent and

1952-405: A smaller selection of (often larger) game and gathering a smaller selection of food. This specialization of work also involved creating specialized tools such as fishing nets , hooks, and bone harpoons . The transition into the subsequent Neolithic period is chiefly defined by the unprecedented development of nascent agricultural practices. Agriculture originated as early as 12,000 years ago in

2074-432: A surplus of carbohydrates but inadequate protein. Trading may thus be the most cost-effective means of acquiring carbohydrate resources. Hunter-gatherer societies manifest significant variability, depending on climate zone / life zone , available technology, and societal structure. Archaeologists examine hunter-gatherer tool kits to measure variability across different groups. Collard et al. (2005) found temperature to be

2196-611: A threat to livestock. Several bird species, such as turkeys , Muscovy ducks , Puna ibis , and neotropic cormorants were domesticated by various peoples in Mesoamerica and South America to be used for poultry. In the Andean region, indigenous peoples domesticated llamas and alpacas to produce fiber and meat. The llama was the only beast of burden in the Americas before European colonization. Guinea pigs were domesticated from wild cavies to be raised for meat consumption in

2318-493: A variety of origins of their respective peoples. Some were "always there" or were created by gods or animals, some migrated from a specified compass point , and others came from "across the ocean". The European colonization of the Americas fundamentally changed the lives and cultures of the resident Indigenous peoples. Although the exact pre-colonization population count of the Americas is unknown, scholars estimate that Indigenous populations diminished by between 80% and 90% during

2440-666: A violent poison. Eventually, a Taíno Cacique named Enriquillo managed to hold out in the Baoruco Mountain Range for thirteen years, causing serious damage to the Spanish, Carib-held plantations and their Indian auxiliaries . Hearing of the seriousness of the revolt, Emperor Charles V (also King of Spain) sent Captain Francisco Barrionuevo to negotiate a peace treaty with the ever-increasing number of rebels. Two months later, after consultation with

2562-437: A whole, in general, most Indigenous peoples prefer to be identified by the name of their specific nation, tribe, or band. Early settlers often adopted terms that some tribes used for each other, not realizing these were derogatory terms used by enemies. When discussing broader subsets of peoples, naming has often been based on shared language, region, or historical relationship. Many English exonyms have been used to refer to

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2684-534: A whole. Since the 1970s, the word "Indigenous", which is capitalized when referring to people, has gradually emerged as a favored umbrella term. The capitalization is to acknowledge that Indigenous peoples have cultures and societies that are equal to Europeans, Africans, and Asians. This has recently been acknowledged in the AP Stylebook . Some consider it improper to refer to Indigenous people as "Indigenous Americans" or to append any colonial nationality to

2806-441: A wide geographical area, thus there were regional variations in lifestyles. However, all the individual groups shared a common style of stone tool production, making knapping styles and progress identifiable. This early Paleo-Indian period lithic reduction tool adaptations have been found across the Americas, utilized by highly mobile bands consisting of approximately 25 to 50 members of an extended family. The Archaic period in

2928-533: Is a common term, though nativos or pueblos nativos ('native peoples') may also be heard; moreover, aborigen ('aborigine') is used in Argentina and pueblos originarios ('original peoples') is common in Chile . In Brazil, indígenas and povos originários ('Indigenous peoples') are common formal-sounding designations, while índio ('Indian') is still the more often heard term (the noun for

3050-416: Is an arduous task to assign an operational definition and systematically collect data when studying IHT. Many of the studies that incorporate IHT measure it in different ways, making it hard to compile data and review it holistically. This is an important point that provides context for the following studies that attempt to understand the relationship between IHT and potential adverse health impacts. Some of

3172-551: Is general agreement that the Americas were first settled from Asia, the pattern of migration and the place(s) of origin in Eurasia of the peoples who migrated to the Americas remain unclear. The traditional theory is that Ancient Beringians moved when sea levels were significantly lowered due to the Quaternary glaciation , following herds of now-extinct Pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between

3294-685: Is inhospitable to large scale economic exploitation and maintain their subsistence based on hunting and gathering, as well as incorporating a small amount of manioc horticulture that supplements, but is not replacing, reliance on foraged foods. Evidence suggests big-game hunter-gatherers crossed the Bering Strait from Asia (Eurasia) into North America over a land bridge ( Beringia ), that existed between 47,000 and 14,000 years ago. Around 18,500–15,500 years ago, these hunter-gatherers are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct Pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between

3416-409: Is never total but is striking when viewed in an evolutionary context. One of humanity's two closest primate relatives, chimpanzees , are anything but egalitarian, forming themselves into hierarchies that are often dominated by an alpha male . So great is the contrast with human hunter-gatherers that it is widely argued by paleoanthropologists that resistance to being dominated was a key factor driving

3538-456: Is not necessarily a one-way process. It has been argued that hunting and gathering represents an adaptive strategy , which may still be exploited, if necessary, when environmental change causes extreme food stress for agriculturalists. In fact, it is sometimes difficult to draw a clear line between agricultural and hunter-gatherer societies, especially since the widespread adoption of agriculture and resulting cultural diffusion that has occurred in

3660-405: Is the field of study whereby food plants of various peoples and tribes worldwide are documented. Most hunter-gatherers are nomadic or semi-nomadic and live in temporary settlements. Mobile communities typically construct shelters using impermanent building materials, or they may use natural rock shelters, where they are available. Some hunter-gatherer cultures, such as the indigenous peoples of

3782-570: The Archaic period of North American cultures. Technology had advanced to the point where pottery had started to become common and the small-scale felling of trees had become feasible. Concurrently, the Archaic Indigenous peoples began using fire in a controlled manner. They carried out the intentional burning of vegetation to mimic the effects of natural fires that tended to clear forest understories. It made travel easier and facilitated

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3904-614: The Chiribaya to herd llamas . The vast majority of indigenous dog breeds in the Americas went extinct, due to being replaced by dogs of European origin. The Fuegian dog was a domesticated variation of the culpeo that was raised by several cultures in Tierra del Fuego , like the Selk'nam and the Yahgan . It was exterminated by Argentine and Chilean settlers, due to supposedly posing as

4026-477: The Fertile Crescent , Ancient India , Ancient China , Olmec , Sub-Saharan Africa and Norte Chico . As a result of the now near-universal human reliance upon agriculture, the few contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures usually live in areas unsuitable for agricultural use. Archaeologists can use evidence such as stone tool use to track hunter-gatherer activities, including mobility. Ethnobotany

4148-771: The Great Plains , the Northwest Plateau , the Great Basin , Aridoamerica , the Gran Chaco and the Southern Cone . By domesticating horses, some tribes had great success: horses enabled them to expand their territories, exchange more goods with neighboring tribes, and more easily capture game , such as bison . According to Erin McKenna and Scott L. Pratt, the Indigenous population of the Americas

4270-503: The Inca Civil War of 1529–1532. Smallpox was only the first epidemic. Typhus (probably) in 1546, influenza and smallpox together in 1558, smallpox again in 1589, diphtheria in 1614, and measles in 1618—all ravaged the remains of Inca culture. Smallpox killed millions of native inhabitants of Mexico. Unintentionally introduced at Veracruz with the arrival of Pánfilo de Narváez on 23 April 1520, smallpox ravaged Mexico in

4392-570: The Ju'/hoansi people of Namibia, women help men track down quarry. In the Australian Martu, both women and men participate in hunting but with a different style of gendered division; while men are willing to take more risks to hunt bigger animals such as kangaroo for political gain as a form of "competitive magnanimity", women target smaller game such as lizards to feed their children and promote working relationships with other women, preferring

4514-573: The Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using boats , they migrated down the Pacific coast to South America as far as Chile . Any archaeological evidence of coastal occupation during the last Ice Age would now have been covered by the sea level rise , up to a hundred metres since then. While technically referring to the era before Christopher Columbus ' voyages of 1492 to 1504, in practice

4636-602: The Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using primitive boats , they migrated down the Pacific coast to South America. Hunter-gatherers would eventually flourish all over the Americas, primarily based in the Great Plains of the United States and Canada, with offshoots as far east as the Gaspé Peninsula on the Atlantic coast , and as far south as Chile , Monte Verde . American hunter-gatherers were spread over

4758-549: The Laurentide Ice Sheet and spread rapidly southward, occupying both North and South America by 12,000 to 14,000 years ago. The earliest populations in the Americas, before roughly 10,000 years ago, are known as Paleo-Indians . Indigenous peoples of the Americas have been linked to Siberian populations by proposed linguistic factors , the distribution of blood types , and in genetic composition as reflected by molecular data, such as DNA . While there

4880-823: The Menominee of Wisconsin—suggest that longstanding "sacred values" may represent a summary of sustainable millennial traditions. Numerous Native American dog breeds have been used by the people of the Americas, such as the Canadian Eskimo dog , the Carolina dog , and the Chihuahua . Some indigenous peoples in the Great Plains used dogs for pulling travois , while others like the Tahltan bear dog were bred to hunt larger game. Some Andean cultures also bred

5002-595: The Middle East , and also independently originated in many other areas including Southeast Asia , parts of Africa , Mesoamerica , and the Andes . Forest gardening was also being used as a food production system in various parts of the world over this period. Many groups continued their hunter-gatherer ways of life, although their numbers have continually declined, partly as a result of pressure from growing agricultural and pastoral communities. Many of them reside in

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5124-514: The Southwest , Arctic , Poverty Point , Dalton and Plano traditions. These regional adaptations would become the norm, with reliance less on hunting and gathering, with a more mixed economy of small game, fish , seasonally wild vegetables and harvested plant foods. Scholars like Kat Anderson have suggested that the term Hunter-gatherer is reductive because it implies that Native Americans never stayed in one place long enough to affect

5246-804: The University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario started offering a credit course in Mohawk; the classes are to be given at Renison University College in collaboration with the Waterloo Aboriginal Education Centre, St. Paul's University College . Indigenous peoples of the Americas In the Americas , indigenous peoples comprise the two continents' pre-Columbian inhabitants prior to European settlement in

5368-485: The history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European and African influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original arrival in the Upper Paleolithic to European colonization during the early modern period . The Norte Chico civilization (in present-day Peru) is one of the defining six original civilizations of the world, arising independently around

5490-448: The residential school ancestry studies ask respondents if their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, or "elders from their community" went to a residential school to understand if family or community history in residential schools is associated with negative health outcomes. In a comprehensive review of the research literature, Joseph Gone and colleagues compiled and compared outcomes for studies using these IHT measures relative to

5612-431: The " West Indies " (or " Antilles "), a name that is still used to describe the islands. This led to the blanket term "Indies" and "Indians" ( Spanish : indios ; Portuguese : índios ; French : indiens ; Dutch : indianen ) for the Indigenous inhabitants, which implied some kind of ethnic or cultural unity among the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. This unifying concept, codified in law, religion, and politics,

5734-621: The 1520s, possibly killing over 150,000 in Tenochtitlán (the heartland of the Aztec Empire) alone, and aiding in the victory of Hernán Cortés over the Aztec Empire at Tenochtitlan (present-day Mexico City) in 1521. There are many factors as to why Indigenous peoples suffered such immense losses from Afro-Eurasian diseases. Many Old World diseases, like cow pox, are acquired from domesticated animals that are not indigenous to

5856-846: The 15th century, as well as the ethnic groups that identify with the pre-Columbian population of the Americas as such. These populations exhibit significant diversity; some Indigenous peoples were historically hunter-gatherers , while others practiced agriculture and aquaculture . Various Indigenous societies developed complex social structures , including pre-contact monumental architecture, organized cities , city-states , chiefdoms , states , kingdoms , republics , confederacies , and empires . These societies possessed varying levels of knowledge in fields such as engineering , architecture , mathematics , astronomy , writing , physics , medicine , agriculture , irrigation , geology , mining , metallurgy , art , sculpture , and goldsmithing . Indigenous peoples continue to inhabit many regions of

5978-587: The 16th century were Constantinople and Paris with 300,000 and 200,000 inhabitants respectively. The population in London, Madrid, and Rome hardly exceeded 50,000 people. In 1523, right around the time of the Spanish conquest, the entire population in the country of England was just under three million people. This fact speaks to the level of sophistication, agriculture, governmental procedure, and rule of law that existed in Tenochtitlan, needed to govern over such

6100-552: The 1800s to the present day found that women hunted in 79 percent of hunter gatherer societies. However, an attempted verification of this study found "that multiple methodological failures all bias their results in the same direction...their analysis does not contradict the wide body of empirical evidence for gendered divisions of labor in foraging societies". At the 1966 " Man the Hunter " conference, anthropologists Richard Borshay Lee and Irven DeVore suggested that egalitarianism

6222-627: The 250,000 Taínos of Hispaniola , represented the dominant culture in the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas. Within thirty years about 70% of the Taínos had died. They had no immunity to European diseases, so outbreaks of measles and smallpox ravaged their population. One such outbreak occurred in a camp of enslaved Africans, where smallpox spread to the nearby Taíno population and reduced their numbers by 50%. Increasing punishment of

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6344-1111: The American South. They are believed to have spoken an Iroquoian language but documentation is lacking. Attempts to link the Iroquoian, Siouan , and Caddoan languages in a Macro-Siouan family are suggestive but remain unproven ( Mithun 1999 :305). As of 2012, a program in Iroquois linguistics at Syracuse University , the Certificate in Iroquois Linguistics for Language Learners , is designed for students and language teachers working in language revitalization . Six Nations Polytechnic in Ohsweken, Ontario offers Ogwehoweh language Diploma and Degree Programs in Mohawk or Cayuga . Starting in September 2017,

6466-763: The Americas began when Paleolithic hunter-gatherers entered North America from the North Asian mammoth steppe via the Beringia land bridge. During the 1970s, Lewis Binford suggested that early humans obtained food via scavenging , not hunting . Early humans in the Lower Paleolithic lived in forests and woodlands , which allowed them to collect seafood, eggs, nuts, and fruits besides scavenging. Rather than killing large animals for meat, according to this view, they used carcasses of such animals that had either been killed by predators or that had died of natural causes. Scientists have demonstrated that

6588-401: The Americas saw a changing environment featuring a warmer more arid climate and the disappearance of the last megafauna. The majority of population groups at this time were still highly mobile hunter-gatherers. Individual groups started to focus on resources available to them locally, however, and thus archaeologists have identified a pattern of increasing regional generalization, as seen with

6710-462: The Americas are defined by cultural identification and kinship rather than ancestry or race , mestizos are typically not counted among the Indigenous population unless they speak an Indigenous language or identify with a specific Indigenous culture. Additionally, many individuals of wholly Indigenous descent who do not follow Indigenous traditions or speak an Indigenous language have been classified or self-identify as mestizo due to assimilation into

6832-479: The Americas for the first time, coincident with the extinction of numerous predominantly megafaunal species. Major extinctions were incurred in Australia beginning approximately 50,000 years ago and in the Americas about 15,000 years ago. Ancient North Eurasians lived in extreme conditions of the mammoth steppes of Siberia and survived by hunting mammoths , bison and woolly rhinoceroses. The settlement of

6954-530: The Americas have been more vocal about how they want to be addressed, pushing to suppress the use of terms widely considered to be obsolete, inaccurate, or racist . During the latter half of the 20th century and the rise of the Indian rights movement , the United States federal government responded by proposing the use of the term " Native American ", to recognize the primacy of Indigenous peoples' tenure in

7076-1001: The Americas, with significant populations in countries such as Bolivia , Canada , Chile , Colombia , Ecuador , Guatemala , Mexico , Peru , and the United States . There are at least 1,000 different indigenous languages spoken across the Americas, with 574 federally recognized tribes in the US alone. Some languages, including Quechua , Arawak , Aymara , Guaraní , Mayan , and Nahuatl , have millions of speakers and are recognized as official by governments in Bolivia , Peru , Paraguay , and Greenland . Indigenous peoples, whether residing in rural or urban areas, often maintain aspects of their cultural practices, including religion , social organization , and subsistence practices. Over time, these cultures have evolved, preserving traditional customs while adapting to modern needs. Some Indigenous groups remain relatively isolated from Western culture , with

7198-456: The Americas. European populations had adapted to these diseases, and built up resistance, over many generations. Many of the Old World diseases that were brought over to the Americas were diseases, like yellow fever , that were relatively manageable if infected as a child, but were deadly if infected as an adult. Children could often survive the disease, resulting in immunity to the disease for

7320-506: The Andean region. Guinea pigs are now widely raised in Western society as household pets. Hunter-gatherers Hunting and gathering was humanity's original and most enduring successful competitive adaptation in the natural world, occupying at least 90 percent of human history . Following the invention of agriculture , hunter-gatherers who did not change were displaced or conquered by farming or pastoralist groups in most parts of

7442-565: The Audencia of Santo Domingo, Enriquillo was offered any part of the island to live in peace. The Laws of Burgos, 1512–1513 , were the first codified set of laws governing the behavior of Spanish settlers in America, particularly concerning Indigenous peoples. The laws forbade the maltreatment of them and endorsed their conversion to Catholicism . The Spanish crown found it difficult to enforce these laws in distant colonies. Epidemic disease

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7564-725: The Conestoga Confederacy and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy were defeated and scattered, migrating to form new tribes or adopted into others. The Iroquoian peoples had a practice of adopting valiant enemies into the tribe; they also adopted captive women and children to replace members who had died. The group known as the Meherrin were neighbors to the Tuscarora and the Nottoway ( Binford 1967 ) in

7686-580: The English and Spanish lexicons. The South American highlands became a center of early agriculture. Genetic testing of the wide variety of cultivars and wild species suggests that the potato has a single origin in the area of southern Peru , from a species in the Solanum brevicaule complex. Over 99% of all modern cultivated potatoes worldwide are descendants of a subspecies indigenous to south-central Chile , Solanum tuberosum ssp. tuberosum , where it

7808-426: The Europeans began the human trafficking of massive numbers of enslaved Western and Central African people to the Americas. Like Indigenous peoples, these African people, newly exposed to European diseases, lacked any inherited resistance to the diseases of Europe. In 1520, an African who had been infected with smallpox had arrived in Yucatán. By 1558, the disease had spread throughout South America and had arrived at

7930-442: The Huron and Petun languages. The languages of the tribes that constituted the tiny Wenrohronon , the powerful Conestoga Confederacy and the confederations of the Neutral Nation and the Erie Nation are very poorly documented in print. The Huron ( Wyandot people ) referred to the Neutral people as Atiwandaronk, meaning 'they who understand the language'. The Wenro and Neutral are historically grouped together, and geographically

8052-401: The Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Some of these names were based on foreign language terms used by earlier explorers and colonists, while others resulted from the colonists' attempts to translate or transliterate endonyms from the native languages. Other terms arose during periods of conflict between the colonists and Indigenous peoples. Since the late 20th century, Indigenous peoples in

8174-485: The Indigenous population of North America in the first hundred years after the arrival of Europeans. Some 90 percent of the native population near Massachusetts Bay Colony died of smallpox in an epidemic in 1617–1619. In 1633, in Fort Orange (New Netherland) , the Native Americans there were exposed to smallpox because of contact with Europeans. As it had done elsewhere, the virus wiped out entire population groups of Native Americans. It reached Lake Ontario in 1636, and

8296-593: The Indigenous-European mixed-race mestizos (or caboclos in Brazil) of Hispanic America who, with their larger population (in most Latin American countries constituting either outright majorities, pluralities, or at the least large minorities), identify largely as a new ethnic group distinct from both Europeans and Indigenous, but still considering themselves a subset of the European-derived Hispanic or Brazilian peoplehood in culture and ethnicity ( cf. ladinos ). Among Spanish-speaking countries , indígenas or pueblos indígenas ('Indigenous peoples')

8418-451: The Northwest Coast of North America and the Calusa in Florida ) are an exception to this rule. For example, the San people or "Bushmen" of southern Africa have social customs that strongly discourage hoarding and displays of authority, and encourage economic equality via sharing of food and material goods. Karl Marx defined this socio-economic system as primitive communism . The egalitarianism typical of human hunters and gatherers

8540-643: The Pacific Northwest Coast and the Yokuts , lived in particularly rich environments that allowed them to be sedentary or semi-sedentary. Amongst the earliest example of permanent settlements is the Osipovka culture (14–10.3 thousand years ago), which lived in a fish-rich environment that allowed them to be able to stay at the same place all year. One group, the Chumash , had the highest recorded population density of any known hunter and gatherer society with an estimated 21.6 persons per square mile. Hunter-gatherers tend to have an egalitarian social ethos, although settled hunter-gatherers (for example, those inhabiting

8662-481: The Plata basin. Colonist violence towards Indigenous peoples accelerated the loss of lives. European colonists perpetrated massacres on the Indigenous peoples and enslaved them. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1894), the North American Indian Wars of the 19th century had a known death toll of about 19,000 Europeans and 30,000 Native Americans, and an estimated total death toll of 45,000 Native Americans. The first Indigenous group encountered by Columbus,

8784-748: The South-Asian nationality being indiano ), but for the past 10 years has been considered offensive and pejorative. Aborígene and nativo are rarely used in Brazil in Indigenous-specific contexts (e.g., aborígene is usually understood as the ethnonym for Indigenous Australians ). The Spanish and Portuguese equivalents to Indian , nevertheless, could be used to mean any hunter-gatherer or full-blooded Indigenous person, particularly to continents other than Europe or Africa—for example, indios filipinos . Indigenous peoples of

8906-421: The Taínos for revolting against forced labor, despite measures put in place by the encomienda , which included religious education and protection from warring tribes, eventually led to the last great Taíno rebellion (1511–1529). Following years of mistreatment, the Taínos began to adopt suicidal behaviors, with women aborting or killing their infants and men jumping from cliffs or ingesting untreated cassava ,

9028-568: The United States are commonly known as Native Americans , Indians, as well as Alaska Natives . The term "Indian" is still used in some communities and remains in use in the official names of many institutions and businesses in Indian Country . The various nations, tribes, and bands of Indigenous peoples of the Americas have differing preferences in terminology for themselves. While there are regional and generational variations in which umbrella terms are preferred for Indigenous peoples as

9150-667: The Wenro's range on the eastern end of Lake Erie placed them between the larger confederations. To the east of the Wenro, beyond the Genesee Gorge , were the lands of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. To the southeast, beyond the headwaters of the Allegheny River , lay the Conestoga (Susquehannock). The Conestoga Confederacy and Erie were militarily powerful and respected by neighboring tribes. By 1660 all of these peoples but

9272-412: The age of 15. Of those that reach 15 years of age, 64% continue to live to or past the age of 45. This places the life expectancy between 21 and 37 years. They further estimate that 70% of deaths are due to diseases of some kind, 20% of deaths come from violence or accidents and 10% are due to degenerative diseases. Mutual exchange and sharing of resources (i.e., meat gained from hunting) are important in

9394-477: The arguments put forward by Wilmsen. Doron Shultziner and others have argued that we can learn a lot about the life-styles of prehistoric hunter-gatherers from studies of contemporary hunter-gatherers—especially their impressive levels of egalitarianism. There are nevertheless a number of contemporary hunter-gatherer peoples who, after contact with other societies, continue their ways of life with very little external influence or with modifications that perpetuate

9516-680: The contact and colonization period and were documented in historical accounts of the time. A few, such as the Mayan, Olmec, Mixtec, Aztec , and Nahua peoples , had their written languages and records. However, the European colonists of the time worked to eliminate non-Christian beliefs and burned many pre-Columbian written records. Only a few documents remained hidden and survived, leaving contemporary historians with glimpses of ancient culture and knowledge. According to both Indigenous and European accounts and documents, American civilizations before and at

9638-400: The country of Denmark in 2007. In addition, wealth transmission across generations was also a feature of hunter-gatherers, meaning that "wealthy" hunter-gatherers, within the context of their communities, were more likely to have children as wealthy as them than poorer members of their community and indeed hunter-gatherer societies demonstrate an understanding of social stratification. Thus while

9760-532: The developing world, either in arid regions or tropical forests. Areas that were formerly available to hunter-gatherers were—and continue to be—encroached upon by the settlements of agriculturalists. In the resulting competition for land use, hunter-gatherer societies either adopted these practices or moved to other areas. In addition, Jared Diamond has blamed a decline in the availability of wild foods, particularly animal resources. In North and South America , for example, most large mammal species had gone extinct by

9882-554: The diet until relatively recently, during the Late Stone Age in southern Africa and the Upper Paleolithic in Europe. Fat is important in assessing the quality of game among hunter-gatherers, to the point that lean animals are often considered secondary resources or even starvation food. Consuming too much lean meat leads to adverse health effects like protein poisoning , and can in extreme cases lead to death. Additionally,

10004-504: The dominant Hispanic culture . In recent years, the self-identified Indigenous population in many countries has increased as individuals reclaim their heritage amid rising Indigenous-led movements for self-determination and social justice . Application of the term " Indian " originated with Christopher Columbus , who, in his search for India , thought that he had arrived in the East Indies . The islands came to be known as

10126-409: The economic systems of hunter-gatherer societies. Therefore, these societies can be described as based on a " gift economy ". A 2010 paper argued that while hunter-gatherers may have lower levels of inequality than modern, industrialised societies, that does not mean inequality does not exist. The researchers estimated that the average Gini coefficient amongst hunter-gatherers was 0.25, equivalent to

10248-495: The end of the Pleistocene —according to Diamond, because of overexploitation by humans, one of several explanations offered for the Quaternary extinction event there. As the number and size of agricultural societies increased, they expanded into lands traditionally used by hunter-gatherers. This process of agriculture-driven expansion led to the development of the first forms of government in agricultural centers, such as

10370-466: The environment around them. However, many of the landscapes in the Americas today are due to the way the Natives of that area originally tended the land. Anderson specifically looks at California Natives and the practices they utilized to tame their land. Some of these practices included pruning, weeding, sowing, burning, and selective harvesting. These practices allowed them to take from the environment in

10492-399: The evidence for early human behaviors for hunting versus carcass scavenging vary based on the ecology, including the types of predators that existed and the environment. According to the endurance running hypothesis , long-distance running as in persistence hunting , a method still practiced by some hunter-gatherer groups in modern times, was likely the driving evolutionary force leading to

10614-460: The evolution of certain human characteristics. This hypothesis does not necessarily contradict the scavenging hypothesis: both subsistence strategies may have been in use sequentially, alternately or even simultaneously. Starting at the transition between the Middle to Upper Paleolithic period, some 80,000 to 70,000 years ago, some hunter-gatherer bands began to specialize, concentrating on hunting

10736-613: The evolutionary emergence of human consciousness , language , kinship and social organization . Most anthropologists believe that hunter-gatherers do not have permanent leaders; instead, the person taking the initiative at any one time depends on the task being performed. Within a particular tribe or people, hunter-gatherers are connected by both kinship and band (residence/domestic group) membership. Postmarital residence among hunter-gatherers tends to be matrilocal, at least initially. Young mothers can enjoy childcare support from their own mothers, who continue living nearby in

10858-577: The first centuries of European colonization. Most scholars estimate a pre-colonization population of around 50 million, with other scholars arguing for an estimate of 100 million. Estimates reach as high as 145 million. Epidemics ravaged the Americas with diseases, such as smallpox , measles , and cholera , which the early colonists brought from Europe. The spread of infectious diseases was slow initially, as most Europeans were not actively or visibly infected, due to inherited immunity from generations of exposure to these diseases in Europe. This changed when

10980-579: The growth of herbs and berry-producing plants, which were important both for food and for medicines. In the Mississippi River valley, Europeans noted that Native Americans managed groves of nut and fruit trees not far from villages and towns and their gardens and agricultural fields. They would have used prescribed burning farther away, in forest and prairie areas. Many crops first domesticated by Indigenous peoples are now produced and used globally, most notably maize (or "corn") arguably

11102-435: The health outcomes of Indigenous peoples. The study defined negative health outcomes to include such concepts as anxiety , suicidal ideation , suicide attempts , polysubstance abuse , PTSD , depression , binge eating , anger, and sexual abuse. The connection between IHT and health conditions is complicated because of the difficult nature of measuring IHT, the unknown directionality of IHT and health outcomes, and because

11224-400: The idea that they were satisfied with very little in the material sense. Later, in 1996, Ross Sackett performed two distinct meta-analyses to empirically test Sahlin's view. The first of these studies looked at 102 time-allocation studies, and the second one analyzed 207 energy-expenditure studies. Sackett found that adults in foraging and horticultural societies work on average, about 6.5 hours

11346-570: The imposition and restriction of Indigenous peoples and cultures by the Canadian Government. The terms "Native" and " Eskimo " are generally regarded as disrespectful (in Canada), and so are rarely used unless specifically required. While "Indigenous peoples" is the preferred term, many individuals or communities may choose to describe their identity using a different term. The Métis people of Canada can be contrasted, for instance, to

11468-707: The lands of the Iroquois by 1679. During the 1770s smallpox killed at least 30% of the West Coast Native Americans. The 1775–82 North American smallpox epidemic and the 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic brought devastation and drastic population depletion among the Plains Indians . In 1832 the federal government of the United States established a smallpox vaccination program for Native Americans ( The Indian Vaccination Act of 1832 ). The Indigenous peoples in Brazil declined from

11590-655: The last 10,000 years. Nowadays, some scholars speak about the existence within cultural evolution of the so-called mixed-economies or dual economies which imply a combination of food procurement (gathering and hunting) and food production or when foragers have trade relations with farmers. Some of the theorists who advocate this "revisionist" critique imply that, because the "pure hunter-gatherer" disappeared not long after colonial (or even agricultural) contact began, nothing meaningful can be learned about prehistoric hunter-gatherers from studies of modern ones (Kelly, 24–29; see Wilmsen ) Lee and Guenther have rejected most of

11712-476: The methodologies to measure IHT include a "Historical Losses Scale" (HLS), "Historical Losses Associated Symptoms Scale" (HLASS), and residential school ancestry studies. HLS uses a survey format that includes "12 kinds of historical losses", such as loss of language and loss of land and asks participants how often they think about those losses. The HLASS includes 12 emotional reactions, and asks participants how they feel when they think about these losses. Lastly,

11834-440: The most densely forested areas. Unlike their Bronze and Iron Age counterparts, Neolithic societies could not establish themselves in dense forests, and Copper Age societies had only limited success. In addition to men, a single study found that women engage in hunting in 79% of modern hunter-gatherer societies. However, an attempted verification of this study found "that multiple methodological failures all bias their results in

11956-887: The most important crop in the world. Other significant crops include cassava ; chia ; squash (pumpkins, zucchini, marrow , acorn squash , butternut squash ); the pinto bean , Phaseolus beans including most common beans , tepary beans , and lima beans ; tomatoes ; potatoes ; sweet potatoes ; avocados ; peanuts ; cocoa beans (used to make chocolate ); vanilla ; strawberries ; pineapples ; peppers (species and varieties of Capsicum , including bell peppers , jalapeños , paprika , and chili peppers ); sunflower seeds ; rubber ; brazilwood ; chicle ; tobacco ; coca ; blueberries , cranberries , and some species of cotton . Studies of contemporary Indigenous environmental management—including agro-forestry practices among Itza Maya in Guatemala and hunting and fishing among

12078-721: The most speakers, Mohawk (Kenien'kéha) in New York and Canada, and Cherokee in Oklahoma and North Carolina, are spoken by less than 10% of the populations of their nations. † — language extinct/dormant Evidence is emerging that what has been called the Laurentian language appears to be more than one dialect or language. Ethnographic and linguistic field work with the Wyandot tribal elders ( Barbeau 1960 ) yielded enough documentation for scholars to characterize and classify

12200-410: The nation. As may be expected among people of over 400 different cultures in the US alone, not all of the people intended to be described by this term have agreed on its use or adopted it. No single group naming convention has been accepted by all Indigenous peoples in the Americas. Most prefer to be addressed as people of their tribe or nations when not speaking about Native Americans/American Indians as

12322-423: The only statistically significant factor to impact hunter-gatherer tool kits. Using temperature as a proxy for risk, Collard et al.'s results suggest that environments with extreme temperatures pose a threat to hunter-gatherer systems significant enough to warrant increased variability of tools. These results support Torrence's (1989) theory that the risk of failure is indeed the most important factor in determining

12444-674: The researchers agreed that hunter-gatherers were more egalitarian than modern societies, prior characterisations of them living in a state of egalitarian primitive communism were inaccurate and misleading. This study, however, exclusively examined modern hunter-gatherer communities, offering limited insight into the exact nature of social structures that existed prior to the Neolithic Revolution. Alain Testart and others have said that anthropologists should be careful when using research on current hunter-gatherer societies to determine

12566-774: The rest of their lives. But contact with adult populations without this childhood or inherited immunity would result in these diseases proving fatal. Colonization of the Caribbean led to the destruction of the Arawaks of the Lesser Antilles . Their culture was destroyed by 1650. Only 500 had survived by the year 1550, though the bloodlines continued through to the modern populace. In Amazonia, Indigenous societies weathered, and continue to suffer, centuries of colonization and genocide. Contact with European diseases such as smallpox and measles killed between 50 and 67 percent of

12688-452: The same camp. The systems of kinship and descent among human hunter-gatherers were relatively flexible, although there is evidence that early human kinship in general tended to be matrilineal . The conventional assumption has been that women did most of the gathering, while men concentrated on big game hunting. An illustrative account is Megan Biesele's study of the southern African Ju/'hoan, 'Women Like Meat'. A recent study suggests that

12810-646: The same direction...their analysis does not contradict the wide body of empirical evidence for gendered divisions of labor in foraging societies". Only a few contemporary societies of uncontacted people are still classified as hunter-gatherers, and many supplement their foraging activity with horticulture or pastoralism . Hunting and gathering was presumably the subsistence strategy employed by human societies beginning some 1.8 million years ago, by Homo erectus , and from its appearance some 200,000 years ago by Homo sapiens . Prehistoric hunter-gatherers lived in groups that consisted of several families resulting in

12932-540: The same time as that of Egypt . Many later pre-Columbian civilizations achieved great complexity, with hallmarks that included permanent or urban settlements, agriculture, engineering, astronomy, trade, civic and monumental architecture, and complex societal hierarchies . Some of these civilizations had long faded by the time of the first significant European and African arrivals (ca. late 15th–early 16th centuries), and are known only through oral history and through archaeological investigations. Others were contemporary with

13054-509: The sexual division of labor was the fundamental organizational innovation that gave Homo sapiens the edge over the Neanderthals, allowing our ancestors to migrate from Africa and spread across the globe. A 1986 study found most hunter-gatherers have a symbolically structured sexual division of labor. However, it is true that in a small minority of cases, women hunted the same kind of quarry as men, sometimes doing so alongside men. Among

13176-403: The structure of hunter-gatherer toolkits. One way to divide hunter-gatherer groups is by their return systems. James Woodburn uses the categories "immediate return" hunter-gatherers for egalitarianism and "delayed return" for nonegalitarian. Immediate return foragers consume their food within a day or two after they procure it. Delayed return foragers store the surplus food. Hunting-gathering

13298-765: The structure of societies in the paleolithic era, emphasising cross-cultural influences, progress and development that such societies have undergone in the past 10,000 years. As one moves away from the equator , the importance of plant food decreases and the importance of aquatic food increases. In cold and heavily forested environments, edible plant foods and large game are less abundant and hunter-gatherers may turn to aquatic resources to compensate. Hunter-gatherers in cold climates also rely more on stored food than those in warm climates. However, aquatic resources tend to be costly, requiring boats and fishing technology, and this may have impeded their intensive use in prehistory. Marine food probably did not start becoming prominent in

13420-474: The term Indigenous people used in the various samples comprises a huge population of individuals with drastically different experiences and histories. That being said some studies such as Bombay, Matheson, and Anisman (2014), Elias et al. (2012), and Pearce et al. (2008) found that Indigenous respondents with a connection to residential schools have more negative health outcomes (e.g., suicide ideation, suicide attempts, and depression) than those who did not have

13542-497: The term because Indigenous cultures existed before European colonization. Indigenous groups have territorial claims that are different from modern national and international borders, and when labeled as part of a country, their traditional lands are not acknowledged. Some who have written guidelines consider it more appropriate to describe an Indigenous person as "living in" or "of" the Americas, rather than calling them "American"; or simply calling them "Indigenous" without any addition of

13664-569: The term usually includes the history of Indigenous cultures until Europeans either conquered or significantly influenced them. "Pre-Columbian" is used especially often in the context of discussing the pre-contact Mesoamerican Indigenous societies : Olmec ; Toltec ; Teotihuacano ' Zapotec ; Mixtec ; Aztec and Maya civilizations ; and the complex cultures of the Andes : Inca Empire , Moche culture , Muisca Confederation , and Cañari . The Pre-Columbian era refers to all period subdivisions in

13786-458: The time of European encounter had achieved great complexity and many accomplishments. For instance, the Aztecs built one of the largest cities in the world, Tenochtitlan (the historical site of what would become Mexico City ), with an estimated population of 200,000 for the city proper and a population of close to five million for the extended empire. By comparison, the largest European cities in

13908-847: The viability of hunting and gathering in the 21st century. One such group is the Pila Nguru (Spinifex people) of Western Australia , whose land in the Great Victoria Desert has proved unsuitable for European agriculture (and even pastoralism). Another are the Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean , who live on North Sentinel Island and to date have maintained their independent existence, repelling attempts to engage with and contact them. The Savanna Pumé of Venezuela also live in an area that

14030-427: The world. Across Western Eurasia, it was not until approximately 4,000 BC that farming and metallurgical societies completely replaced hunter-gatherers. These technologically advanced societies expanded faster in areas with less forest, pushing hunter-gatherers into denser woodlands. Only the middle-late Bronze Age and Iron Age societies were able to fully replace hunter-gatherers in their final stronghold located in

14152-456: Was 145 million in the late 15th and by the late 17th century, had been reduced to 15 million due to epidemics , wars, massacres, mass rapes , starvation, and enslavement. Indigenous historical trauma (IHT) is the trauma that can accumulate across generations and develop as a result of the historical ramifications of colonization and is linked to mental and physical health hardships and population decline. IHT affects many different people in

14274-642: Was cultivated as long as 10,000 years ago. According to Linda Newson , "It is clear that in pre-Columbian times some groups struggled to survive and often suffered food shortages and famines , while others enjoyed a varied and substantial diet." Persistent drought around AD 850 coincided with the collapse of the Classic Maya civilization, and the famine of One Rabbit (AD 1454) was a major catastrophe in Mexico. Indigenous peoples of North America began practicing farming approximately 4,000 years ago, late in

14396-656: Was immediately rejected by some leading members of the Association, and, while adopted by many, it was never universally accepted. While never popular in Indigenous communities themselves, it remains a preferred term among some anthropologists, notably in some parts of Canada and the English-speaking Caribbean . " Indigenous peoples in Canada " is used as the collective name for First Nations , Inuit , and Métis . The term Aboriginal peoples as

14518-505: Was not originally accepted by the myriad groups of Indigenous peoples themselves but has since been embraced or tolerated by many over the last two centuries. The term "Indian" generally does not include the culturally and linguistically distinct Indigenous peoples of the Arctic regions of the Americas, including the Aleuts , Inuit , or Yupik peoples . These peoples entered the continent as

14640-429: Was one of several central characteristics of nomadic hunting and gathering societies because mobility requires minimization of material possessions throughout a population. Therefore, no surplus of resources can be accumulated by any single member. Other characteristics Lee and DeVore proposed were flux in territorial boundaries as well as in demographic composition. At the same conference, Marshall Sahlins presented

14762-465: Was the common human mode of subsistence throughout the Paleolithic , but the observation of current-day hunters and gatherers does not necessarily reflect Paleolithic societies; the hunter-gatherer cultures examined today have had much contact with modern civilization and do not represent "pristine" conditions found in uncontacted peoples . The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture

14884-517: Was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the Indigenous peoples. After initial contact with Europeans and Africans, Old World diseases caused the deaths of 90 to 95% of the native population of the New World in the following 150 years. Smallpox killed from one-third to half of the native population of Hispaniola in 1518. By killing the Incan ruler Huayna Capac , smallpox caused

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