26 November 2009

The Indigeous People of North America


Photo: earthstarspiritualcenter.org


When European explorers arrived in America in 1492 they found around 2 million indigenous people living there.
The Europeans mistakenly called them Indians, thinking they had landed in the Indies in the Far East of Asia.
The explorer Christopher Columbus made this famous mistake.
The term “Indians” stuck with the people who lived there despite not even coming from India!!!.
How rude!!
These 'Indians' belonged to at least 300 different tribes and spoke over 2,000 different languages.
Famous examples of these indigenous tribes are

_ the Cheyenne

_ the Blackfoot

_ the Comanche

_ the Sioux


Each tribe spoke a separate language, and their houses, clothes and entertainment differed. However, they all followed a similar life based on hunting and farming.
These indigenous people were related to the peoples of north eastern Asia.
It is thought that their ancestors crossed a land bridge linking Siberia to Alaska around 30,000 BC.
There was gradual movement south to the Great Plains of (the yet to be
called) America.

www.schoolhistory.co.uk

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