Indian may refer to:

On the Indian subcontinent:

Indian people

A person belonging to one of the ethnic groups of India or South Asian ethnic groups (see Demographics of India)

Languages of India

Non-resident Indian and Person of Indian Origin

Indian (airline), a now defunct state-owned airline of India, also formerly known as ''Indian Airlines''.

In the Americas:

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

* First Nations of Canada

* Native Americans in the United States

* West Indians, associated with the Caribbean

Indigenous languages of the Americas

Mardi Gras Indians

In the arts

''Indian'' (1996 film), a Tamil film

''Indian'' (2001 film), a Hindi film

"Indian" (song), by Sturm und Drang

''Indian'' (soundtrack), a soundtrack album from the 1996 film

"Indians" (song), by Anthrax on the album ''Among the Living''

''Indians'' (play)

Geography

Indian River (disambiguation), several rivers and communities

The Indians, British Virgin Islands islets group

Sports teams

;Baseball

Cleveland Indians, in the Major Leagues

Indianapolis Indians, in the minor leagues

Indios de Mayagüez, in Puerto Rico

;Cricket

Mumbai Indians, in the Indian Premier League

;Hockey

Indians, Frölunda HC in Swedish hockey

Springfield Indians, of Springfield, Massachusetts,an original American Hockey League team

Other uses

Indian (card game)

Indus (constellation), ''The Indian''

Indian (motorcycle), US manufacturing company

See also

India (disambiguation)

Indica (disambiguation)

Indicus (disambiguation)

Indicum (disambiguation)

an:Indio ceb:Indio cs:Indián (rozcestník) de:Indisch es:Indio fr:Indien gl:Indio it:Indiano lv:Indiānis ms:Orang India nl:Indisch simple:Indian (disambiguation) sk:Indický fi:Intiaani sv:Indian (olika betydelser) tl:Indian (paglilinaw) th:อินเดียน

Coordinates	5°39′″N100°30′″N
name	Russell Peters
birth name	Russell Dominic Peters
birth date	September 29, 1970
birth place	Brampton, Ontario, Canada
medium	Stand-up, Television, Film, Radio
nationality	Canadian
genre	Satire, Improvisational comedy, Observational comedy
active	1989–present
subject	Racism, Race relations, Stereotypes, Multiculturalism, Indian culture
influences	George Carlin, Steve Martin, Cheech and Chong, Don Rickles, Eddie Murphy
signature	Russell Peters Autograph.svg
website	RussellPeters.com
spouse	Monica Diaz (2010–present) 1 child }}

Russell Dominic Peters (born September 29, 1970) is a Canadian comedian, actor and disc jockey. He began performing in Toronto in 1989 and has been nominated for four Gemini Awards.

Early life

Russell Peters was born in Brampton, Ontario, Canada to Eric and Maureen Peters. His family is of Anglo-Indian ancestry and is Catholic. His father was born in Pune, India and worked as a federal meat inspector and his mother was born in Calcutta, India. He has an older brother named Clayton who was born in Calcutta.

He went to Georges Vanier Catholic Elementary School from kindergarten to grade 8, Bramalea Secondary School for grades 9–10, and North Peel Secondary School for grades 11–12 in Brampton.

Career

Peters began performing in Toronto in 1989. He has since also performed in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, mainland China, Hong Kong, Iran, Denmark, South Africa, the Caribbean, Vietnam, New Zealand, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Sweden, India, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan, Norway , Lebanon, London, Pakistan and Trinidad among other places.

He hosted the Canada Day Comedy Festival 2006. His comedy special ''Russell Peters: Outsourced'', aired on Comedy Central on August 16, 2006. The DVD version features his uncensored performance. The DVD has been popular, especially in Canada, selling over 100,000 copies. ''Outsourced'' remained on the National DVD Chart over one and a half years after release.

In September 2008, it was confirmed that Peters made a deal with Fox to develop a new sitcom, based on his experience in Canada. Peters says, "It's really a snapshot of where my family maybe was ten years ago" and he ensures that the sitcom is "Something that will be funny and honest." Peters participated in a USO tour of Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, Africa and Greenland in November 2007 with Wilmer Valderrama and Mayra Veronica. Peters' latest DVD/CD combo ''Russell Peters: Red, White, and Brown'' was recorded on February 2, 2008, at The WAMU Theatre at Madison Square Garden. Peters and his brother, Clayton Peters, who is also his manager, self-produced and financed ''Red, White and Brown''. It was released in Canada in September 2008 and in the US on January 27, 2009. Peters also currently produces and stars on the radio situation comedy series, ''Monsoon House'', on CBC Radio One.

Peters was the host of the 2008 Juno Awards televised ceremonies in Calgary on April 6, 2008, for which he won a Gemini Award for "Best Performance or Host in a Variety Program or Series". The 2008 awards broadcast received the second-highest ratings ever for the program. He was asked to host the Juno Awards for a second year in a row. The 2009 Juno Awards took place in Vancouver on March 29, 2009.

Between June 2008 and June 2009, Peters earned $10 million, making him one of the highest-paid comedians during that twelve-month period.

Between June 2008 and June 2010, Peters earned $15 million, continuing his run as one of the highest-paid comedians.

On October 26, 2010, Peters released his autobiography, ''Call me Russell'', co - written with his brother Clayton and Dannis Koromilas.

Russell first appeared as a guest on the Joe Rogan podcast on December 17th 2010, episode 63. On June 21st 2011, Russell went onto the Joe Rogan podcast again, this time with Junior Simpson. Joe Rogan was the main host and Brian Redban was the co-host/technician.

Popularity

Peters' popularity extends to several countries. In Canada, Peters became the first comedian to sell out Toronto's Air Canada Centre, with more than 15,000 tickets in two days for the single show. He ended up selling over 30,000 tickets nationally over the two-day sales period. A total of over 60,000 tickets were sold across six cities. In Sydney, Peters had a record breaking audience of 13,880, making the event the largest stand-up comedy show in Australian history He broke a UK comedy sales record at London's O2 arena when he sold over 16,000 tickets to his show on February 14, 2009 . Peters attributes his sudden widespread popularity to a stand-up performance he did on the Canadian TV comedy series ''Comedy Now!'' that was uploaded onto YouTube and became viral. While the initial video upload featured his performance in its 45 minute entirety, subsequent videos uploaded by other YouTube users were snippets of that performance, chopped into each of the cultural groups he targeted. According to Peters, those snippets made their way to those specified cultural groups, and were well received by them.

Comedy

Russell Peters' stand-up performances are mostly made up of observational comedy where he uses humor to poke fun at the subjects of race, class and culture, often using his own life experiences as well as impersonations of different cultural accents to illustrate his act. Russell Peters uses his minority status to allow him to poke fun at different races in his performance, but according to an interview done for ''The National'', he does not intend to put down or offend different races and cultures, but instead tries to raise them up through humor. For example: "Somebody gonna get a hurt real bad".

Personal life

Peters proposed to girlfriend Monica Diaz García on July 10, 2010 at the Los Angeles International Airport. He announced the engagement via Twitter. The couple married on August 20, 2010 at A Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas. The wedding was attended by about 20 guests, including an Elvis impersonator. Peters and Diaz had their first child, a girl, due February 23, 2011. When announcing the pregnancy, Peters told The Canadian Press, "Did I get married because she was knocked up? I would say that expedited it." His daughter was born two and a half months early,on December 14, 2010, but was healthy as Peters stated on his Twitter. She was given the name Crystianna Marie Peters.

Awards and recognition

He has been nominated for four Gemini Awards, the Canadian television awards. He has also been nominated for Best Male Comic at the Canadian Comedy Awards. Peters has been featured at such shows as Montreal's Just for Laughs (Juste pour rire) Comedy Festival, the Winnipeg Comedy Festival, and the Edinburgh Festival.

On June 28, 2011 it was announced that Peters will receive a star on Canada's Walk of Fame and will be inducted on October 1 at Elgin Theatre in Toronto.

1997 – Nomination for the Gemini Award in the category "Best Individual Performance in a Comedy Program or Series". This was for ''Show Me The Funny'', from the TV-series ''Comics!'' (1997)

2004 – Nomination for a Gemini Award for his Comedy Now! special.

2008 – Nomination for a Gemini Award for hosting The Junos.

2008 – Winner of a Gemini Award for 'Best Performance or Host in a Variety Program or Series'.

Filmography

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Notable roles played

Peters has appeared in a few films, most recently ''Senior Skip Day'' also starring Larry Miller, Tara Reid, and Gary Lundy. Besides this, he has also had short appearances in the 1994 film ''Boozecan'' as Snake's Friend, the 1999 film ''Tiger Claws III'' as Detective Elliott, the 2004 film ''My Baby's Daddy'' as the obstetrician, the 2006 film ''Quarter Life Crisis'' as Dilip Kumar, the 2007 film ''The Take'' as Dr. Sharma, and the 2008 film ''Senior Skip Day'' as Uncle Todd.

Peters is scheduled to star as "Pervius" in ''National Lampoon's The Legend of Awesomest Maximus'' he is also going to appear in a CBC movie entitled 'Breakaway'. He also acted in Duncan Jones's movie ''Source Code'' as Max, an amateur comedian with a bad attitude. ;Acting roles – television

"Comics Without Borders" (2008)

Russell Peters: Red, White and Brown (2008)

Senior Skip Day/High School's Day Off (Australia title) (2008)- Uncle Todd

;Appearances on television

"Lopez Tonight" - Himself (February 2, 2010)

"The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" – Himself (2009)

"The 9th Annual Canadian Comedy Awards" (2008)- Himself (Winner – Best Large Venue Stand-up)

"CBC News: The Hour" .... Himself – Episode dated 18 September 2008 (2008) TV episode .... Himself

"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" – Himself – Episode dated 15 February 2008 (2008)

"Def Comedy Jam" – Episode #8.4 (2008) TV episode – Himself/Comedian

"Pulse: The Desi Beat" – Episode #1.9 (2007) TV episode – Himself

"Video on Trial" – Episode #3.3 (2007) TV episode – Himself

"Comics Unleashed" – Episode #1.6 (2009) TV episode- Himself

The 4th Annual Canadian Comedy Awards (2003) – Himself

The 5th Annual Canadian Comedy Awards (2004) – Nominee (Male Stand-up)

MTV Cribs (Where he featured on two different episodes)

;Self

Heckler (2007)

Let's All Hate Toronto (2007)

References

Further reading

External links

Official website

Russell Peters at Facebook

Russell named first Toronto ambassador

Category:1970 births Category:Actors from Ontario Category:Anglo-Indian people Category:Canadian expatriates in the United States Category:Canadian film actors Category:Canadian Internet personalities Category:Canadian people of Indian descent Category:Canadian radio actors Category:Canadian Roman Catholics Category:Canadian stand-up comedians Category:Gemini Award winners Category:Living people Category:People from Brampton

de:Russell Peters es:Russell Peters hi:रसेल पीटर्स it:Russell Peters kn:ರಸ್ಸೆಲ್ ಪೀಟರ್ಸ್ nl:Russell Peters ro:Russell Peters simple:Russell Peters ta:ரசல் பீட்டர்சு zh:罗素·彼得斯

The population figures for Indigenous peoples in the Americas before the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus have proven difficult to establish and rely on archaeological data and written records from European settlers. Most scholars writing at the end of the 19th century estimated the pre-Columbian population at about 10 million; by the end of the 20th century the scholarly consensus had shifted to about 50 million, with some arguing for 100 million or more. Contact with the New World led to the European colonization of the Americas, in which millions of immigrants from the "Old World" eventually settled in the New.

The population of African and Eurasian peoples in the Americas grew steadily, while the number of the indigenous people plummeted. Eurasian diseases such as smallpox, influenza, bubonic plague and pneumonic plagues devastated the Native Americans who did not have immunity. Conflict and outright warfare with European newcomers and other American tribes reduced populations and disrupted traditional society. The extent and causes of the decline have long been a subject of academic debate, along with its characterization as a genocide.

Population overview

Given the fragmentary nature of the evidence, even semi-accurate pre-Columbian population figures are impossible to obtain. Estimates are made by extrapolations from small bits of data. In 1976, geographer William Denevan used the existing estimates to derive a "consensus count" of about 54 million people. Nonetheless, more recent estimates still range widely.

Using an estimate of approximately 30 million people in 1492 (including 15 million in the Aztec Empire and six million in the Inca Empire), the lowest estimates give a death toll due from disease of an astonishing 80% by the end of the 17th century (eight million people in 1650). Latin America would match its 15th century population early in the 20th century; it numbered 17 million in 1800, 30 million in 1850, 61 million in 1900, 105 million in 1930, 218 million in 1960, 361 million in 1980, and 563 million in 2005. In the last three decades of the 16th century, the population of present-day Mexico dropped to about one million people. The Maya population is today estimated at six million, which is about the same as at the end of the 15th century, according to some estimates. In what is now Brazil, the indigenous population declined from a pre-Columbian high of an estimated four million to some 300,000.

While it is difficult to determine exactly how many Natives lived in North America before Columbus, estimates range from a low of 2.1 million (Ubelaker 1976) to 7 million people to (Russell Thornton) to a high of 18 million (Dobyns 1983).

The Aboriginal population of Canada during the late 15th century is estimated to have been between 200,000 and two million, with a figure of 500,000 currently accepted by Canada's Royal Commission on Aboriginal Health. Repeated outbreaks of European infectious diseases such as influenza, measles and smallpox (to which they had no natural immunity), combined with dispossession from European/Canadian settlements and repressive policies, resulted in a forty to eighty percent aboriginal population decrease post-contact. For example, during the late 1630s, smallpox killed over half of the Wyandot (Huron), who controlled most of the early North American fur trade in what became Canada, were reduced to fewer than 10,000 people.

Historian David Henige has argued that many population figures are the result of arbitrary formulas selectively applied to numbers from unreliable historical sources. He believes this is a weakness unrecognized by several contributors to the field, and insists there is not sufficient evidence to produce population numbers that have any real meaning. He characterizes the modern trend of high estimates as "pseudo-scientific number-crunching." Henige does not advocate a low population estimate, but argues that the scanty and unreliable nature of the evidence renders broad estimates inevitably suspect, saying "high counters" (as he calls them) have been particularly flagrant in their misuse of sources. Many population studies acknowledge the inherent difficulties in producing reliable statistics, given the scarcity of hard data.

The population debate has often had ideological underpinnings. Low estimates were sometimes reflective of European notions of cultural and racial superiority. Historian Francis Jennings argued, "Scholarly wisdom long held that Indians were so inferior in mind and works that they could not possibly have created or sustained large populations." On the other hand, some have argued that contemporary estimates of a high pre-Columbian indigenous population are rooted in a bias against Western civilization and/or Christianity. Robert Royal writes that "estimates of pre-Columbian population figures have become heavily politicized with some scholars, who are particularly critical of Europe, often favoring wildly higher figures."

Civilizations rose and fell, and indigenous peoples migrated long before Europeans arrived on the scene. The indigenous population in 1492 was not necessarily at a high point and may actually have been in decline in some areas. Fernand Braudel has pointed out a problem the Amerindian faced which was not a factor in Eurasia and Africa: "The Indian population ... suffered from a demographic weakness, particularly because of the absence of any substitute animal milk. Mothers had to nurse their children until they were three or four years old. This long period of breast-feeding severely reduced female fertility and made any demographic revival precarious." Indigenous populations in most areas of the Americas reached a low point by the early 20th century. In most cases, populations have since begun to climb. In the United States, for instance, the numbers may already have recovered to pre-Columbian levels or even exceeded them.

Pre-Columbian Americas

Genetic diversity and population structure in the American land mass using DNA micro-satellite markers (genotype) sampled from North, Central, and South America have been analyzed against similar data available from other indigenous populations worldwide. The Amerindian populations show a lower genetic diversity than populations from other continental regions. Observed is both a decreasing genetic diversity as geographic distance from the Bering Strait occurs and a decreasing genetic similarity to Siberian populations from Alaska (genetic entry point). Also observed is evidence of a higher level of diversity and lower level of population structure in western South America compared to eastern South America. A relative lack of differentiation between Mesoamerican and Andean populations is a scenario that implies coastal routes were easier for migrating peoples (Paleo-Indians) to traverse in comparison with inland routes. The overall pattern that is emerging suggests that the Americas were recently colonized by a small number of individuals (effective size of about 70), and then they grew by a factor of 10 over 800 – 1000 years. The data also show that there have been genetic exchanges between Asia, the Arctic and Greenland since the initial peopling of the Americas.

Depopulation from disease

Nearly all scholars now believe that widespread epidemic disease, to which the natives had no prior exposure or resistance, was the overwhelming cause of the massive population decline of the Native Americans. They reject both of the earliest European immigrants' explanations for the population decline of the American natives. The first explanation was the brutal practices of the Spanish conquistadores, as recorded by the Spanish themselves. This was applied through the encomienda which was a system to protect warring tribes as well as to teach the natives the essence of the Spanish language and the Catholic religion. The most notable account was that of the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas, whose writings vividly depict Spanish atrocities committed in particular against the Taínos. It took five years for the successful Taíno rebellion to be quelled by both the Real Audiencia—through diplomatic sabotage, and through the joint-Indian forces allied and fighting with the Spanish. After Emperor Charles V personally eradicated the notion of the encomienda system as a use for slave labour, there were not enough Spanish to have caused such a large population decline. The second European explanation was a perceived divine approval, in which God removed the natives as part of His "divine plan" to make way for a new Christian civilization. Many native Americans viewed their troubles in terms of religious or supernatural causes within their own belief systems.

Soon after Europeans and Africans began to arrive in the New World, bringing with them the infectious diseases of Europe and Africa, observers noted immense numbers of indigenous Americans began to die from these diseases. One reason this death toll was overlooked (or downplayed) is that once introduced the diseases raced ahead of European immigration in many areas. Disease killed off a sizable portion of the populations before European observations (and thus written records) were made. After the epidemics had already killed massive numbers of natives, many newer European immigrants assumed that there had always been relatively few indigenous peoples. The scope of the epidemics over the years was tremendous, killing millions of people—possibly in excess of 90% of the population in the hardest hit areas—and creating one of "the greatest human catastrophe in history, far exceeding even the disaster of the Black Death of medieval Europe", which had killed up to one-third of the people in Europe and Asia between 1347 and 1351. The Black Death occurred to a European population which also had not been exposed and had little or no resistance to a new disease.

One of the most devastating diseases was smallpox, but other deadly diseases included typhus, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, malaria, tuberculosis, mumps, yellow fever, and pertussis (whooping cough), which were chronic in Eurasia. The indigenous Americas also had a number of endemic diseases, such as tuberculosis and perhaps including an unusually virulent type of syphilis, which soon became rampant when brought back to the Old World. (This transfer of disease between the Old and New Worlds was part of the phenomenon known as the "Columbian Exchange"). The diseases brought to the New World proved to be exceptionally deadly to the Native Americans.

The epidemics had very different effects in different regions of the Americas. The most vulnerable groups were those with a relatively small population and few built-up immunities. Many island-based groups were annihilated. The Caribs and Arawaks of the Caribbean nearly ceased to exist, as did the Beothuks of Newfoundland. While disease ranged swiftly through the densely populated empires of Mesoamerica, the more scattered populations of North America saw a slower spread.

Virulence and mortality

A disease (viral or bacterial) that kills its victims before they can spread it to others tends to flare up and then die out, like a fire running out of fuel. A more resilient disease would establish an equilibrium; if its victims lived beyond infection, the disease would spread further. The evolutionary process selects against quick lethality, with the most immediately fatal diseases being the most short-lived. A similar evolutionary pressure acts upon the victim populations, as those lacking genetic resistance to common diseases die and do not leave descendants, whereas those who are resistant procreate and pass resistant genes to their offspring. For example, in the fifty years following Columbus' voyage to the Americas, an unusually strong strain of syphilis killed a high proportion of infected Europeans within a few months; over time, however, the disease has become much less virulent.

Thus both diseases and populations tend to evolve towards an equilibrium in which the common diseases are non-symptomatic, mild, or manageably chronic. When a population that has been relatively isolated is exposed to new diseases, it has no resistance to the new diseases (the population is "biologically naive"); this body of people succumbs at a much higher rate, resulting in what is known as a "virgin soil" epidemic. Before the European arrival, the Americas had been isolated from the Eurasian-African landmass. The peoples of the Old World had had thousands of years for their populations to accommodate to their common diseases.

The fact that all members of an immunologically naive population are exposed to a new disease simultaneously increases the fatalities. Populations where the disease is endemic have generations of individuals with acquired immunity or hardiness. In populations where a disease is endemic, most adults are exposed to the disease at a young age. Thus resistant to reinfection, they are able to care for individuals who catch the disease for the first time, such as the next generation of children. With proper care, many of these "childhood diseases" are often survivable. In a naive population, all age groups are affected at once, leaving few or no healthy caregivers to nurse the sick. With no resistant individuals healthy enough to tend to the ill, a disease may have higher fatalities than otherwise.

The natives of the Americas suffered the introduction of several new diseases at once, so that a person who successfully resisted one disease might die from another. Multiple simultaneous infections (e.g., smallpox and typhus at the same time) or in close succession (e.g., smallpox in an individual who was still weak from a recent bout of typhus) are more deadly than just the sum of the individual diseases. In this scenario, death rates can also be elevated by combinations of new and familiar diseases: smallpox in combination with American strains of syphilis or yaws, for example.

Other contributing factors:

Native American medical treatments such as sweat baths and cold water immersion (practiced in some areas) weakened some patients and probably increased mortality rates. Europeans brought many diseases with them because they had many more domesticated animals than the Native Americans. Domestication usually means close and frequent contact between animals and people, which is an opportunity for diseases of domestic animals to mutate and migrate into the human population.

The Eurasian landmass extends many thousands of miles along an east–west axis. Climate zones also extend for thousands of miles, which facilitated the spread of agriculture, domestication of animals, and the diseases associated with domestication. The Americas extend mainly north and south, which, according to the environmental determinist theory popularized by Jared Diamond in ''Guns, Germs, and Steel'', meant that it was much harder for cultivated plant species, domesticated animals, and diseases to migrate.

Mexican epidemiologist Rodolfo Acuña-Soto argues that mortality due to imported diseases was compounded, or even dwarfed, by mortality due to a hemorrhagic fever native to the Americas. The Aztecs called it ''''. Acuña-Soto's conclusions are based in part on the 50 volumes written by Francisco Hernández, physician to Philip II of Spain. He interviewed survivors of the 1576 epidemic and autopsied many victims, then recorded his findings and observations. He found that the fever was endemic during drought years, a series of which had coincided with the early Spanish invasion of Central America. Acuña-Soto noticed that previous historians using the same reference works that he used had chosen which accounts to base their results on, so that epidemic illnesses coinciding with the Spanish invasion could, by selectively using resources, look like accounts of European-caused smallpox rather than the Aztec-recognized ''''. The disease the Aztecs described, however, when read in full described a hemorrhagic fever that had nothing in common with smallpox. Such fevers are viral, spread by rodents and bodily fluid contacts between infected people. Using evidence from 24 epidemics, Acuña-Soto concluded that the Spanish did not bring the epidemic to the Aztecs, but arrived during its onset and intensification. Acuña-Soto's theory is controversial and not widely accepted .

Deliberate infection?

One of the most contentious issues relating to disease depopulation in the Americas concerns the degree to which Europeans deliberately infected indigenous peoples with diseases such as smallpox. Cook asserts that there is no evidence that the Spanish attempted to infect the American natives. The cattle introduced by the Spanish polluted the water reserves which Native Americans dug in the fields to accumulate rain water. In response, the Franciscans and Dominicans created public fountains and aqueducts to guarantee access to drinking water. But when the Franciscans lost their privileges in 1572, many of these fountains were not guarded any more and deliberate well poisoning may have happened. Although no proof of such poisoning has been found, some historians believe the decrease of the population correlates with the end of religious orders' control of the water.

1763 Smallpox outbreak at Fort Pitt

In one incident, British soldiers in North America were said to have discussed intentionally infecting native people as part of a war effort. During Pontiac's Rebellion in 1763, a number of Native Americans launched a widespread war against British soldiers and settlers to drive the British out of the Great Lakes region. In what is now western Pennsylvania, Native Americans (primarily Delawares) laid siege to Fort Pitt on June 22, 1763. Surrounded and isolated, William Trent, the commander of Fort Pitt gave representatives of the besieging Delawares two blankets and a handkerchief from the Pittsburgh smallpox hospital, "out of our regard to them", when the two Delaware men came to talk to him. Letters exist between two other British officers, Jeffrey Amherst and Henry Bouquet, that explicitly advocate the idea of using smallpox-infested blankets to kill Indians. Historians disagree as to whether Trent acted with the intent expressed by Bouquet and Amherst.

In Carl Waldman's Atlas of the North American Indian [NY: Facts on File, 1985]. Waldman writes, in reference to a siege of Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) by Chief Pontiac's forces during the summer of 1763: ... Captain Simeon Ecuyer had bought time by sending smallpox-infected blankets and handkerchiefs to the Indians surrounding the fort—an early example of biological warfare—which started an epidemic among them. Amherst himself had encouraged this tactic in a letter to Ecuyer. [p. 108]

Whatever Trent's intent, a number of recent scholars consider doubtful the evidence connecting his gift of blankets to the smallpox outbreak. These scholars believe that the disease was most likely spread by native warriors returning from attacks on infected white settlements. In other words, while some officers expressed the desire to use biological warfare, smallpox was so widespread and so easy to catch that there were other opportunities for Native Americans to be infected. Others attribute the smallpox outbreak to the common Indian practice of digging up recent European graves to retrieve the clothes of those buried , some of whom had died from smallpox.

Vaccination

After Edward Jenner's 1796 confirmation of the efficacy of smallpox vaccination, the inoculation technique became better known. Smallpox became less deadly in the United States (and elsewhere). Many colonists and natives became vaccinated. Although in some cases officials tried to inoculate natives, the disease often was carried beyond containment attempts. At other times, trade demands broke quarantines. In other cases, some natives refused inoculation because of suspicion of European Americans. In 1831 government officials inoculated the Yankton Sioux at Sioux Agency. The Santee Sioux refused inoculation and many died.

Other causes of depopulation

War and violence

While epidemic disease was by far the leading cause of the population decline of the American indigenous peoples after 1492, there were other contributing factors, all of them related to European contact and colonization. One of these factors was warfare. According to demographer Russell Thornton, although many lives were lost in wars over the centuries, and war sometimes contributed to the near extinction of certain tribes, warfare and death by other violent means was a comparatively minor cause of overall native population decline.

There is some disagreement among scholars about how widespread warfare was in pre-Columbian America, but there is general agreement that war became deadlier after the arrival of the Europeans and their firearms. Europeans had gunpowder and swords, which made killing easier and war more deadly. Europeans proved consistently successful in achieving domination in warfare with Native Americans for a variety of reasons. One reason was the staying power of the Europeans, who could call on a far ranging supply network, and could sustain a conflict over several years including the winters if necessary. Almost no Indian tribes had the stored resources to conduct a war for more than a few months. The massive death toll from disease played a major role in the European conquest, but equally decisive was the European approach to war, which was less ritualistic and more focused on achieving decisive victory. European colonization also contributed to a number of wars between Native Americans, who fought over which of them should have first access to the new weapon.

Empires such as the Incas depended on a highly centralized administration for the distribution of resources. Disruption caused by the war and the colonization hampered the traditional economy, and possibly led to shortages of food and materials.

Exploitation

Some Spaniards objected to the encomienda system, notably Bartolomé de las Casas, who insisted that the Indians were humans with souls and rights. Due to many revolts and military encounters, Emperor Charles V helped relieve the strain on both the Indian labourers and the Spanish vanguards probing the Caribana for military and diplomatic purposes. Later on New Laws were promulgated in Spain in 1542 to protect isolated natives, but the abuses in the Americas were never entirely or permanently abolished. The Spanish also employed the pre-Columbian draft system called the ''mita'', and treated their subjects as something between slaves and serfs. Serfs stayed to work the land; slaves were exported to the mines, where large numbers of them died. In other areas the Spaniards replaced the ruling Aztecs and Incas and divided the conquered lands among themselves ruling as the new feudal lords with often, but unsuccessful lobbying to the viceroys of the Spanish crown to pay Tlaxcalan war demnities. The infamous Bandeirantes from São Paulo, adventurers mostly of mixed Portuguese and native ancestry, penetrated steadily westward in their search for Indian slaves. Serfdom existed as such in parts of Latin America well into the 19th century, past independence.

Massacres

Las Casas and other dissenting Spaniards from the colonial period gave vivid descriptions of the atrocities inflicted upon the natives. This has helped to create an image of the Spanish conquistadores as cruel in the extreme. Even as late 1520, there were still tentative parleys between the still, in both a diplomatic and agricultural sense, explorative Spaniards who were continuously replenished by the natives' superior knowledge of the terrain. Great revenues were drawn from Hispaniola so the advent of losing manpower didn't benefit the Spanish crown. At best, the reinforcement of vanguards sent by the Council of the Indies to explore the Caribana country and gather information on alliances or hostilities was the main goal of the local viceroys and their adelantados. Although mass killings and atrocities were not a significant factor in native depopulation, no mainstream scholar dismisses the sometimes humiliating circumstances now believed to be precipitated by civil disorder as well as Spanish cruelty.

However, in many areas settlers and even governments did engage in what have been called "democides", usually against nomadic Indian tribes who were seen solely as hindrances to land use by European settlers. Whether or not these people were non-combatants (intruding on the term "massacre") is a subject to debate. (For further discussion of democide, see the following section.) Notable democides include:

The Tainos in the Antilles (Some believe 80% of the population disappeared in thirty years). The smallpox outbreak in 1518–1519 wiped out much of the region's indigenous population.

The Pequot War in early New England.

In mid-19th century Argentina, post-independence leaders Juan Manuel de Rosas and Julio Argentino Roca engaged in what they presenteded as a "Conquest of the Desert" against the natives of the Argentinian interior, leaving over 1,300 indigenous dead. While some California tribes were settled on reservations, others were hunted down and massacred by 19th century American settlers. It is estimated that some 4,500 people of the Population of Native California suffered violent deaths between 1849 and 1870.

Determining how many people died in these massacres is difficult. Amateur historian William M. Osborn calculates that as high as 16,000 people died at the hands of both the settlers and native Americans. Other somewhat presumptuous detailing of deadly frontier encounters range from 64,000 to 21,586 native and colonizing Americans being wounded, captured or killed. Both numbers are far too low for the presumed large loss of manpower.

Displacement and disruption

Even more consequential than warfare or mistreatment on indigenous populations was the geographic displacement of native Indian tribes. The increased European population due to immigration and high birth rates of Native European settlers put pressure on native tribes to relocate and alter their traditional ways of life. The introduction of new forms of intensive agriculture by Europeans let them grow enough food in a given area to support many more people than the native hunting and gathering societies could. Displacement of native peoples living their traditional lifestyles often resulted in decreased birth rates and often higher death rates which steadily lowered their populations for some time. In the United States, for example, the relocations of Native Americans resulting from the policies of Indian removal and the reservation system created a disruption which resulted in fewer births and a short term population decline.

The populations of many Native American peoples were reduced by the common practice of intermarrying with Europeans. Although many Indian cultures that once thrived are extinct today, their descendants exist today in some of the bloodlines of the current inhabitants of the Americas.

Formal apologies

United States of America

On September 8, 2000, the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) formally apologized for the agency's participation in the "ethnic cleansing" of Western tribes.

See also

References

Notes

Bibliography

;Books

Cappel, Constance, The Smallpox Genocide of the Odawa Tribe at L'Arbre Croche, 1763: The History of a Native American People, Edwin Mellen Press, 2007, ISBN 0-7734-5220-6, ISBN 13: 978-0-7734-5220-6.

Cook, Noble David. ''Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-521-62208-5, ISBN 0-521-62730-3.

Hanson, Victor Davis. ''Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power''. New York: Doubleday, 2001. ISBN 0-385-50052-1.

Henige, David. ''Numbers from Nowhere: The American Indian Contact Population Debate''. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8061-3044-X.

Mann, Charles C. ''1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus'' New York: Knopf, 2005. ISBN 1-4000-4006-X

Royal, Robert. ''1492 and All That: Political Manipulations of History''. Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1992.

Shoemaker, Nancy. ''American Indian Population Recovery in the Twentieth Century''. University of New Mexico Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8263-1919-X.

Stannard, David E. ''American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World''. Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-19-508557-4

Stearn, E. Wagner and Allen E. Stearn. ''The Effect of Smallpox on the Destiny of the Amerindian''. Boston: Humphries, 1945.

Thornton, Russell. ''American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492''. University of Oklahoma Press, 1987. ISBN 0-8061-2074-6.

;Online sources

Lewy, Guenter. "Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?", History News Network, originally published in ''Commentary''.

Lord, Lewis. How many people were here before Columbus? (mirror of original at archive.org), August 10, 1997.

Rummel, R.J. ''Death by Government'', Chapter 3: Pre-Twentieth Century Democide

Stutz, Bruce. Megadeath in Mexico Discover, February 21, 2006.

White, Matthew. "The Annihilation of the Native Americans". Amateur website, but reports data from scholarly sources.

Jeffrey Amherst and Smallpox Blankets "Lord Jeffrey Amherst's letters discussing germ warfare against American Indians" Retrieved February 2007

Further reading

Fagan, Brian. ''Ancient North America''. London: Thames and Hudson, 2005, ISBN 0-500-28532-2.

Mann, Charles C. ''1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus''. Knopf Publishing Group, August 2005, ISBN 1-4000-4006-X.

McNeill, William H. ''Plagues and Peoples''. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., New York, 1976, ISBN 0-385-12122-9.

Michael Sletcher, ‘North American Indians’, in Will Kaufman and Heidi Macpherson, eds., ''Britain and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History'', (2 vols., Oxford, 2005).

Cappel, Constance, ''The Smallpox Genocide of the Odawa Tribe at L'Arbre Croche. 1763: The History of a Native American People'', Edwin Mellen Press, October, 2007, ISBN 10: 0-7734-5220-6 and ISBN 13: 978-0-7734-5220-6.

External links

Article by Russell Thornton on American Indian population history in North America

Excerpts from David Stannard's ''American Holocaust''

Article by Alan Rinding on Brazil's Indians

Colonial Brazil: Portuguese, Tupi, etc

Indigenous Genocide in the Brazilian Amazon

Category:History of indigenous peoples of the Americas Category:Genocide Category:Native American history Category:Colonization of the Americas Category:Colonization history of the United States Category:History of the Americas Category:Demographic history of the United States Category:Indigenous peoples of the Americas Category:Native American genocide

be:Генацыд індзейцаў es:Catástrofe demográfica en América tras la llegada de los europeos fr:Histoire démographique des Amérindiens pt:História demográfica dos povos indígenas das Américas ru:Геноцид индейцев

Coordinates	5°39′″N100°30′″N
Group	Indigenous peoples of the Americas
Pop	approximately 48 million
Regions	''(not including Mestizo or Zambo population)''
Region1
Pop1	13.8 million
Ref1
Region2
Pop2	10.1 million
Ref2
Region3
Pop3	6 million
Ref3
Region4
Pop4	5.4 million
Ref4
Region5
Pop5	3.4 million
Region6
Pop6	2.5 million
Ref6
Region7
Pop7	1.4 million
Ref7
Region8
Pop8	1.2 million
Ref8
Region9
Pop9	700,000
Ref9
Region10
Pop10	692,000
Ref10
Region11
Pop11	600,000
Ref11
Region12
Pop12	524,000
Ref12
Region13
Pop13	443,847
Ref13
Region14
Pop14	204,000
Ref14
Region15
Pop15	95,235
Ref15
Region16
Pop16	~70,000
Ref16
Languages	Indigenous languages of the Americas
Religions	Inuit religionNative American mythology Native American religionChristianity
Related	}}

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identifed with those peoples. The indigenous peoples of the Americas also include Iñupiat, Cup'ik/Yup'ik, Alutiiq, Aleut, Inuit, Aboriginals, and Native Americans, also known in Canada as First Nations, (by Christopher Columbus' geographic mistake) Indians, Red Indians, American Indians, or Amerindians. Indigenous peoples are also known by their specific tribal and cultural ancestry and citizenship.

According to the New World migration model, a migration of humans from Eurasia to the Americas took place via Beringia, a land bridge which connected the two continents across what is now the Bering Strait. The most recent point at which this migration could have taken place is ca. 12,000 years ago, with the earliest period remaining a matter of some unresolved contention. These early Paleo-Indians soon spread throughout the Americas, diversifying into many hundreds of culturally distinct nations and tribes. According to the oral histories of many of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, they have been living there since their genesis, described by a wide range of traditional creation accounts.

Application of the term "Indian" originated with Christopher Columbus, who thought that he had arrived in the East Indies, while seeking Asia. Later the name was still used as the Americas at the time were often called West Indies. This has served to imagine a kind of racial or cultural unity for the aboriginal peoples of the Americas. Once created, the unified "Indian" was codified in law, religion, and politics. The unitary idea of "Indians" was not originally shared by indigenous peoples, but many over the last two centuries have embraced the identity.

While some indigenous peoples of the Americas were historically hunter-gatherers, many practiced aquaculture and agriculture. The impact of their agricultural endowment to the world is a testament to their time and work in reshaping and cultivating the flora indigenous to the Americas. Some societies depended heavily on agriculture while others practiced a mix of farming, hunting, and gathering. In some regions the indigenous peoples created monumental architecture, large-scale organized cities, chiefdoms, states, and empires.

Many parts of the Americas are still populated by indigenous Americans; some countries have sizable populations, especially Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, and Ecuador. At least a thousand different indigenous languages are spoken in the Americas. Some, such as Quechua languages, Aymara, Guaraní, Mayan languages, and Nahuatl, count their speakers in millions. Many also maintain aspects of indigenous cultural practices to varying degrees, including religion, social organization and subsistence practices. Some indigenous peoples still live in relative isolation from Western society, and a few are still counted as uncontacted peoples.

History

Migration into the continents

The specifics of Paleo-Indian migration to and throughout the Americas, including the exact dates and routes traveled, are subject to ongoing research and discussion. The traditional Western theory has been that these early migrants moved into the Beringia land bridge between eastern Siberia and present-day Alaska around 40,000—16,500 years ago, when sea levels were significantly lowered due to the Quaternary glaciation. These people are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct Pleistocene megafauna along ''ice-free corridors'' that stretched between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using primitive boats, they migrated down the Pacific Northwest coast to South America. Evidence of the latter would since have been covered by a sea level rise of hundreds of meters following the last ice age.

The time range of 40,000—16,500 years ago is a hot source of debate and will be for years to come. The few agreements achieved to date are the origin from Central Asia, with widespread habitation of the Americas during the end of the last glacial period, or more specifically what is known as the late glacial maximum, around 16,000 — 13,000 years before present.

Stone tools, particularly projectile points and scrapers, are the primary evidence of the earliest human activity in the Americas. Crafted lithic flaked tools are used by archaeologists and anthropologists to classify cultural periods. Scientific evidence links indigenous Americans to Asian peoples, specifically eastern Siberian populations. Indigenous peoples of the Americas have been linked to North Asian populations by linguistic factors, the distribution of blood types, and in genetic composition as reflected by molecular data, such as DNA.

Pre-Columbian era

The Pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in 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 settlement in the Upper Paleolithic to European colonization during the Early Modern period.

While technically referring to the era before Christopher Columbus's voyages of 1492 to 1504, in practice the term usually includes the history of American indigenous cultures until they were either conquered or significantly influenced by Europeans, even if this happened decades or even centuries after Columbus' initial landing. Pre-Columbian is used especially often in the context of the great indigenous civilizations of the Americas, such as those of Mesoamerica (the Olmec, the Toltec, the Teotihuacano, the Zapotec, the Mixtec, the Aztec, and the Maya) and the Andes (Inca, Moche, Chibcha, Cañaris).

Many pre-Columbian civilizations established characteristics and hallmarks which included permanent or urban settlements, agriculture, civic and monumental architecture, and complex societal hierarchies. Some of these civilizations had long faded by the time of the first permanent European and African arrivals (ca. late 15th–early 16th centuries), and are known only through oral history and archaeological investigations. Others were contemporary with this period, and are also known from historical accounts of the time. A few, such as the Maya, Olmec, Mixtec, and Nahua peoples, had their own written records. However, the European colonists of the time viewed such texts as heretical, and much was destroyed in Christian pyres. Only a few hidden documents remain today, leaving contemporary historians with glimpses of ancient culture and knowledge.

According to both indigenous American and European accounts and documents, American civilizations at the time of European encounter possessed many impressive accomplishments. For instance, the Aztecs built one of the most impressive cities in the world, Tenochtitlan, the ancient site of Mexico City, with an estimated population of 200,000. American civilizations also displayed impressive accomplishments in astronomy and mathematics. Inuit, Alaskan Native, and American Indian creation myths tell of a variety of originations 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".

So far, the only verifiable site of "pre-Columbian" European settlement anywhere in the Western Hemisphere is L'Anse aux Meadows, located near the very northern tip of the Canadian island of Newfoundland. It was settled by the Norse around the end of the 10th century AD.

European colonization

The European colonization of the Americas forever changed the lives, bloodlines and cultures of the peoples of the continent. The population history of American indigenous peoples postulates that infectious disease exposure, displacement, and warfare diminished populations, with the first the most significant cause. The first indigenous group encountered by Columbus were the 250,000 Taínos of Hispaniola who were the dominant culture in the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas. In thirty years, about 70% of the Taínos died. They had no immunity to European diseases, so outbreaks of measles and smallpox ravaged their population. The increased ignorance towards the practice of punishing the Taínos for revolting themselves from forced labour, despite the measures brought by the encomienda which included religious education and protection from warring tribes, eventually helped conceived the last great Taíno rebellion.

Mistreated, the Taínos began to adopt suicidal behaviors, with women aborting or killing their infants, men jumping from the cliffs or ingesting ''manioc'', a violent poison. Eventually, a Taíno Cacique named Enriquillo managed to hold out in the mountain range of Bahoruco for thirteen years conducting serious damage to the Spanish, Carib-held plantations and their Indian auxiliaries. After hearing of the seriousness of the revolt, Emperor Charles V sent captain Francisco Barrionuevo to negotiate a peace treaty with the ever increasing number of rebels. Two months later, with the consulting of 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 with regards to native Indians. They forbade the maltreatment of natives, and endorsed their conversion to Catholicism. The Spanish crown found it difficult to enforce these laws in a distant colony. Reasons for the decline of the Native American populations are variously theorized to be from epidemic diseases, conflicts with Europeans, and conflicts among warring tribes. Scholars now believe that, among the various contributing factors, epidemic disease was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the American natives. After first contacts with Europeans and Africans, some believe that the death of 90 to 95% of the native population of the New World was caused by Old World diseases. Half the native population of Hispaniola in 1518 was killed by smallpox. Within a few years smallpox killed between 60% and 90% of the Inca population, with other waves of European disease weakening them further. Smallpox was only the first epidemic. Typhus (probably) in 1546, influenza and smallpox together in 1558, smallpox again in 1589, diphtheria in 1614, measles in 1618—all ravaged the remains of Inca culture. Smallpox had killed millions of native inhabitants of Mexico. Unintentionally introduced at Veracruz with the arrival of Pánfilo de Narváez on April 23, 1520, smallpox ravaged Mexico in the 1520s, possibly killing over 150,000 in Tenochtitlan alone (the heartland of the Aztec Empire), and aided in the victory of Hernán Cortés over the Aztec empire at Tenochtitlan (present-day Mexico City) in 1521.

Over the centuries, the Europeans had developed high degrees of immunity to these diseases, while the indigenous Americans had no such immunity. Europeans had been ravaged in their own turn by such diseases as bubonic plague and Asian flu that moved west from Asia to Europe. In addition, when they went to some territories, such as Africa and Asia, they were more vulnerable to malaria. The repeated outbreaks of influenza, measles and smallpox probably resulted in a decline of between one-half and two-thirds of the Aboriginal population of eastern North America during the first 100 years of European contact. In 1617–1619, smallpox reportedly killed 90% of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Native American residents. In 1633, in Plymouth, 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 the lands of the Iroquois by 1679. During the 1770s, smallpox killed at least 30% of the West Coast Native Americans. Smallpox epidemics in 1780–1782 and 1837–1838 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'').

In Brazil, the indigenous population has declined from a pre-Columbian high of an estimated three million to some 300,000 in 1997.

Later explorations of the Caribbean led to the discovery of the Arawak peoples of the Lesser Antilles. The culture was destroyed by 1650. Only 500 had survived by the year 1550, though the bloodlines continued through the modern populace. In Amazonia, indigenous societies weathered centuries of colonization.

The Spaniards and other Europeans brought horses to the Americas. Some of these animals escaped and began to breed and increase their numbers in the wild. The re-introduction of the horse had a profound impact on Native American culture in the Great Plains of North America and of Patagonia in South America. By domesticating horses, some tribes had great success: they expanded their territories, exchanged many goods with neighboring tribes, and more easily captured game, especially bison.

Agriculture

Over the course of thousands of years, American indigenous peoples domesticated, bred and cultivated a large array of plant species. These species now constitute 50–60% of all crops in cultivation worldwide. In certain cases, the indigenous peoples developed entirely new species and strains through artificial selection, as was the case in the domestication and breeding of maize from wild ''teosinte'' grasses in the valleys of southern Mexico. Numerous such agricultural products retain native names in the English and Spanish lexicons.

The South American highlands were a center of early agriculture. Genetic testing of the wide variety of cultivars and wild species suggest 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 was cultivated as long as 10,000 years ago. According to George Raudzens, "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." The persistent drought around 850 AD coincided with the collapse of Classic Maya civilization, and the famine of One Rabbit (A.D. 1454) was a major catastrophe in Mexico.

Natives of North American began practicing farming approximately 4,000 years ago, late in the Archaic period of North American cultures. Technology had advanced to the point that pottery was becoming common, and the small-scale felling of trees became feasible. Concurrently, the Archaic Indians began using fire in a widespread manner. Intentional burning of vegetation was used to mimic the effects of natural fires that tended to clear forest understories. It made travel easier and facilitated the growth of herbs and berry-producing plants, which were important for both food and medicines.

In the Mississippi River valley, Europeans noted Native Americans' managed groves of nut and fruit trees as orchards, not far from villages and towns, in addition to their gardens and agricultural fields. Wildlife competition could be reduced by understory burning. Further away, prescribed burning would have been used in forest and prairie areas.

Many crops first domesticated by indigenous Americans are now produced and/or used globally. Chief among these is maize or "corn", arguably 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, tomato, 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, manioc 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 the Menominee of Wisconsin, suggest that longstanding "sacred values" may represent a summary of sustainable millennial traditions.

Culture

Cultural practices in the Americas seem to have been mostly shared within geographical zones where otherwise unrelated peoples might adopt similar technologies and social organizations. An example of such a cultural area could be Mesoamerica, where millennia of coexistence and shared development between the peoples of the region produced a fairly homogeneous culture with complex agricultural and social patterns. Another well-known example could be the North American plains area, where until the 19th century, several different peoples shared traits of nomadic hunter-gatherers primarily based on buffalo hunting.

Writing systems

An independent origin and development of writing is counted among the many achievements and innovations of pre-Columbian American cultures. The Mesoamerican region produced a number of indigenous writing systems from the 1st millennium BCE onwards. What may be the earliest-known example in the Americas of an extensive text thought to be writing is by the Cascajal Block. The Olmec hieroglyphs tablet has been indirectly dated from ceramic shards found in the same context to approximately 900 BCE, around the time that Olmec occupation of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán began to wane.

The Maya writing system (often called ''hieroglyphs'' from a superficial resemblance to the Ancient Egyptian writing) was a combination of phonetic symbols and logograms. It is most often classified as a logographic or (more properly) a logosyllabic writing system, in which syllabic signs play a significant role. It is the only pre-Columbian writing system known to completely represent the spoken language of its community. In total, the script has more than one thousand different glyphs, although a few are variations of the same sign or meaning, and many appear only rarely or are confined to particular localities. At any one time, no more than around five hundred glyphs were in use, some two hundred of which (including variations) had a phonetic or syllabic interpretation.

Aztec codices (singular ''codex'') are books written by pre-Columbian and colonial-era Aztecs. These codices provide some of the best primary sources for Aztec culture. The pre-Columbian codices differ from European codices in that they are largely pictorial; they were not meant to symbolize spoken or written narratives. The colonial era codices not only contain Aztec pictograms, but also Classical Nahuatl (in the Latin alphabet), Spanish, and occasionally Latin.

The Wiigwaasabak, birch bark scrolls on which the Ojibwa (Anishinaabe) people wrote complex geometrical patterns and shapes, can also be considered a form of writing, as can Mi'kmaq hieroglyphics.

Aboriginal syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of abugidas used to write a number of Aboriginal Canadian languages of the Algonquian, Inuit, and (formerly) Athabaskan language families.

Music and art

Native American music in North America is almost entirely monophonic, but there are notable exceptions. Traditional Native American music often centers around drumming. Rattles, clappersticks, and rasps were also popular percussive instruments. Flutes were made of rivercane, cedar, and other woods. The tuning of these flutes is not precise and depends on the length of the wood used and the hand span of the intended player, but the finger holes are most often around a whole step apart and, at least in Northern California, a flute was not used if it turned out to have an interval close to a half step. The Apache fiddle is a single stringed instrument.

Music from indigenous peoples of Central Mexico and Central America often was pentatonic. Before the arrival of the Spaniards and other Europeans it was inseparable from religious festivities and included a large variety of percussion and wind instruments such as drums, flutes, sea snail shells (used as a kind of trumpet) and "rain" tubes. No remnants of pre-Columbian stringed instruments were found until archaeologists discovered a jar in Guatemala, attributed to the Maya of the Late Classic Era (600–900 CE), which depicts a stringed musical instrument which has since been reproduced. This instrument is astonishing in at least two respects. First, it is the very few string instruments known in the Americas prior to the introduction of European musical instruments. Second, when played, it produces a sound virtually identical to a jaguar's growl.

Visual arts by indigenous peoples of the Americas composes a major category in the world art collection. Contributions include pottery, paintings, jewellery, weavings, sculptures, basketry, carvings and beadwork. Due to the many artists posing as Native Americans, the United States passed the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990, requiring artists prove that they are enrolled in a state or federally recognized tribe.

Demography of contemporary populations

The following table provides estimates of the per-country populations of Amerindian people, and also those with partial Amerindian ancestry, expressed as a percentage of the overall country population of each country that is comprised by Amerindians, and of people of partial Amerindian descent. The total percentage obtained by adding both of these categories is also given.

''Note:'' these categories are inconsistently defined and measured differently from country to country. Some are based on the results of population wide genetic surveys, while others are based on self identification or observational estimation.

+ Indigenous populations of the Americas''as estimated percentage of total country's population''
Country	Amerindian	Ref.	Part Amerindian	Ref.	Combined total	Ref.
North America
Canada	1.8%		3.6%		5.4%
Mexico	9.8%		60%		69.8%
United States	0.9%		0.6%		1.5%
Central America
Belize	16.7%		33.8%		50.5%
Costa Rica	1%		15%		16%
El Salvador	1%		90%		91%
Guatemala	40.8%		%		%
Honduras	7%		90%		97%
Nicaragua	5%		69%		74%
Panama	6%		84%		90%
Caribbean
Antigua and Barbuda	%		%		%
Barbados	%		%		%
The Bahamas	%		%		%
Cuba	%		%		%
Dominica	2.9%		%		%
Dominican Republic	%		%		%
Grenada	~0%		~0%		~0%
Haiti	~0%		~0%		~0%
Jamaica	%		%		%
Puerto Rico	0.4%		84%		84%
Saint Kitts and Nevis	%		%		%
Saint Lucia	%		%		%
	2%		%		%
Trinidad and Tobago	0.8%		88%		80%
South America
Argentina	1.0%		2%		3%
Bolivia	55%		30%		85%
Brazil	0.4%		%		%
Chile	4.6%		%		%
Colombia	1%		58%		59%
Ecuador	25%		65%		90%
French Guiana	%		%		%
Guyana	9.1%		%		%
Paraguay	1.7%		95%		96.7%
Peru	45%		37%		82%
Suriname	2%		%		%
Uruguay	0%		8%		8%
Venezuela	%		%		%

History and status by country

Argentina

Argentina's indigenous population in 2005 was about 600,329 (1.6% of total population); this figure includes 457,363 people who self-identified as belonging to an indigenous ethnic group, and the remaining 142,966 who recognized themselves as first-generation descendants of an Amerindian people. The ten most populous indigenous peoples are the Mapuche (113,680 people), the Kolla (70,505), the Toba (69,452), the Guaraní (68,454), the Wichi (40,036), the Diaguita-Calchaquí (31,753), the Mocoví (15,837), the Huarpe (14,633), the Comechingón (10,863) and the Tehuelche (10,590). Minor but important peoples are the Quechua (6,739), the Charrúa (4,511), the Pilagá (4,465), the Chané (4,376), and the Chorote (2,613). The Selknam (Ona) people are now virtually extinct in its pure form. The languages of the Diaguita, Tehuelche, and Selknam nations are now extinct or virtually extinct: the Cacán language (spoken by Diaguitas) in the 18th century, the Selknam language in the 20th century; whereas one Tehuelche language (Southern Tehuelche) is still spoken by a small handful of elderly people.

Belize

Mestizos (European with indigenous peoples) number about 34 percent of the population; unmixed Maya make up another 10.6 percent (Ketchi, Mopan, and Yucatec). The Garifuna, who came to Belize in the 19th century, originating from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, with a mixed African, Carib, and Arawak ancestry make up another 6% of the population.

Bolivia

In Bolivia, a 62% majority of residents over the age of 15 self-identify as belonging to an indigenous people, while another 3.7% grew up with an indigenous mother tongue yet do not self-identify as indigenous. Including both of these categories, and children under 15, some 66.4% of Bolivia's population was registered as indigenous in the 2001 Census. The largest indigenous ethnic groups are: Quechua, about 2.5 million people; Aymara, 2.0 million; Chiquitano, 181 thousand; Guaraní, 126 thousand; and Mojeño, 69 thousand. Some 124 thousand pertain to smaller indigenous groups. The Constitution of Bolivia, enacted in 2009, recognizes 36 cultures, each with their own language, as part of a plurinational state. Others, including CONAMAQ (the National Council of Ayllus and Markas of Qollasuyu) draw ethnic boundaries within the Quechua- and Aymara-speaking population, resulting in a total of fifty indigenous peoples native to Bolivia.

Large numbers of Bolivian highland peasants retained indigenous language, culture, customs, and communal organization throughout the Spanish conquest and the post-independence period. They mobilized to resist various attempts at the dissolution of communal landholdings, and used legal recognition of "empowered caciques" to further communal organization. Indigenous revolts took place frequently until 1953. While the National Revolutionary Movement government begun in 1952 discouraged self-identification as indigenous (reclassifying rural people as ''campesinos'', or peasants), renewed ethnic and class militancy re-emerged in the Katarista movement beginning in the 1970s. Lowland indigenous peoples, mostly in the east, entered national politics through the 1990 March for Territory and Dignity organized by the CIDOB confederation. That march successfully pressured the national government to sign ILO Convention 169 and to begin a still-ongoing process of recognizing and titling indigenous territories. The 1994 Law of Popular Participation granted "grassroots territorial organizations" recognized by the state certain rights to govern local areas.

Radio and some television in Quechua and Aymara is produced. The constitutional reform in 1997 for the first time recognized Bolivia as a multilingual, pluri-ethnic society and introduced education reform. In 2005, for the first time in the country's history, an indigenous descendant Aymara, Evo Morales, was elected as President.

Morales began work on his “indigenous autonomy” policy which he launched in the eastern lowlands department on 3 August 2009, making Bolivia the first country in the history of South America to declare the right of indigenous people to govern themselves. The issue has divided the country.

Brazil

The Amerindians make up 0.4% of Brazil's population, or about 700,000 people. Indigenous peoples are found in the entire territory of Brazil, although the majority of them live in Indian reservations in the North and Centre-Western part of the country. On 18 January 2007, FUNAI reported that it had confirmed the presence of 67 different uncontacted tribes in Brazil, up from 40 in 2005. With this addition Brazil has now overtaken the island of New Guinea as the country having the largest number of uncontacted tribes.

Canada

Aboriginal peoples in Canada comprise the First Nations, Inuit and Métis; the descriptors "Indian" and "Eskimo" are falling into disuse. Hundreds of Aboriginal nations evolved trade, spiritual and social hierarchies. The Métis culture of mixed blood originated in the mid-17th century when First Nation and native Inuit married European settlers. The Inuit had more limited interaction with European settlers during that early period. Various laws, treaties, and legislation have been enacted between European immigrants and First Nations across Canada. Aboriginal Right to Self-Government provides opportunity to manage historical, cultural, political, health care and economic control aspects within first people's communities.

Although not without conflict, European/Canadian early interactions with First Nations and Inuit populations were relatively peaceful, compared to the experience of native peoples in the United States. Combined with relatively late economic development in many regions, this peaceful history has allowed Canadian Indigenous peoples to have a relatively strong influence on the national culture while preserving their own identity. National Aboriginal Day recognises the cultures and contributions of Aboriginal peoples of Canada. There are currently over 600 recognized First Nations governments or bands encompassing 1,172,790 ²⁰⁰⁶ people spread across Canada with distinctive Aboriginal cultures, languages, art, and music.

Chile

According to the 2002 Census, 4.6% of the Chilean population, including the Rapanui of Easter Island, was indigenous, although most show varying degrees of miscegenation. Many are descendants of the Mapuche, and live in Santiago, Araucanía and the lake district. The Mapuche successfully fought off defeat in the first 300–350 years of Spanish rule during the Arauco War. Relations with the new Chilean Republic were good until the Chilean state decided to occupy their lands. During the Occupation of Araucanía the Mapuche surrendered to the country's army in the 1880s. Their land was opened to settlement by Chileans and Europeans. Conflict over Mapuche land rights continued until present days.

Other groups include the Aimara who live mainly in Arica-Parinacota and Tarapacá Region and has the mayority of their alikes living in Bolivia and Peru and the Alacalufe survivors who now reside mainly in Puerto Edén.

Colombia

A small minority today within Colombia's overwhelmingly Mestizo and Afro-Colombian population, Colombia's indigenous peoples nonetheless encompass at least 85 distinct cultures and more than 1,378,884 people. A variety of collective rights for indigenous peoples are recognized in the 1991 Constitution.

One of these is the Muisca culture, a subset of the larger Chibcha ethnic group, famous for their use of gold, which led to the legend of El Dorado. At the time of the Spanish conquest, the Chibchas were the largest native civilization between the Incas and the Aztecs.

Costa Rica

There are over 60,000 inhabitants of Native American origins, representing 1.5% of the population. Most of them live in secluded reservations, distributed among eight ethnic groups: Quitirrisí (In the Central Valley), Matambú or Chorotega (Guanacaste), Maleku (Northern Alajuela), Bribri (Southern Atlantic), Cabécar (Cordillera de Talamanca), Guaymí (Southern Costa Rica, along the Panamá border), Boruca (Southern Costa Rica) and Térraba (Southern Costa Rica).

These native groups are characterized for their work in wood, like masks, drums and other artistic figures, as well as fabrics made of cotton.

Their subsistence is based on agriculture, having corn, beans and plantains as the main crops.

Ecuador

Ecuador was the site of many indigenous cultures, and civilizations of different proportions. An early sedentary culture, known as the Valdivia culture, developed in the coastal region, while the Caras and the Quitus unified to form an elaborate civilization that ended at the birth of the Capital Quito. The Cañaris near Cuenca were the most advanced, and most feared by the Inca, due to their fierce resistance to the Incan expansion. Their architecture remains were later destroyed by Spaniards and the Incas.

Approximately 96.4% of Ecuador's Indigenous population are Highland Quichuas living in the valleys of the Sierra region. Primarily consisting of the descendents of Incans, they are Kichwa speakers and include the Caranqui, the Otavaleños, the Cayambi, the Quitu-Caras, the Panzaleo, the Chimbuelo, the Salasacan, the Tugua, the Puruhá, the Cañari, and the Saraguro. Linguistic evidence suggests that the Salascan and the Saraguro may have been the descendants of Bolivian ethnic groups transplanted to Ecuador as ''mitimaes''.

Coastal groups, including the Awá, Chachi, and the Tsáchila, make up 0.24% percent of the indigenous population, while the remaining 3.35 percent live in the Oriente and consist of the Oriente Kichwa (the Canelo and the Quijos), the Shuar, the Huaorani, the Siona-Secoya, the Cofán, and the Achuar.

In 1986, indigenous people formed the first "truly" national political organization. The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) has been the primary political institution of the Indigenous since then and is now the second largest political party in the nation. It has been influential in national politics, contributing to the ouster of presidents Abdalá Bucaram in 1997 and Jamil Mahuad in 2000.

El Salvador

Much of El Salvador was home to the Pipil, Lenca, and a number of Maya. The Pipil lived in western El Salvador, spoke Nahuat, and had many settlements there. The Pipil had no treasure but held land that had rich and fertile soil, good for farming. This both disappointed and garnered attention from the Spaniards who were shocked not to find gold or jewels in El Salvador like they did in other lands like Guatemala or Mexico, but later learned of the fertile land El Salvador had to offer and attempted to conquer it. At first the Pipil had repelled Spanish Attacks but after many other attacks they had stopped fighting and many were used for labor by Spaniards. Today many Pipil and Indigenous populations live in small towns of El Salvador like Izalco, Panchimalco, Sacacoyo, and Nahuizalco.

Guatemala

Many of the indigenous peoples of Guatemala are of Maya heritage. Other groups are Xinca people and Garifuna.

Pure Maya account for some 40 percent of the population; although around 40 percent of the population speaks an indigenous language, those tongues (of which there are more than 20) enjoy no official status. Guatemala's majority population holds a percentage of 59.4% in White or Mestizo (of mixed White and Amerindian ancestry) people. The area of Livingston, Guatemala is highly influenced by the Caribbean and its population includes a combination of Mestizos and Garifuna people.

Honduras

About 5 percent of the population are of full-blooded Amerindian descent, but upwards to 80 percent more or the majority of Hondurans are mestizo or part-Amerindian with Caucasian, and about 10 percent are of Amerindian and/or African descent. The main concentration of Amerindians in Honduras are in the rural westernmost areas facing Guatemala and to the Caribbean Sea coastline, as well on the Nicaraguan border. The majority of indigenous people are Lencas, Miskitos to the east, Mayans, Pech, Sumos, and Tolupan.

Mexico

The territory of modern-day Mexico was home to numerous indigenous civilizations prior to the arrival of the Spanish ''conquistadores'': The Olmecs, who flourished from between 1200 BCE to about 400 BCE in the coastal regions of the Gulf of Mexico; the Zapotecs and the Mixtecs, who held sway in the mountains of Oaxaca and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec; the Maya in the Yucatán (and into neighbouring areas of contemporary Central America); the Purepecha or Tarascan in present day Michoacán and surrounding areas, and the Aztecs, who, from their central capital at Tenochtitlan, dominated much of the centre and south of the country (and the non-Aztec inhabitants of those areas) when Hernán Cortés first landed at Veracruz.

In contrast to what was the general rule in the rest of North America, the history of the colony of New Spain was one of racial intermingling (''mestizaje''). ''Mestizos'' quickly came to account for a majority of the colony's population; however, significant numbers and communities of ''indígenas'' (as the native peoples are now known) survive to the present day. The CDI identifies 62 indigenous groups in Mexico, each with a unique language.

In the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca and in the interior of the Yucatán peninsula the majority of the population is indigenous. Large indigenous minorities, including Aztecs, P'urhépechas, and Mixtecs are also present in the central regions of Mexico. In Northern Mexico indigenous people are a small minority.

The "General Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples" grants all indigenous languages spoken in Mexico, regardless of the number of speakers, the same validity as Spanish in all territories in which they are spoken, and indigenous peoples are entitled to request some public services and documents in their native languages. Along with Spanish, the law has granted them — more than 60 languages — the status of "national languages". The law includes all Amerindian languages regardless of origin; that is, it includes the Amerindian languages of ethnic groups non-native to the territory. As such the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples recognizes the language of the Kickapoo, who immigrated from the United States, and recognizes the languages of the Guatemalan Amerindian refugees. The Mexican government has promoted and established bilingual primary and secondary education in some indigenous rural communities. Nonetheless, of the indigenous peoples in Mexico, only about 67% of them (or 5.4% of the country's population) speak an Amerindian language and about a sixth do not speak Spanish (1.2% of the country's population).

The indigenous peoples in Mexico have the right of free determination under the second article of the constitution. According to this article the indigenous peoples are granted:

the right to decide the internal forms of social, economic, political and cultural organization;

the right to apply their own normative systems of regulation as long as human rights and gender equality are respected;

the right to preserve and enrich their languages and cultures;

the right to elect representatives before the municipal council in which their territories are located;

amongst other rights.

Nicaragua

The Miskito are a native people in Central America. Their territory extended from Cape Camarón, Honduras, to Rio Grande, Nicaragua along the Mosquito Coast. There is a native Miskito language, but large groups speak Miskito Coastal Creole, Spanish, Rama and other languages. The Creole English came about through frequent contact with the British who colonized the area. Many are Christians.

Traditional Miskito society was highly structured with a defined political structure. There was a king, but he did not have total power. Instead, the power was split between himself, a governor, a general, and by the 1750s, an admiral. Historical information on kings is often obscured by the fact that many of the kings were semi-mythical.

=== Peru === Indigenous population in Peru make up around 30% Native Peruvian traditions and customs have shaped the way Peruvians live and see themselves today. Cultural citizenship—or what Renato Rosaldo has called, "the right to be different and to belong, in a democratic, participatory sense" (1996:243)—is not yet very well developed in Peru. This is perhaps no more apparent than in the country's Amazonian regions where indigenous societies continue to struggle against state-sponsored economic abuses, cultural discrimination, and pervasive violence.

United States

Indigenous peoples in what is now the contiguous United States are commonly called "American Indians", or just "Indians" domestically, but are also often referred to as "Native Americans". In Alaska, indigenous peoples, which include Native Americans, Yupik and Inupiat Eskimos, and Aleuts, are referred to collectively as Alaska Natives.

Native Americans and Alaska Natives make up 2 percent of the population, with more than 6 million people identifying themselves as such, although only 1.8 million are recognized as registered tribal members. Tribes have established their own rules for membership, some of which are increasingly exclusive. More people have unrecognized Native American ancestry together with other ethnic groups. A minority of U.S. Native Americans live in land units called Indian reservations. Some southwestern U.S. tribes, such as the Yaqui and Apache, have registered tribal communities in Northern Mexico. Similarly, some northern bands of Blackfoot reside in southern Alberta, Canada, in addition to within US borders. thumb|150px|An Inuit woman A number of Kumeyaay communities may be found in the Mexican State of Baja California.

Venezuela

Most Venezuelans have some indigenous heritage, but the indigenous population make up only around 2% of the total population. They speak around 29 different languages and many more dialects, but some of the ethnic groups are very small and their languages are in danger of becoming extinct in the next decades. The most important indigenous groups are the Ye'kuana, the Wayuu, the Pemon and the Warao. The most advanced native people to have lived in present-day Venezuela is thought to have been the Timoto-cuicas, who mainly lived in the Venezuelan Andes. In total it is estimated that there were between 350 thousand and 500 thousand inhabitants, the most densely populated area being the Andean region (Timoto-cuicas), thanks to the advanced agricultural techniques used.

The 1999 constitution of Venezuela gives them special rights, although the vast majority of them still live in very critical conditions of poverty. The largest groups receive some basic primary education in their languages.

Other parts of the Americas

Indigenous peoples make up the majority of the population in Bolivia and Peru, and are a significant element in most other former Spanish colonies. Exceptions to this include Costa Rica, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Dominican Republic, and Uruguay. At least four of the native American languages (Quechua in Peru and Bolivia; Aymara also in Peru, Bolivia and Chile, Guaraní in Paraguay, and Greenlandic in Greenland) are recognized as official languages languages (or Aymara in Chile, by regional basis).

Native American name controversy

The Native American name controversy is an ongoing dispute over the acceptable ways to refer to the indigenous peoples of the Americas and to broad subsets thereof, such as those living in a specific country or sharing certain cultural attributes. Once-common terms like "Indian" remain in use, despite the introduction of terms such as "Native American" and "Amerindian" during the latter half of the 20th century.

Rise of indigenous movements

In recent years, there has been a rise of indigenous movements in the Americas (mainly South America). These are rights-driven groups that organize themselves in order to achieve some sort of self-determination and the preservation of their culture for their peoples. Organizations like the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin and the Indian Council of South America are examples of movements that are breaking the barrier of borders in order to obtain rights for Amazonian indigenous populations everywhere. Similar movements for indigenous rights can also be seen in Canada and the United States, with movements like the International Indian Treaty Council and the accession of native Indian group into the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization.

There has also been a recognition of indigenous movements on an international scale, with the United Nations adopting the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, despite dissent from the stronger countries of the Americas.

Moves towards the rights of the indigenous in Leftist countries of Latin America, led to a surge in activity in historically the most right-wing state in South America. In Colombia, various indigenous groups protested the denial of their rights. People organized a march in Cali in October 2008 to demand the government live up to promises to protect indigenous lands, defend the indigenous against violence, and reconsider the free trade pact with the United States.

Legal prerogative

With the rise to power of Leftist governments in Venezuela, Ecuador, Paraguay, and especially Bolivia where Evo Morales was the first indigenous descendant elected president of Bolivia, the indigenous movement gained a strong foothold. Representatives from indigenous and rural organizations from major South American countries, including Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile and Brazil, started a forum in support of Morales' legal process of change. The meeting condemned plans by the European "foreign" power elite to destabilize the country. The forum also expressed solidarity with the Morales and his economic and social changes in the interest of historically marginalized majorities. Furthermore, in a cathartic blow to the US-backed elite, it questioned US interference through diplomats and NGO's. The forum was suspicious of plots against Bolivia and other countries, including Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Paraguay and Nicaragua.

The forum rejected the supposed violent method used by regional civic leaders from the called "Crescent departments" in Bolivia to impose their autonomous statutes, applauded the decision to expel the US ambassador to Bolivia, and reafirmed the sovereignty and independence of the presidency. Amongst others, representatives of CONAIE, the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia, the Chilean Council of All Lands, and the Brazilian Landless Movement participated in the forum.

Genetics

Genetic history of indigenous peoples of the Americas primarily focus on Human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups and Human mitochondrial DNA haplogroups. "Y-DNA" is passed solely along the patrilineal line, from father to son, while "mtDNA" is passed down the matrilineal line, from mother to offspring of both sexes. Neither recombines, and thus Y-DNA and mtDNA change only by chance mutation at each generation with no intermixture between parents' genetic material. Autosomal "atDNA" markers are also used, but differ from mtDNA or Y-DNA in that they overlap significantly. AtDNA is generally used to measure the average continent-of-ancestry genetic admixture in the entire human genome and related isolated populations.

The genetic pattern indicates Indigenous Amerindians experienced two very distinctive genetic episodes; first with the initial-peopling of the Americas, and secondly with European colonization of the Americas. The former is the determinant factor for the number of gene lineages, zygosity mutations and founding haplotypes present in today's Indigenous Amerindian populations.

Human settlement of the New World occurred in stages from the Bering sea coast line, with an initial 15, 000 to 20,000-year layover on Beringia for the small founding population. The micro-satellite diversity and distributions of the Y lineage specific to South America indicates that certain Amerindian populations have been isolated since the initial colonization of the region. The Na-Dené, Inuit and Indigenous Alaskan populations exhibit haplogroup Q (Y-DNA) mutations, however are distinct from other indigenous Amerindians with various mtDNA and atDNA mutations. This suggests that the earliest migrants into the northern extremes of North America and Greenland derived from later migrant populations.

See also

Classification of indigenous peoples of the Americas

Alaska Natives

History of the west coast of North America

Hyphenated American

Indigenous languages of the Americas

Indigenous Movements in the Americas

Indigenous rights

List of American Inuit

List of Greenlandic Inuit

List of indigenous artists of the Americas

List of indigenous people of the Americas

List of traditional territories of the indigenous peoples of North America

List of writers from peoples indigenous to the Americas

Mongoloid race

Native American art

Native American Languages Act of 1990

Native American religion

Native Hawaiians

Pacific Islander

Population history of American indigenous peoples

Uncontacted peoples

Zambo

References

Books

External links

The Peopling of the American Continents, ''Early California History''

North America, ''Indigenous Peoples Issues and Resources''

South America, ''Indigenous Peoples Issues and Resources''

Indigenous Peoples in Brazil. Instituto Socioambiental (ISA)

America's Stone Age explorers, ''PBS Nova''

A history of Native people of Canada - The Canadian Museum of Civilization''

Category:Ethnic groups in the Americas Category:Ethnic groups in Latin America Category:Ethnic groups in North America Category:Historical definitions of race Category:Latin American caste system

ar:أمريكيون أصليون az:Hindilər be:Індзейцы be-x-old:Індзейцы bar:Indiana bs:Domorodački narodi Amerike bg:Индианци ca:Pobles indígenes d'Amèrica cs:Indiáni da:Oprindelige amerikanere pdc:Insching de:Indianer nv:Bitsįʼ yishtłizhii et:Indiaanlased el:Ιθαγενείς πληθυσμοί της Αμερικής es:Amerindio eo:Indianoj eu:Amerindiar fa:سرخ‌پوست fr:Amérindiens fy:Yndianen gl:Amerindio ko:아메리카 토착민 hi:इंडियन (अमेरिका के आदिवासी) hr:Indijanci id:Suku Indian ia:Indiano american is:Frumbyggjar Ameríku it:Nativi americani he:אינדיאנים jv:Suku Indian kn:ಅಮೇರಿಕ ಖಂಡಗಳ ಸ್ಥಳೀಯ ಜನ kk:Үндістер ku:Amerîkiyên resen la:Indi Americani lv:Amerikas pamatiedzīvotāji lt:Indėnai hu:Indiánok mk:Американски староседелци mg:Tera-tan' Amerika mr:मूळचे अमेरिकन mzn:سرخپوست ms:Amerindian nah:Mācēhualtlācatl nl:Indianen ja:アメリカ州の先住民族 no:Indianere nn:Amerikanske urfolk pnb:لال ہندی pap:Nativonan di Amérika pl:Indianie pt:Povos ameríndios ro:Amerindieni ru:Индейцы stq:Indioaner simple:Native American sk:Indiáni sl:Ameriški staroselci szl:Indjanery so:Maraykanka assalkoodii sr:Američki starosedeoci fi:Intiaanit sv:Indianer ta:அமெரிக்க முதற்குடிமக்கள் th:ชนพื้นเมืองในทวีปอเมริกา tr:Amerikan yerlileri tk:Indeýler uk:Індіанці ur:سرخ ہندی vi:Người bản địa châu Mỹ zh-yue:美洲土著 bat-smg:Indienā zh:美洲原住民

Coordinates	5°39′″N100°30′″N
bgcolour	silver
name	Iron Eyes Cody
birth name	Espera Oscar de Corti
birth date	April 03, 1904
birth place	Kaplan, Louisiana, U.S.
death date	January 04, 1999
death place	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
other names	Tony Corti, Tony Cody, The Crying Indian
years active	1927–1987
spouse	Bertha "Birdie" Parker (1936–1978)Wendy Foote (1992–1993)}}

Iron Eyes Cody (April 3, 1904 – January 4, 1999) was an American actor. He was recognized for portraying American Indians in Hollywood films, and he lived as an American Indian as an adult. He and his wife Bertha, who was American Indian, adopted several Indian children. In 1995 Cody was honored by the American Indian community for his portrayals in films. The next year, a newspaper revealed his Sicilian ancestry, which he denied.

Early life

Cody was born as Espera Oscar de Corti in Kaplan, Louisiana, a second son of Antonio de Corti and his wife, Francesca Salpietra, immigrants from Sicily, Italy. He had two brothers and a sister. His parents had a local grocery store in Gueydan, Louisiana, where he was raised. In some of his earliest acting credits, he was listed as Tony de Corti. His father left the family and moved to Texas, where he took the name Tony Corti. His mother married Alton Abshire and had five more children with him.

When the three De Corti brothers were teenagers, they joined their father in Texas and also took the shortened last name of Corti. They moved on to California, where they started acting in movies, and each took the surname Cody. Joseph William and Frank Henry Cody worked some as extras, but moved on to other work. Tony Cody made a career as a film actor.

Film career

Cody began his acting career at age twelve. He worked in film and TV until the time of his death. From his time in Hollywood, Tony Cody claimed Cherokee-Cree ancestry. He lived his life as if he were of indigenous American Indian descent, both on and off the screen, and strongly supported American Indian causes.

He appeared in more than 200 films, including ''The Big Trail'' (1930), with John Wayne; ''The Scarlet Letter'' (1934), with Colleen Moore; ''Sitting Bull'' (1954), as Crazy Horse; ''The Light in the Forest'' (1958) as Cuyloga; ''Nevada Smith'' (1966), with Steve McQueen; ''A Man Called Horse'' (1970), with Richard Harris; and ''Ernest Goes to Camp'' (1987), as Chief St. Cloud. In 1953, he appeared twice as Chief Big Cloud in Duncan Renaldo's television series, ''The Cisco Kid''. He later guest starred on John Payne's NBC western series, ''The Restless Gun''.

Cody became widely seen in his "crying Indian" role in the "Keep America Beautiful" Public Service Announcement (PSA) in the early 1970s. The environmental commercial showed Cody as an Indian, shedding a tear after people throw trash from a speeding car and it lands at his feet. The announcer, William Conrad, says: "People start pollution; people can stop it."

The Joni Mitchell song "Lakota," from the 1988 album, ''Chalk Mark in a Rainstorm'', features Cody's chanting. He made a cameo appearance in the 1990 film ''Spirit of '76''.

In an episode of the TV series, ''The Sopranos,'' titled "Christopher" (2002), Ralph Cifaretto (Joseph Pantoliano) threatens to expose Cody's Sicilian ancestry as leverage against anti-Columbus protests by an Indian group. He is told that "it's like knowing that James Caan isn't Italian" (referring to his role as an Italian American in ''The Godfather'' film).

Marriage and family

Cody married Bertha Parker, an American Indian woman, in 1936. They adopted several Indian children, including two brothers who were Dakota-Maricopa. They divorced in 1978.

In 1992 he married Wendy Foote. They divorced in 1993.

Honors

In 1995, the Hollywood American Indian community honored Cody for his contributions to the representation of Indian life.

In 1996, the ''New Orleans Times-Picayune'' reported his Sicilian heritage, but Cody denied it. He lived all his adult life claiming he was American Indian and supported related causes.

Cody died in 1999, aged 94; he was interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. He was survived by his adopted son, Robert "Tree" Cody, who has become known as a performer on the Native American flute. Robert is of Dakota-Maricopa ancestry.

Filmography

Film
! Year	! Film	! Role	! Notes
		Indian	Uncredited Role
	The Big Trail	Indian	Uncredited Role
	Fighting Caravans	Indian After Firewater	Uncredited Role
Oklahoma Jim	War Eagle
	The Senator Was Indiscreet	Indian
	Indian Agent	Wovoka
	Massacre River	Chief Yellowstone
	Gun Fever	1st Indian Chief
	Nevada Smith	Taka-Ta	Uncredited Role
		Santana, Apache Chief
Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County	Crazy Foot
A Man Called Horse	Medicine Man
	Grayeagle	Standing Bear
	Ernest Goes to Camp	Old Indian 'Chief St. Cloud'
Television
! Year	! Title	! Role	! Notes
		Chief Big Cloud / Chief Sky Eagle	Two separate roles, Indian Uprising (1953) as Chief Sky Eagle and The Gramophone (1953) as Chief Big Cloud
	Cavalcade of America	n/a	Episode, The Hostage (1955)
	The Fastest Guitar Alive	1st Indian
	Then Came Bronson	Chief John Carbona	Episode, Old Tigers Never Die--They Just Run Away (1969)
	The A-Team	Chief Watashi	Episode, Mission of Peace (1986)

References

External links

Category:1904 births Category:1999 deaths Category:People from Kaplan, Louisiana Category:American people of Sicilian descent Category:Actors from Louisiana Category:American film actors Category:American television actors Category:Native American activists Category:Western (genre) film actors Category:Burials at Hollywood Forever Cemetery

ca:Iron Eyes Cody de:Iron Eyes Cody