The natives of the American continents before Europeans arrived. That means before 1000 AD? ''He means the Asians that migrated through Siberia'' ''But are now a distinct group as indicated by blood type frequencies and other indices that I am too lazy to find out. -- AnonymousCoward'' In the United States today, it is generally considered more polite to use the term NativeAmericans, isn't it? ''Maybe, but I find it misleading. As far as I'm concerned, ''I'm'' a native American, too, . Lived here all my life, you betcha.'' -- MikeSmith I'd say American Indian is somewhat more misleading, though, because they don't have ''anything'' to do with India. Maybe Aboriginal American is what you're looking for. ''Well, yes, but ChristopherColumbus thought he had arrived to EasternIndia. That was how Europeans of that time called China. Considering the result, China was lucky there was America in the middle.'' Europeans arrived in China, too, simply with a different outcome. I think that what you mean about being Native American is because you were born in the United States, this does not mean you are "Native American" it is meant by your family from hundreds of years ago immigrated here just like the Europeans, now American Indians are the true Indians from America that's why they are called Native Americans by the white men in history.Colombus thought he had reached the Indies,when he arrived here he saw the Indians and named them, this is why the Indians are called Indians by mistake. Indians were here still by 864AD, So tell me were do you think they came from? -- Anna Baez * By that logic, many Europeans are Native Romans. And we should distinguish Native Picts from the Scottish? This politically correct nonsense is annoying. I know many (white) African-Americans. Likewise there are a huge number of Blacks from the carribean, not from Africa so African-American is a misnomer. Finally, some people say Gypsies should be called Roma, yet the Gypsies from Northern Ireland are genetically from Ireland. Using the original terms for people (American Indian, Black, Gypsy, etc) will not cause any confusion and be more accurate. Rewriting the dictionary to suit ultra-leftism will mangle our language. BTW ChristopherColumbus did not care _what_ he found, and saying he "thought" he had arrived in East India is unduly charitable. He had promised monarchs he would find a way to India going West, so when he returned he simply announced victory. ---- ''Except the current theory is that what we think of as indians weren't the original people group here at all.'' Really? I didn't know that. Can you elaborate? ''IIRC, the oldest remains found do not match those of the known ancestors of the main population at the time of Columbus - different biometrics place them as part of the same group that the Ainu descended from, while the current NativeAmericans descended from a later wave of East Asians colonists.'' I'd appreciate a source for the above; I'd hate to propagate a RunawayMeme like the "una gente in Dios" vs Hindustan explanation. I heard that meme first, oddly enough, in GeorgeCarlin's book, while it was debunked by CecilAdams. In any case, it's almost too bad we lump them all as "Indians" and "Americans" so often, rather than using one of their words. Then again, Japan hasn't complained about us calling them Japan. -- NickBensema, the terminally naﶥ. American Indians don't have a word for "American Indians", just words for their own tribe, and the tribes their ancestors knew. Last I heard, they prefer "American Indians" over "Native Americans". ''It might also be possible that many Indian immigrants living in America prefer the use of "Native American" over "American Indian". Otherwise, you have a very confusing situation where "Indian-American" and "American Indian" mean two entirely different, unrelated things.'' Exactly, see GroupingByaName for a simple illustration. ''The source for the ''current Amerinds being second wave of immigrants'' is a PBS piece on Kenniwick Man, a thousands of years old skeleton that is being legally wrangled over as to whether it is a NativeAmerican, and therefore subject to various protections against examination, or if it is from a different population, and therefore not protected by the NativeAmerican regulations. I imagine a quick net search will turn up authoritative info. I'll do one ASAP'' ---- White Man: So, my good man, what did you Native Americans call this great land before the coming of the European? Native American: "Ours". Also they would speak of the "land", the "skies", the "waters", the "mountains", and "sun, moon and stars" They did not have a concept of "ours" or ownership. Theirs was a sense of living in the land and receiving from the land, Ownership was introduced by the "immigrants"! Inter-tribal warfare was conducted for what purpose then? Primarily, for the acquisition of finite, consumable resources. Parse carefully; what I'm about to say sounds very confusing the first 10 times you read this. Just because they didn't speak in terms of ownership, and that they ''lacked a vocabulary to describe it'' in context, doesn't mean the idea of, "If we don't eat (because someone from tribe Foo took our source of food, or ...), we'll die" didn't exist. It very much did. Despite this, the ''concept'' that land and produce resources ''belonged to them'' (e.g., that they had finite territories to be managed ''by man'', versus ''by the gods'') simply didn't exist. It's a language issue, not a conceptual issue. ---- The Mormon faith has it that one of the lost tribes of Israel managed to wind up in the Americas, where Jesus''''''Christ was also alledged to have made an appearance. According to the religious lore, said tribe was later slaughtered by what we now know as AmericanIndians. Unfortunately (for advocates of this theory), there is no archeological evidence of this. There are other groups (Asataru Folk Assembly, or something like that) that also claim to have ancestry in the New World before European settlers came; no evidence for these claims either. Wow, what a useless page! There could have been NativeAmericanDevelopers, ShamanismAsSoftwareDevelopment, NativeAmericansAndLegalRights, WhatIsNativeAmerican, BlockVotingAndPolitics, WhiteManConsideredHarmful, TheMentalBenefitsOfaSweat, NativeAmericanStories, NativeAmericanPolitics, WhyWasIndianUsed, etc. . . instead we have a badly named page with no focus, full of "but aren't american indians. . .??" ''What a useless attitude! I think we should be more aware of the history of the original tenants of north america certainly there are many pages about eastern philosophy and other cultures here. We toil daily at programming I am at least a little bit curious as to who toiled where I am living, several hundred years ago. For instance what was the distribution of various tribes across the continent? A recent visit to the bookstore was not able to answer that question perhaps someone here could summarize it concisely.''