Indigenous Peoples' Literature

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian peoples of the Americas and their descendants. Indigenous peoples of the United States are commonly known as Native Americans or American Indians, and Alaska Natives.

Although some indigenous peoples of the Americas were traditionally hunter-gatherers—and many, especially in the Amazon basin, still are—many groups practiced aquaculture and agriculture. In some regions the indigenous peoples created monumental architecture, large-scale organized cities, chiefdoms, states and empires.

Application of the term "Indian" originated with Christopher Columbus, who, in his search for India, thought that he had arrived in the East Indies. Eventually, those islands came to be known as the "West Indies", a name still used. This led to the blanket term "Indies" and "Indians" for the indigenous inhabitants, which implied some kind of racial or cultural unity among the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Even though the term "Indian" generally does not include the culturally and linguistically distinct indigenous peoples of the Arctic regions of the Americas—such as the Aleuts, Inuit, or Yupik peoples, who entered the continent as a second more recent wave of migration several thousand years before, and have much more recent genetic and cultural commonalities with the aboriginal peoples of the Asiatic Arctic Russian Far East—these groups are nonetheless considered "indigenous peoples of the Americas". Please enjoy this extensive collection of writings, legends, stories and research which has been compiled to become known as the Indigenous Peoples' Literature.

This body of work 'Indigenous Peoples' Literature' was researched and cataloged by Glenn Welker and graciously shared with and first published on Indians.org.