The other day I found this map in Facebook, covering the major linguistic groups of the North America. Attached to it was question, “Why isn’t this in any of our history books?”
It received 3,800 likes and over 5,000 shares.
Clearly, it hit a nerve with many people, after all it isn’t that high quality of an image. It definitely caught my attention and so I wanted to write about the native people of North America. I’m not an expert so instead I will just pull together some interesting maps and links for you to expand your knowledge.
A map of the reservations in the United States, from the U.S. Census Bureau:
A historical map of the tribes on the East Coast in the year 1600:
Here is a list of sites with good information. Unfortunately, there are no up-to-date well-kept sites other than Wikipedia. Most of them are just lists with descriptions of each group.
It would be nice to have a full-blown website for each tribe with pictures, detailed descriptions, language, etc.
- Library of Congress – browse tribes by geographic region
- Wikipedia
- Edward S. Curtis – essay – Tribal Regions of ‘The North American Indian’
- Genealogy of North American Tribes
- Languages of the tribes of the North America