Tribes by Region

Ethnographers commonly classify the native peoples of the United States and Canada into ten geographical regions with shared cultural traits. The following list groups native american indians by their region of origin, followed by the current reservation locations.

Anvik Village

21 Views
March 9, 2014

Anvik is a Deg Hit’an Athabascan community, with a rich history. It is located on the west bank of the Yukon River in Interior Alaska, just inside the old mouth of the Anvik River along the hillside. This hillside is called Deloy Ges (Hawk Bluff is the English name), which means “so-called mountain” in Deg Xinag, the local Athabascan language. Raven, or Yuxgitsiy, whose name translates as “everyone’s grandfather” created Deloy Ges.

Deg Hit'an

Eskimo Culture

21 Views
March 9, 2014

Eskimos are indigenous peoples who have traditionally inhabited the circumpolar region from eastern Siberia (Russia), across Alaska (United States), Canada, and Greenland. There are two main groups that are referred to as Eskimo: Yupik and Inuit. A third group, the Aleut, is related.

Arctic Tribes

Sioux Nation

21 Views
March 1, 2014

Sioux indians, tribes, nations and reservations

The Great Sioux Nation is actually made up of 18 separate tribes, or bands in the US, and 12 in Canada. These are divided into three divisions: the Lakota Sioux, Dakota Sioux, and the Nakota Sioux.

Sioux Nation
December 1, 2013

Four tribal groupings make up the indigenous Indians of San Diego County: the Kumeyaay/Diegueño, the Luiseño, the Cupeño, and the Cahuilla.

The Diegueño are the largest group, and are classified in the Yuman language family, Hokan stock. They are divided into the Ipai (the northern dialectical form) and the Tipai (the southern dialectical form). The Southern Diegueño are known in their language as the Kumeyaay. 

Mission / Rancheria Indians
April 22, 2013

Genevieve Fields, Enrollment Officer
Ph (435) 234-1267
genevievefields@goshutetribe.com

This department is responsible for the enrollment and updating of tribal membership for the tribe issuing and receiving enrollment applications, issuing tribal identification cards, researching and gathering information, sending correspondences to various tribes and applicants, and preparing completed applications to present to the Goshute Enrollment Committee.

Shoshone Indian
February 28, 2013

Of 2,448 enrolled Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone members in 2003, an estimated 413 were disenrolled (some 17% of the Tribe), and it is expected that the current disenrollment wave underway by Nevada’s Te-Moak Tribal Council will eliminate the membership of another 300 persons for a total disenrollment of approximately 29% of the Tribe.

In a letter dated January 23, 2012 to the Te-Moak Tribal Council in Elko, Lois Whitney and Myron Tybo informed Council Members a meeting had been held January 21, 2012 to discuss enrollment issues at which the “majority of the people in attendance expressed that the enrollment committee altered their family enrollment,” which the letter maintains is “unconstitutional and a violation.” The letter called on the Tribal Council to investigate its enrollment process.

Shoshone Indian
November 20, 2012

The 19 pueblo tribes never signed treaties, and with that came decades of a dual existence. On one hand, they didn’t fit the mold the government had established for native people. Still, they were Indian enough to be subjected to policies that called for them to trade in their native languages and send their children to boarding school.

For the first time, the pueblos have come together to offer their own historical perspective on the effects of 100 years of state and federal policy as part of an exhibit at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque.

Pueblo Indians
August 2, 2012

My people, Hude´shabina (the Red Bottom people), were one of forty bands of Assiniboines who roamed the northern Great Plains from York Factory on Hudson’s Bay, Lake Nipigon, and Lake Superior in the East to the Rocky Mountains of Alberta and Montana in the West.

Sioux Nation
July 31, 2012

In order to become a member of the Aroostook Band of Micmacs, you must be able to prove pre-recognition ties to Aroostook County, Maine before November 26, 1991, and provide documentation to prove your Aroostook ancestry. Other requirements include:

  • You must have the certification within the application notarized.
  • Provide a Certified Birth Certificate, which will be returned to you after copies are made for your file.
  • You must be a United States citizen.
    Abenaki Indians
July 28, 2012

Many of the historical names of Apache groups that were recorded by non-Apache are difficult to match to modern-day tribes or their subgroups. Over the centuries, many Spanish, French and/or English-speaking authors did not differentiate between Apache and other seminomadic non-Apache peoples who might pass through the same area. Most commonly, Europeans learned to identify the tribes by translating their exonym, what another group whom the Europeans encountered first called the Apachean peoples. Europeans often did not learn what the peoples called themselves, referred to as their autonyms.

While anthropologists agree on some traditional major subgrouping of Apaches, they have often used different criteria to name finer divisions, and these do not always match modern Apache groupings. Some scholars do not consider groups residing in what is now Mexico to be Apache. In addition, an Apache individual has different ways of identification with a group, such as a band or clan, as well as the larger tribe or language grouping, which can add to the difficulties in an outsider comprehending the distinctions.

Apache Indians
July 7, 2012

A debate over whether to expand the eligibility requirements to enroll as a Blackfeet tribal member is dividing the Blackfeet Nation.

The Blackfeet tribe in 2011 had 16,924 enrolled members, according to tribal enrollment office statistics. But there are about 105,000 people who identified themselves as `Blackfeet Indian’ on the 2010 U.S. Census.

Blackfeet Tribe
January 16, 2011

Seneca Indians were the westernmost indian nation within the Six Nations or Iroquois League, also known as the Iroquois Confederacy. They are also known as “Iroquois Indians.”

The word ‘Seneca‘ came from the name of one of their villages, Osininka. Seneca Indians called themselves Onandowaga, which means “People of the Great Hill.”

Seneca Indians
August 11, 2009

AUTHOR: Lydia Bogren, age 16 Kaa too wu kin yoo xat du wasaakwShugkeidee aya xatXeitl hit daxKwaashi Kwaan yadi aya xat My name is Lydia Bogren.My clan is shungukeideeI come from the Thunderbird HouseI am the grandchild of Kwaashki Kwaan. The people were at the head of the Alsek River. This river runs very swift […]

Tlingit
August 11, 2009

AUTHOR: Kai Monture, age 11

Kaakutkeich Yoo xat du wasaakw Tlingit tleina.
Kwaash kikwaan naa aya xat Tiskw Hit dax.
My name is Kai Monture.
My clan is the Kwaashkikwaan.
My house is the Owl house.
My land is from Icy Bay down to Yakutat.

Yakutat Bay and the area around it was part of the 263 miles of land owned by the Tlingit people. The area they owned was from Katalla to Lituya Bay.The land was owned by five clans.

Tlingit
June 29, 2009

American Horse, who succeeded to the name and position of an uncle who was killed in the battle of Slim Buttes in 1876, was one of the wittiest and shrewdest of the Oglalla Sioux peace chiefs.

Wašíčuŋ Tȟašúŋke or American Horse (1840 – December 16, 1908) was a chieftain of the Oglala Sioux during the Sioux Wars of the 1870s. He was also the nephew of the elder American Horse and son-in-law of Red Cloud. A more literal translation of his Lakota name (Wašíčuŋ Tȟašúŋke) is He-Has-A-White-Man’s-Horse.

Sioux Nation
July 1, 2008

Today the Sinixt, or Lake Indians, as they are also known, live primarily on the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington State, where they form part of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, which is recognized by the United States government as an American Indian Tribe. A few Sinixt live in their traditional West Kootenay […]

Colville Confederated Tribe
May 22, 2008

The Makah Indian Nation’s proposal to hunt gray whales has fewer negative impacts than five of six alternatives considered in a draft federal study released May 9. The National Marine Fisheries Service conducted the study of the possible impacts of Makah resuming gray whale hunts, in response to the nation’s request for a waiver of the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act. It is accepting public comment on the study until July 8. 

Makah Indians
April 6, 2008

Mesa Verde National Park, in Colorado’s southwest corner, offers visitors a look at the life of the Ancestral Pueblo people. The park is home to 600 cliff dwellings, where Ancestral Puebloans lived for more than 700 years. Chaco’s main draw is Pueblo Bonito, one of the most extensively excavated and studied sites in North America. Center of the Chacoan world and occupied from the mid-800s to 1200s, it was a four-story masonry “great house” with more than 600 rooms and 40 kivas.

Pueblo Indians
April 27, 2007

AUTHOR: Sue Reisinger, Seminole Corporate Counsel

Several times last autumn, the Florida Seminoles’ efforts to buy Hard Rock Cafe International Inc. hit a snag. Some tribal leaders balked at spending nearly a billion dollars for the hotel/restaurant/casino franchise; they didn’t want to hear advice from outsiders, such as Wall Street investment bankers, to go ahead with the deal. It was tribe’s general counsel, Jim Shore — the first Seminole to graduate from law school — who saved the day and the deal.

He oversaw the negotiations, worked with the bankers, and supervised the tribe’s outside lawyers. Then he soothed the leaders’ anxiety. For seven months he repeatedly called, visited or emailed the tribe’s five elected council members, answering their questions, easing their doubts, and sharing his vision for the Seminoles’ future. The leaders were “a little bit cautious because we’re talking big bucks here. They had to be satisfied with the numbers,” Shore says.

But in the end Shore and the Seminoles prevailed over 69 other bidders. On Dec. 7 the tribe announced that it had reached an agreement to buy the Hard Rock franchise for $965 million from the London-based Rank Group Plc. Rank’s shareholders approved the sale on Jan. 8, and the deal closed last March. The Seminole Indians gained control of the two Hard Rock casinos on Florida Seminole reservations, plus 124 Hard Rock Cafes in 45 countries, five hotels, two Hard Rock live performance venues, and the Hard Rock brand name.

Seminole Indians
December 27, 2005

When Columbus landed in 1492, the Indigenous Red Nations and Peoples he met were gracious and friendly, as they had always been. Unfortunately, Columbus murdered many of those “Indians” and took many back to Europe as slaves. This historical fact is discarded by US schools and instead the “Hitler-Columbus” is celebrated as some type of “hero” while Indigenous existence, human rights, and nationhood is ignored.

Sioux Nation
October 20, 2005

The Creeks were overwhelmingly opposed to allotment or any change in the treaty of 1832, which had forced them to move to Indian Territory. One full-blood expressed a common sentiment when he told a Senate investigating committee that “I love my treaty, and I want my old treaty back.”(21) He went on to say that “I will never stop asking for this treaty, the old treaty that our fathers made with the Government which gave us this land forever … as long as the grass grows, water runs, and the sun rises.”(22)

At a meeting held in Okmulgee on April 3, 1894, the commissioners explained at great length to a crowd of nearly three thousand (mostly full-bloods) all of the benefits allotment would bring, but the entire group “voted” against the plan.(23)

Muscogee (Creek) Tribes
September 21, 2005

AUTHOR: Gayle Perez From the Black Hills of South Dakota to the plains of Colorado and finally the open fields of Oklahoma, the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho American tribes have endured many hardships and changes throughout history. This cheyenne arapaho tribe article has moved to our new cheyenne indians section.

Cheyenne Indians
March 30, 2005

The First Seminole War

Following the War of 1812 between the United States and Britain, American slave owners came to Florida in search of runaway African slaves and Indians. These Indians, known as the Seminole, and the runaway slaves had been trading weapons with the British throughout the early 1800s and supported Britain during the War of 1812. From 1817-1818, the United States Army invaded Spanish Florida and fought against the Seminole and their African American allies. Collectively, these battles came to be known as the First Seminole War.

Seminole Indians
March 30, 2005

There have been many very notable and honored Chiefs that lived in the Arkansas Territory. Some have claimed Dangerous Man from the Cherokee legend of the Lost Cherokee resided in Arkansas for a time, however we will stick to what we know as fact, as that is usually the best policy when doing legitimate research.

Cherokee Indians
March 28, 2005

The Cherokee Nation once encompassed parts of eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, western West Virginia, southwestern Virginia, western North Carolina, northern Alabama, northwestern South Carolina and northern Georgia. Genealogy issues are further complicated by the infamous removal of the Cherokee to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears in the late 1830s.

Cherokee Indians