Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples from the regions of North America now encompassed by the continental United States, including parts of Alaska and the island state of Hawaii. They comprise a large number of distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as intact political communities. There has been a wide range of terms used to describe them and no consensus has been reached among indigenous members as to what they prefer to be called collectively. Native Americans have also been known as American Indians, Amerindians, Amerinds, Aboriginal, Indians, Indigenous, Original Americans, First Americans, Red Indians, or Red Men.
European colonization of the Americas was a period of conflict between Old and New World cultures. Most of the written historical record about Native Americans began with European contact. Ideologies clashed, old world diseases decimated, religious institutions challenged, and technologies were exchanged in what would be one of the greatest meetings of cultures in the history of the world. Native Americans lived in hunter/farmer subsistence societies with comparatively fewer societal constraints and institutional structures—as well as less focus on the acquisition of material goods and market transactions—than the more unyielding, institutional, market-based societies of Western Europe.[citation needed] The differences between these two cultures were vast enough to make for great misunderstandings and create long-lasting cultural conflicts.
As the colonies revolted against the United Kingdom and established the United States of America, the ideology of Manifest destiny became integral to the American nationalist movement. This ideology accommodated the American policy of attempting to “civilize” native tribes with Western ideals, (as conceived by men such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Henry Knox)[5][6][7][8][9]and assimilation, (whether voluntary as with the Choctaw,[10][11] or forced) became a consistent policy through American administrations. Major resistance to American expansion, or “Indian Wars”, were nearly a constant issue up until the 1890s.
Indian Nations had always been considered as distinct, independent political communities, retaining their original natural rights, as the undisputed possessors of the soil . . . The very term “nation,” so generally applied to them, means “a people distinct from others.”—John Marshall, 1832 Worcester v. Georgia.
Your terminology is sound… the problem is historical applicability… it came a few decades after.
Composing members:
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Composing members:
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