The First Americans

Long before any European ship reached its shores, this land was already home to millions of people. The people who lived in America before the Europeans arrived^Q74 were Native Americans, also called American Indians. They had lived here for thousands of years, in hundreds of nations with their own languages, farms, trade routes and governments.

Many of those nations are still here today. There are more than 570 federally recognized tribes. One American Indian tribe^Q117 is the Apache of the Southwest, known for skilled horsemen and fierce defense of their homeland. Others include the Cherokee, Navajo, Lakota and Seminole.