page_title: Native Americans in the United States
section_title: Sports
hierarchical_section_title: Native Americans in the United States / Society, language, and culture / Sports
context_page_description: Native Americans, also known as American Indians, Indigenous Americans and other terms, are the indigenous peoples of the United States, except Hawaii and territories of the United States. There are 574 federally recognized tribes living within the US, about half of which are associated with Indian reservations. The term "American Indian" excludes Native Hawaiians and some Alaskan Natives, while "Native Americans" are American Indians, plus Alaska Natives of all ethnicities. The US Census does not include Native Hawaiians, Samoans, or Chamorros, instead being included in the Census grouping of "Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander".
  The ancestors of living Native Americans arrived in what is now the United States at least 15,000 years ago, possibly much earlier, from Asia via Beringia. A vast variety of peoples, societies and cultures subsequently developed. European colonization of the Americas, which began in 1492, resulted in a precipitous decline in Native American population through introduced diseases, warfare, ethnic cleansing, and slavery.
context_section_description: Native American leisure time led to competitive individual and team sports. Jim Thorpe, Joe Hipp, Notah Begay III, Chris Wondolowski, Jacoby Ellsbury, Joba Chamberlain, Kyle Lohse, Sam Bradford, Jack Brisco, Tommy Morrison, Billy Mills, Angel Goodrich, Shoni Schimmel, and Kyrie Irving are well known professional athletes.
caption: Ball players from the Choctaw and Lakota tribe in a 19th-century lithograph by George Catlin
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