Native American (Civ4)/Civilopedia

The Native Americans were the original inhabitants of North America, emigrating roughly 16,000 years ago. The term "Native American" most often refers to the people who settled in the northern continent of the Western Hemisphere, in the land that is today owned by the United States and Canada. At the time of the arrival of Columbus, thousands of Native American tribes populated the furthest reaches of North America, with somewhere between two and 18 million Natives living in this region. (The "Native American" civilization in the game represents the empire that would have formed had these disparate people ever united.)
The northern Native Americans never developed a system of writing (the Mayans to the south were the only Native Americans to do so), so the history of the Native Americans before the arrival of the Europeans is difficult to piece together. It is known, however, that these original inhabitants had crossed a land bridge (since gone) connecting Siberia with Alaska. As these Siberian immigrants spread south and east across the continent in search of sustenance, they encountered many different climates, ecologies, and geographies. Settling from within a stone's throw of the Arctic Circle to the most desolate regions of the American Southwest, the Native Americans were a testament to human adaptability.
Given the diversity of lands which they inhabited, not to mention the vast distances separating them, the Native Americans never formed a unified nation. Powerful local entities - such as the Six Nations (also known as the "Iroquois Confederacy") - would appear periodically, but for the most part tribes remained the largest political organization.
With the arrival of the Europeans in the New World, the Native American tribes would be forced to adapt to yet another hostile environment. As the United States established itself as a nation, the Native Americans were perceived as a roadblock to American supremacy - a roadblock which needed to be removed. Andrew Jackson, before his election as the seventh President of the United States, waged total war against the Seminoles in Florida and obliterated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. As President, he signed into effect the "Indian Removal Act" of 1830, the precedent to numerous future "relocation treaties." The Treaty of New Echota, one such relocation treaty, was signed between the United States government and a tiny fraction of the Cherokee people. The march of the Cherokee from their homeland in the eastern United States to new territory in Oklahoma and Arkansas cost the lives of some four thousand natives, and would later become known as the "Trail of Tears."
The continual pushes westwards by American settlers further displaced the Natives, resulting in a series of conflicts known as the "Indian Wars." However, the Native Americans were never able to unify on a grand enough scale to stop the Europeans or their descendants. A common scenario began to occur. Various individual tribes would fight tooth and nail against the invaders and be nearly defeated. These tribes would then be enticed into signing treaties that would often be ignored by the Americans and the tribe would once again be pushed on at the point of a bayonet. The state of Oklahoma was originally given to Native Americans who had been forced from the east, but then in the 1890s, was opened in chunks for American settlement.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, between 75 and 95 percent of the Native American population had been destroyed by starvation, disease or warfare. The reservation system had consigned most survivors to usually undesirable land throughout the United States, and over the next several decades, the rates of alcoholism and suicide among the Native American population skyrocketed. But during the 1960s, a revival of Native American heritage began to emerge. Today, over two million Native Americans live in roughly 563 tribes across the United States. Native American artists such as author Sherman Alexie have beautifully conveyed the travails endured by modern Native Americans in poetry and prose, and proud peoples once forced onto reservations have again begun to spread throughout the United States.