Native American resources: Sites for online research.
Many terms have been used to denote the first settlers of America, including First Peoples, Indigenous Peoples of America, Original Americans, Indians of North America, First Nations, and Native Americans (an increasingly popular term first used around 1960 in an effort to avoid negative stereotypes). This group is multiethnic and contains many subgroups—more than 500 individual tribes. The Europeans (often considered enemies of the Indians) named some of these individual tribes, like Iroquois and Sioux. Upon seeing Native Americans, Columbus used the word los Indios to describe them because he thought he had found the western route to India. Although Columbus was actually in the Caribbean, this erroneous term remained. The Library of Congress uses “Indians of North America” as a subject heading. Many Native Americans use “Indian.”1 Therefore Indian and Native American will be used interchangeably. Numerous Internet resources exist that support not only the study of Native Americans and their diverse culture, but also to assist their culture and well-being. This list of sites for this article mainly focuses on the study of Native American history and culture. We have also included a few Canadian sites and governmental agencies.