Where did the 'so-called' "Native American" come from and why were they called "Indians"?

Question

The question is: Where did the "so-called" North, Central and South American Indians (AKA) "Native Americans" come from and Why were they called "INDIANS" ?

Answer 1

When Columbus landed in the New World, he thought he had landed in the East Indies, when actually he had landed at Hispaniola, and he called the inhabitants Indians. Indians in the Americas are descendants of people who crossed a land bridge between Asia and North America, where the Bering Strait is today between 40,000 and 100,000 years ago.

Answer 2

The Native Americans most likely came from other continents and/or lived on the Americas when there was still a land bridge connecting the Americas to Asia. People would cross over the land bridge while hunting. Once they finished, some of them never went back across the bridge, so they were left in North America and could have traveled into Central and South America. The Native Americans got the name Indians from when Colombus had "discovered" America and the peoples living on it. Since he was originally going to India , he thought that was where he was, so he called all the natives Indians.

Answer 3

This is controversial. Many people think that there was a land Bridge between Alaska and Asia and that the Indians came from Asia. There are other studies, however, that suggest that the Indians came from Europe. It has also been shown that people in South America came from Polynesia. So it seems likely that the first Americans did not come from any one place but from many.

As for the origin of "Indian" this came about because Columbus when Columbus was trying to fins a Western route to Asian and believed that he had landed in Indian when he arrived in the Caribbean and called the indigineous people 'Indians'.

Answer 4

They came from Asia, some time between 14,000and 40,000 years ago, across a land bridge that existed where the Bering Strait is now located. They rapidly migrated to almost all parts of North and South America.

When the New World was "discovered" around 1500 A.D., the explorers thought they had landed in India, so they called the natives Indians.

Answer 5

When Christopher Columbus arrived in the "New World", he described the people he encountered as Indians because he mistakenly believed that he had reached India, the original destination of his voyage. Despite Columbus's mistake, the name Indian (or American Indian) stuck, and for centuries the native people of the Americas were collectively called Indians in America, and similar terms in Europe. The problem with this traditional term is that the peoples of India are, of course, also known as Indians. The term Native American was originally introduced in the United States by anthropologists as a more accurate term for the indigenous people of the Americas, as distinguished from the people of India.

Answer 6

Most Anthropologists contend they crossed into the North American content during the ice age when a land bridge existed between Asia and Alaska.. although there is some evidence that humans may have existed in North America prior..

As for Indians... blame Columbus, who was sailing west to find a spice trade route with China, and when he landed in the Carribean, thought he was in India.. he 'slightly' misjudged the size of the world..

Answer 7

They came from Asia across the Beiring Straits. Then the land bridge disappeared once the ice melted and the oceans rose trapping them in North America.

They are called Indians because Europeans explorers mistakenly believed they had arrived at India and thus called the inhabitants "Indians."


have a nice day

Answer 8

They reached America by crossing the Bering Strait in separate waves, either by land (during the ice age, when you could walk from Asia to Alaska) or by sea.

They were called Indians because Columbus wasnt seeking a new continent but the "Indias", that is, the Indian eastern coast and the rich Islands of the Spices in particular, and he thought that that was precisely the place where he had arrived.

Answer 9

There is some evidence that the Americas were populated by people who migrated across a land bridge from Asia, but if you ask them, many peoples have their own creation stories stating that they were created where they live, for example many people of the northwest coast have a story of Raven letting them out of a clamshell.

They are called Indians because when Columbus reached America he was looking for a shortcut to India. He thought he had found it, so he called the people he met Indians.

Answer 10

The Native Americans have always been native to north or south America while as Indians have always been native to the country of India...tom science